Tag Archives: Classic Hollywood

By Robert J. Avrech | November 8, 2012

Fay Wray: Beauty and the Beasts, Part I

Tweet Actress Fay Wray achieved screen immortality as Ann Darrow, the girl in King Kong’s paw, the beauty who tamed, at least for a while, the raging beast. For most of us growing up after Hollywood’s Golden Age, Fay Wray (born Vina Fay Wray; September 15, 1907 – August 8, 2004) was nothing more than [...]

Posted in Fay Wray, Hollywood, Movies | Also tagged Hollywood Memoir, King Kong, On the Other Hand | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | October 25, 2012

Elizabeth Taylor: Dying To Love, Dying For Love

Tweet Elizabeth Taylor lived in a diamond encrusted bubble. Hers was a life utterly devoid of any sense of normalcy. From age twelve, when she became a child star in National Velvet, (1944) Elizabeth Taylor was thrust into an aberrant existence. Here was a young girl who never went through the ordinary rites of passage [...]

Posted in Elizabeth Taylor, Hollywood | Also tagged Cleopatra, Eddie Fisher, Furious Love, Hollywood History, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Richard Burton, Walter Wanger | 15 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | August 16, 2012

Mae Clarke, Jimmy Cagney: The Tricks of the Trade

Tweet In Lady Killer (1933) Dan Quigley (Jimmy Cagney) a movie theater usher, gets fired and drifts into a life of petty crime with a gang of con men and their slinky, hardboiled gun moll, Myra, played by the incomparable Mae Clarke. On the lam from the police and the gang who betrays him, Dan [...]

Posted in Hollywood, Jimmy Cagney, Mae Clarke, Movies | Also tagged Acting, Featured Player: An Oral Biography of Mae Clarke, Lady Killer, Yiddish | 19 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | June 29, 2012

Friday Photos: A Star Is Created

Tweet Stars are not born; they are created through a long and tortuous process of trial and error. When conjuring our favorite star we remember an iconic image that captures that personae. When we think of Jean Harlow we see her glowing platinum hair, a fetching body draped in silk, and a come hither look [...]

Posted in Ava Gardner, Brigitte Bardot, Friday Fotos, Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, Rita Hayworth | Also tagged Hollywood Glamour, Hollywood History | 10 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | January 12, 2012

Clark Gable: A Child… A Bull… No Filth

Tweet John Lee Mahin (1902-1984) was one of the greatest screenwriters. His credits include some of Hollywood’s most enduring classics: Scarface (1932), Red Dust (1932), Bombshell (1933), China Seas (1935), Wife Versus Secretary (1936), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) with uncredited contributions to, among others, A Star is Born (1937), Test Pilot (1938), Gone [...]

Posted in Clark Gable, Hollywood | Also tagged Hollywood Glamour, John Lee Mahin, MGM, Pat McGilligan, Screenwriting, Victor Fleming | 4 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | September 2, 2011

Friday Fashion: Mentioning The Unmentionables

Tweet Legendary Hollywood costume designer Edith Head (1897 – 1981) was known for her even disposition, her practical approach to seemingly impossible problems and her ability to costume every genre of film: westerns, musicals, comedies, and biblical spectacles. In her long career she is credited with over 500 motion pictures, more than any other designer [...]

Posted in Edith Head, Hollywood | Also tagged Alfred Hitchcock, Costume Design, Gloria Swanson, Lingerie | 15 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | August 26, 2011

Friday Fotos: Mirror, Mirror

Tweet The business of creating glamour was hard work. And the Hollywood still photographers employed by the studios did a great deal of the heavy lifting. Thorugh their craft they helped manufacture stars by producing shimmering, glamorous images that hinted at beings who were human gods. Who has not seen the stunning George Hurrell photo [...]

Posted in Brigitte Bardot, Hollywood Mirror | Also tagged Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Brigitte Bardot, Glamour, Helen Twelvetrees, Hurrell, Lillian Gish, Myrna Loy | 4 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | August 4, 2011

Gloria Swanson’s Not So Hollywood Wedding Night

Tweet In a series of wildly popular films Gloria Swanson made with Cecile B. De Mille between 1919 and 1921 the iconography of Hollywood glamour was formally codified. The visual language of glamour—and it was purely visual, films were still silent—is characterized by stunning women wearing one gorgeous outfit after another, placed within elegant sets [...]

Posted in Hollywood | Also tagged Glamour, Gloria Swanson, Hollywood Wedding Night, Silent Films, Sunset Boulevard, Wallace Beery | 19 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | July 15, 2011

In Search of Hollywood’s Sole

Tweet Hollywood glamour is most often, and correctly, associated with picture perfect faces, figures, magical charisma, and the stunning costumes worn by stars of the silver screen during Hollywood’s Golden Age. But then, as now, footwear was a vital component of the machinery of glamour.

Posted in Friday Footwear, Hollywood | Also tagged Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Glamour, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Mary Pickford, Paulette Goddard, Salvatore Ferragamo, Tony Curtis | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | July 7, 2011

Not So Hollywood Wedding Night: Ava Gardner & Mickey Rooney

Tweet Hollywood, in its Golden Age, was a dream machine spinning images of adventure, glamour, and most of all, romance. MGM’s roster of female stars constituted the greatest collection of beautiful and talented women the world has ever known. One of the greatest was Ava Gardner. As an emerging starlet in the early 1940′s, before [...]

Posted in Ava Gardner, Hollywood Wedding Nights | Also tagged Ava Gardner, L.B. Mayer, MGM, MIckey Rooney | 17 Responses

How I Married Karen

The new book
by Robert J. Avrech

Available in All Major Book Stores

Adobe Digital Edition's version is available through the Lulu store!
About Me
Robert J. Avrech
Los Angeles, California
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I'm an Emmy Award winning screenwriter. I'm also an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA. I've been writing and producing in Hollywood for over twenty-five years. But the focus of my life is my family: my radiant wife, Karen—with whom I have been in love with since I was nine years-old—and my two daughters, who, thankfully, look like Karen. Not too long ago, we had three children. But our son, Ariel, died at the age of twenty-two from cancer. We miss him terribly. We think about him practically every minute of every day. People tell us that time heals, but Karen and I know this is not true. Time grinds away doing its terrible work. Ariel is gone. Yet absence becomes presence.

Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
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2012
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audio-only mp3 [15MB]: Ninth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture

2011
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audio-only mp3 [18MB]: Eighth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture

2010
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audio-only mp3 [80MB]: Seventh Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture

2009
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audio-only mp3 [64MB]: Sixth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture

2008
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audio-only mp3 [70MB]: Fifth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture

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