Annette Funicello

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

April 8, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 14 Comments

“To be good is to be forgotten. I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.” —Theda Bara — “To be good is to be forgotten. I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.”
—Theda Bara (b. Theodosia Burr Goodman 1885 – 1955)

Friday Photos: There is No End of History Edition

March 6, 2015 by Robert J. Avrech 6 Comments

Jewish children wearing Purim costumes are guarded by Israel soldiers in the Jewish city of Hebron, currently under occupation by Arab Muslim colonials. — Jewish children wearing Purim costumes are guarded by Israeli soldiers in the indigenous Jewish city of Hebron, currently under occupation by Arab Muslim imperialists.

Benjamin Netanyahu, in his devastating deconstruction of disastrous Obama’s Iranian policy was, in spite of Obama’s unprecedented assault on the Jewish State’s Prime Minister, a Churchillian attempt to preserve Western civilization against the onslaught of IslamoNazis.

Obama’s White House would have you believe that Obama’s problem is a personal beef with Bibi. In fact, Obama’s problem is with Israel, the Jewish State.

Obama views the world as a place where there are no evil people — only those who have legitimate grievances against various power groups. For Obama, Israel is a colonial aggressor against the poor folks of Palestine. And the reason the Palestinians are terrorist barbarians is because the Jews have made them so. This is the ideology of a provincial, dogmatically rigid community organizer who guilted America into electing him to the world’s most powerful office.

Israel will, said Netanyahu, act alone if she must, because once again, the Persian kingdom is on the march and is an existential threat to the Jewish people. Netanyahu’s goal with this declaration, which received one of 42 standing ovations, was to cement Congressional support for an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, thereby neutralizing Obama’s poisonous hostility to the Jewish State.

Make no mistake about it, the leader of the free world is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Barack Obama is choosing to take a break from history. And if there is one thing loyal Jews have learned from the Torah it is that history never stops, cycles and patterns never change because human nature never changes. There is good and there is evil, and at some juncture, decent people must make the choice to name, confront, and destroy evil before it is ascendant.

Anyhoo.

Time to enjoy some wonderful photos. Hopefully, there is something for everyone.

Hollywood Stars and Cars: I Drive Therefore I am

May 30, 2013 by Robert J. Avrech 31 Comments

Annette Funicello with her '57 Thunderbird. — Annette Funicello with her ’57 Ford Thunderbird.

America has long had a love affair with the automobile. Cars are the ultimate expression of form, function, fashion — and speed.

But most of all the car represents freedom.

Try and remember when you were a teenager yearning for your driver’s license so you could hop into daddy’s car and go, go, go. It didn’t matter where, you just wanted to burn rubber and escape into the far horizon.

The exhilarating and touching American Graffiti (’73) is the ultimate expression of American car culture. Every scene takes place in a car, or beside a car.

Los Angeles was the first America city built to accommodate the automobile. And Hollywood stars, most born dirt-poor, expressed delight in their sudden prosperity and fame by purchasing and posing with their dream machines.