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

Fred Astaire

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

October 26, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 11 Comments

“I appeared with many leading men. But working with Cary Grant was different from working with other actors. He was much more fun! I think we were a successful team because we enjoyed working together tremendously, and that pleasure must have shown through onto the screen. I will always remember two compliments he made me. He said I had perfect timing in comedy and that I was the sweetest smelling actress he ever worked with.”
—Irene Dunne

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

August 31, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 3 Comments

“My mother wisely made very sure when I was young that I wouldn’t get big-headed about my looks. She said, “You have nice eyes, but they’re only nice as long as the expression in back of them is nice. And that depends solely on what you are as a person inside. You are not beautiful, but you can be attractive when you’re nice inside.”
—Elizabeth Taylor

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

January 12, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 3 Comments

“I don’t think much of most of the films I made, but being a movie star was something I liked very much… My film career faded. A man can go on playing certain roles till he’s sixty. But not a woman… The golden age is gone, and with it most of the people of great taste. It doesn’t seem to be any fun any more.”—Joan Bennett in a 1984 interview

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

December 8, 2017 by Robert J. Avrech 5 Comments

“Professionally, my career was great, but never was the scene offstage great for me.”
—Betty Hutton

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

March 3, 2017 by Robert J. Avrech 7 Comments

“Sometimes I’ll watch an old movie on television and, once in a while, one of mine, such as April Showers (’48) will come on and I’ll watch it. And you know something? I’m always amazed at what a lousy actress I was. I guess in the old days we just got by on glamour.”
—Ann Sothern

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.

Annual Ariel Avrech
Memorial Lectures
Young Israel of Century City

NOTE: Click on video titles inside the thumbnail images, below, to open that video in YouTube

Fifteenth: June 10, 2018
Jackie Danicki: “Confessions of a Convert: A Humbling, Joyful Journey to Judaism.”

Blog Post | Audio: (94 MB)

Fourteenth: June 11, 2017
Daniel Greenfield: “Fighting Anti-Semitism and Defending Israel in the Age of BDS.”

Blog Post | Audio: (100 MB)

Thirteenth: May 22, 2016Ben Shapiro: “How You Can Save Israel”

Blog Post | Audio: (70 MB)

Twelfth: June 7, 2015
Larry Elder: “The New Black Anti-Semitism”

Blog Post | Audio: (100 MB)

Eleventh: June 8, 2014
Michael Medved: “Shifting Alliances: Why Liberals No Longer Reliably Support Israel — And Conservatives Do.”

Blog Post | Audio: (97MB)

Tenth: June 9, 2013
David Horowitz: “The War Against Judaism on the University Campus.”

Blog Post | Audio: (16MB)

Ninth: June 3, 2012
Joel B. Pollak: “The Mainstream Media’s Betrayal of Israel.”

Blog Post | Audio: (15MB)

Eighth: June 5, 2011
Yossi Klein Halevi: “What is Expected of a Survivor People: Lessons My Father Taught Me.”

Blog Post | Audio: (18MB)

Seventh: June 13, 2010
Dennis Prager: “Happiness is a Mitzvah, Not an Emotion.”

Blog Post | Audio: (80MB)

Sixth: June 21, 2009
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky: “Conformity in Jewish Life: Vice, Virtue or Affectation?”

Blog Post | Audio: (64MB)

Fifth: June 15, 2008
Rabbi Dr. Gil S. Perl: “What Was the Rosh Yeshiva Reading: Intellectual Openness in 19th Century Lithuania.”

Blog Post | Audio: (70MB)