Tag Archives: Jean Harlow

By Robert J. Avrech | December 21, 2012

Friday Photos: Hollywood Celebrates Christmas

Tweet During Hollywood’s Golden Age, the studios took thousands of photos of their stars celebrating Christmas. In this way, Hollywood—though founded by poor immigrant Jews—let America know that it and the heartland were aligned. Seraphic Secret — Karen and I — are Orthodox Jews. We observe the Sabbath and eat only kosher food. Our lives [...]

Posted in Christmas, Hollywood | Also tagged Anna May Wong, Carole Lombard, Christmas & Hollywood, Colleen Moore, Elizabeth Taylor, Marceline Day, Mary Pickford | 22 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 10, 2012

The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters

Tweet From where do we draw wisdom? First and foremost, Seraphic Secret relies on Torah, on the lessons of 3,000 years of Jewish history and the common sense advice of my wife Karen. And then there are the movies, a moral landscape of immeasurable power where searing images and razor-sharp dialogue deliver lessons in human [...]

Posted in Hollywood, Screenwriting, The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood | Also tagged Beast of the City, Greta Garbo, Jane Greer, Jean Peters, John Lee Mahin, Lag BaOmer, Out of the Past, Pickup on South Street, Richard Widmark, Robert Mitchum, Sam Fuller, The Temptress, Wallace Ford | 20 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | March 29, 2012

Passover Wine According to Alice ‘Naked Wine’ Feiring

Tweet Passover is almost here. We’re scrubbing our houses, changing dishes and silverware, purchasing tons of kosher for Passover food, shopping for new clothing, and many are wondering which wines to buy for the Passover seders in which we are commanded to drink four cups of wine. Medical Interpolation: Seraphic Secret does not drink wine, [...]

Posted in Passover, Wine | Also tagged Alice Feiring, Benyamin Cantz, Four Gates, Kosher Wine, Marilyn Monroe, Naked Wine, Passover wine, The Battle for Wine and Love, Wallace Ford, William Powell, wine critics | 15 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | February 17, 2012

Friday Fashion: The Past Is The Present

Tweet Seraphic Secret likes to check out the latest fashions, scouting for beautiful but modest clothing. We don’t believe that women have to reveal acres of flesh in order to appear and feel attractive. In fact, the opposite. The more chaste the surface, the more mystery and depth. This season, it’s kind of obvious [...]

Posted in Friday Fashion | Also tagged Anna May Wong, Calvin Klein, Douglas Hannant, Downton Abbey, Eva Marie Saint, Fall 2012 RTW, Hebrew Tattoos, Hollywood Influence on Fashion, Jason Wu, Kim Novak, Lyn Devon, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Milly, Modest Fashion, Orry-Kelly, Ralph Lauren, Suzanne Pleshette, Tippi Hedrin, Victoria Beckham | 15 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | February 3, 2012

Friday Fotos: Hollywood Stars and Their Cars

Tweet America has long had a love affair with the automobile. Cars are the ultimate expression of form, function, fashion—and speed. But most of all the car represents freedom. Try and remember when you were a teenager yearning for your driver’s license so you could hop into daddy’s car and go, go, go. It didn’t [...]

Posted in Friday Fotos, Hollywood, Stars and Cars | Also tagged Abraham Lincoln, Cadillac, Clark Gable, Deusenberg, Friday Fotos, Hollywood on Wheels, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Packard, Pierce Arrow, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Stepin Fetchit, Tyrone Power | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | January 26, 2012

The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters

Tweet From where do we draw wisdom? First and foremost, Seraphic Secret relies on the Torah—written and oral—on the lessons of 3,000 years of Jewish history, and on the common sense advice of my wife Karen. And then there are the movies, a moral landscape of immeasurable power where searing images and razor-sharp dialogue deliver [...]

Posted in Hollywood, Screenwriting, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Also tagged Ace in the Hole, Beast of the City, Ben Hecht, Billy Wilder, China Seas, Clark Gable, Dalton Trumbo, Gone With the Wind, Gun Crazy, James Kevin McGuiness, Jan Sterling, Jo Swerling, John Lee Mahin, John Van Druten, Jules Furthman, Kirk Douglas, Lesser Samuels, MacKinlay Kantor, Oliver H.P. Garrett, Sidney Howard, Victor Desny, Vivien Leigh, W.R. Burnett, Walter Newman | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | December 2, 2011

Friday Footwear: Hollywood Parade

Tweet Glamour depends on mystery, the art of concealment. Hollywood stars of the past and their handlers understood that to maintain the image projected on the screen was a full-time job. Hard working stars like Joan Crawford never appeared in public less than impeccably turned out. Even at their most casual, Hollywood stars of the [...]

Posted in Friday Footwear, Hollywood, Movies | Also tagged Brooks Brothers, Gail Patrick, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Glamour, Marlene Dietrich, Paul Bern, Paulette Goddard, Rodeo Drive, Sabbath, Shabbat | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | September 16, 2011

Friday Footwear: Into Thin Air

Tweet Several days ago Seraphic Secret received this email from a loyal but unhappy reader: Dear Robert: It’s been ages since you posted a Friday Footwear blog. I get it. You like to write about Israel. Awesome. I’m a Christian Zionist who loves the Jewish people. You like to cut Obama down to size. Double [...]

Posted in Friday Footwear | Also tagged Chester Morris, Fashion, Karen, Loehmann's, Target | 5 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | August 12, 2011

Friday Fashion: Hollywood The Old is New

Tweet Every once in a while Seraphic Secret come across a Hollywood photo that isn’t a burnished glamour shot but a portrait of the star caught in a more casual, more intimate moment. Quite often, the resulting look transcends both time and place in terms of fashion and style. Above, in the early 1950′s, is—who [...]

Posted in Friday Fashion, Hollywood | Also tagged Brigitte Bardot, Edith Falk, Glamour, Jimmy Stewart, Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich, Retro-Fashion, Rudy Sieber | 13 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | November 24, 2010

The Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s: ’30-’33

Tweet Clark Gable, the greatest male star of the 1930′s. Gable was glamorous yet rugged, a man’s man. Women wanted him and men wanted to be him. We continue our decade-by-decade survey of The Twenty Greatest Movies. Last week we examined the 1920′s, the era of silent movies where a particular American vitality found expression [...]

Posted in Great Movies, Greatest Movies of the 1930s, Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s | Also tagged Adrian, Bed of Roses, Ben Hecht, Bombshell, Charlie Chaplin, City Lights, Clara Bow, Clark Gable, Constance Bennett, Duck Soup, Ernst Lubitch, Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, Herbert Marshall, Jackie Cooper, Joan Crawford, Joel McCrea, John Barrymore, John Lee Mahin, Josef von Sternberg, Jules Furthman, Kay Francis, Marlene Dietrich, Marx Brothers, Mary Astor, Miriam Hopkins, Myrna Loy, Paul Bern, Pert Kelton, Possessed, Red Dust, Samson Raphelson, Shanghai Express, The Champ, Topaze, Troble in Paradise, Victor Fleming, Wallace Beery | 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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