Seraphic Secret

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

Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

by 4 Comments

“I was a homely kid with freckles that came out every spring and stuck on me ‘til Christmas. I was glamorous because of magicians like George J. Folsey, James Wong Howe, Oliver Marsh, Ray June, and all those other great cinematographers. I trusted those men and the other experts who made us beautiful. The rest of it I didn’t give a damn about. I didn’t fuss about my clothes, my lighting, or anything else, but, believe me, some of them did.”
—Myrna Loy

[Read more…] about Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

Union Depot: Yearning For Zion In A Hollywood Classic

by 4 Comments

Joan Blondell and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in “Union Depot.”

The camera swoops majestically through an enormous train station picking out individuals in the crush of humanity: soldiers, sailors, hookers, pickpockets, cops, Pullman porters, immigrants in peasant garb. This exhilarating opening is a tour de force of vignettes with characters delivering rapid fire dialogue perfectly timed to the swirling, unfettered movement of the G-d like camera.

A Snobby Society Dame steps up to a newsstand:

“Do you have Town & Country?”

Newsstand Owner replies in thick Yiddish accent:

“I had one, but they took it away from us 3,000 years ago.”

[Read more…] about Union Depot: Yearning For Zion In A Hollywood Classic