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.

George Hurrell

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 15, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

“Unlike writers or painters, we don’t sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, ‘How do I start? Where do I start?’ We’re given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there’s a group of people all ready to make a film and it’s a marvelous life.“
—Albert Finney R.I.P. 1936-2019

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 1, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 16 Comments

Greta Garbo, 1931, photo by Clarence Sinclair Bull
“I don’t like to talk to people because I can’t express myself satisfactorily. I don’t say the things I mean.”
—Greta Garbo

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

July 20, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 3 Comments

At the beginning of her career Myrna Loy´s turned-up nose was rather troublesome. She had a little bone on the side of her nose, which cast a shadow in certain lights. This drove the cameramen crazy “because they never knew when it would appear. They’d see the rushes, groan, ‘There’s that thing again,’ and have to retake the scene. It looked like a tiny smudge on my nose. I mean you could hardly see it, but that’s how far the mania for perfection went.” So she was often called in for retakes and since those are rather expensive she was once called in by the makeup department who announced that they maybe would fix her nose. “I was horrified. I used to be known as ‘The Nose’ for goodness’ sake—thousands of women went to plastic surgeons to have it duplicated. I said, ‘Never! Nobody’s touching this nose!’ and got out of there fast.” And she was right. She had the most famous and sought-after nose of the 1930s and women would regularly go to plastic surgeons to get a nose like Myrna Loy.

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

October 21, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 8 Comments

Myrna Loy & William Powell in The Thin Man, 1934. She grinned at me. “You got types?” “Only you, darling - lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.” -Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man (1929) — Myrna Loy & William Powell in The Thin Man, 1934.
She grinned at me. “You got types?”
“Only you, darling—lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.”
—Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man (1929)

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

October 7, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 7 Comments

“You know what you can do with this.” -Myrna Loy to her movie studio when they sent her a letter reprimanding her for speaking out on behalf of German Jews. Her activism resulted in a loss of revenue for the studio when Hitler banned Loy’s movies in Germany. — “You know what you can do with this.”
—Myrna Loy to MGM when they sent her a letter reprimanding her for speaking out on behalf of German Jews. Her call against Jew-hatred resulted in a loss of revenue for the studio when Hitler banned Loy’s movies in Germany.

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)