Seraphic Secret

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

Classic Cars

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I’ll always regret that I didn’t have a normal childhood. Was a picture career worth the sacrifice? Well, yes…you can’t have everything.”
— Linda Darnell

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift. Believe me, in the last fifteen years there were ten projects that came to me, and I’d start working on them and I’d think, ‘It’s not going to work, it needs Marilyn Monroe.’ Nobody else is in that orbit; everyone else is earthbound by comparison.”
—Billy Wilder

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I walked on the “Philadelphia Story” (’40) set just as they were shooting the last love scene between Katie Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart. I must say they were both in the mood–especially Jimmy, who had suggestions for improvement until they’d taken five takes. After each he sheepishly exclaimed, “And I’m getting paid for this!” I congratulated him on the improvement of his love technique and asked him to light my cigarette. His hand shook so much he could hardly manage it.”
—Hedda Hopper (1940)

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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Elsa Lanchester on the set of Bride of Frankenstein, 1935
On her maternal instincts:
“I held a baby once. It felt like a bag of hot snakes.”

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Hollywood: I Drive Therefore I am

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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 brilliant, exhilirating and touching American Grafitti, 1973, is the ultimate expression of American car culture. Almost every single scene takes place in a car.

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

Above, Brigitte Bardot color coordinates her pants and signature ballet flats with a sexy sports car. Très chic.

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