Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Ann Sothern

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Hollywood sold its stars on good looks and personality build-ups. We weren’t really actresses in the true sense. We were just big names–the products of a good publicity department.”
—Ann Sothern

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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Richard Avedon
Buster Keaton, New York City, 1952
“The screen was just a white sheet. They had this flickering machine. That was the first time I saw this angel with a white face and these beautiful eyes. I knew this was something special. It was the first time I saw Keaton. He wore a flat pancake of a hat, and I just couldn’t believe the man’s grace.”
—Mel Brooks, on first seeing a Buster Keaton film when Brooks was a child.

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Sometimes I’ll watch an old movie on television and, once in a while, one of mine, such as April Showers (’48) will come on and I’ll watch it. And you know something? I’m always amazed at what a lousy actress I was. I guess in the old days we just got by on glamour.”
—Ann Sothern

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Hidden Hollywood: Issur Danielovitch AKA Kirk Douglas Can’t Get a Prom Date

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Kirk Douglas as a high school senior.

In the beginning of his legendary career, Kirk Douglas (1916 – ) b. Issur Danielovitch, was almost typecast as a well-meaning but ineffectual husband in two fine films, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946, and A Letter to Three Wives, 1949.  But his career ascended into mega-stardom when he played cynical heroes motivated by rage: Champion, 1949, Ace in the Hole, 1951, The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952, Paths of Glory, 1957, Spartacus, 1960, and his favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, 1962,

Douglas was never a conventional leading man. Though handsome as a fairy tale prince, he wielded his masculine beauty like a weapon. There was none of the gruff, working class charm that made Gable the King. Douglas was not an urbane gentleman like William Powell, nor a witty charmer like Cary Grant.

Kirk Douglas excelled at playing, in his own words, “sons of bitches.”

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.” —Greta Garbo, 1931
“There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.”
—Greta Garbo, 1931

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