Seraphic Secret

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

Bettina

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“There’s a fine line between acting and not acting at all. And not acting is what a lot of actors are guilty of. It amazes me how some of these little numbers with dreamy looks and dead pan are getting by with it. I’ve seen a couple of them – I won’t mention names – with Oscars in their hands. I’d hate to see them on stage with a dog act.”
– Joan Blondell (1906-1979)

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Telling the Truth in Hollywood

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Screenwriter Peter Viertel visits wife Deborah Kerr during the filming of “The Chalk Garden” (1964).

A less than glamorous job, most successful screenwriters are solitary individuals who work quietly and diligently at their craft.

But screenwriter Peter Viertel (1920 – 2007) lived the jet-set life that is the glittering exception. Born in Dresden to an artistic and assimilated Jewish family, mother Salka was a screenwriter who was Greta Garbo’s best friend. His father, Berthold Viertel, was also a prominent writer and intellectual. The family moved to Hollywood in 1928. Peter’s childhood was the stuff of dreams: weekends were spent in the company of Garbo, Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

Young Peter was Hollywood royalty.

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