Seraphic Secret

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

Janet Leigh

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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Letter from Jennifer Jones to husband David Selznick, March 1959
Dearest:
Hope you are well and the deal goes but most of all that you miss me a little. Betty Bogart [Lauren Bacall] came through from Klosters on her way to London with her two children in hand and she told me I was pushing my luck. That you are a very attractive guy and in her words there are plenty of dames in wait for an attractive guy. I said I was less concerned since she had left California but I realized the danger, only I had to continue this work [psychoanalysis] with Dr. Meier. Her reply was, if you can take it, exactly as follows. “F— the Doctor, go home and get yourself l— and you won’t need doctors or diets. Greatest thing in the world for the complexion.”
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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“The stronger the evil, the stronger the film.” ”Alfred Hitchcock Production still of Janet Leigh and John Gavin shooting the opening hotel scene, Psycho.
“The stronger the evil, the stronger the film.”
—Alfred Hitchcock
Production still, Janet Leigh and John Gavin, the opening hotel scene, Psycho.

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I loved acting, which was never about money, the fame. It was about a search for meaning. It was painful.” —Kim Novak
“I loved acting, which was never about money, the fame. It was about a search for meaning. It was painful.”
—Kim Novak

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“The fact is I am terribly shy. Or maybe introverted is a better word. But introverted, shy, whatever, it stays with you whether you’re a star or not. I think people become actors and actresses to overcome just that. You can become so many people." —Rita Hayworth,
“The fact is I am terribly shy. Or maybe introverted is a better word. But introverted, shy, whatever, it stays with you whether you’re a star or not. I think people become actors and actresses to overcome just that. You can become so many people.”
—Rita Hayworth

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Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s: Bye Bye Birdie

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Ann-Margret performs the title song, Bye Bye Birdie.
Ann-Margret performs the title song, Bye Bye Birdie.

We continue our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s, click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s click here.

For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1920s click here.

8. Bye Bye Birdie, 1963

From the opening shot, as Ann-Margret (b. Ann-Margret Olsson) bops, bounces, and belts out the title song — on a treadmill, no less — this film belongs to the twenty-one-year-old Swedish-born beauty.

Bye Bye Birdie (originally a stage hit) is based on the national hysteria that hit when Elvis Presley was drafted into the army in 1957. But the film is also a commentary on the emerging youth culture that found its voice in rock and roll, whose deliciously wicked bad boys displaced the clean-cut romantic crooners who had dominated radio and film since the 1920s.

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