Seraphic Secret

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

Jean Harlow

Flashback: When Hollywood Celebrated Christmas

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Mary Pickford helps Hollywood celebrate Christmas, 1920s.
Mary Pickford helps Hollywood celebrate Christmas, 1920s.

There was a time when Hollywood openly and joyously celebrated Christmas. Now, among the Hollywood elite, the greeting I hear is “Happy Holidays.”

Look, we at Seraphic Secret are Orthodox Jews. This is not our holiday.

But we want our Christian friends to celebrate Christmas. The politically correct Happy Holidays shtick is another nail in the coffin of American culture; another instance where a minority of obnoxious liberals bully the larger culture into secular nothingness.

American Christianity is a unique force for good in world history. It is not the Christianity of Europe that is poisoned with genocidal Jew-hatred.

Hollywood used to celebrate Christmas using every tool in the cinematic playbook.

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“The main problem in marriage is that for a man sex is a hunger like eating. If the man is hungry and can’t get to a fancy French restaurant, he goes to a hot dog stand. For a woman, what is important is love and romance.”
—Joan Fontaine

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Hidden Hollywood: Mae Clarke, Girl, Gangster, Grapefruit

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The infamous grapefruit scene in The Public Enemy (1931), with Mae Clarke and James Cagney.

Most actors are remembered for their unique personae. Clark Gable was a man’s man. The humorous gleam in his eye sent daggers to the knees of women everywhere. Bette Davis practically cornered the market on the deeply neurotic woman clawing at the boundaries of love with baroque fury. Gary Cooper was the classic taciturn American, a solid, self-confident Yankee who spoke eloquently through his silences. Marilyn Monroe is the paradigm of the woman as vulnerable child waiting to be rescued by a knight in shining armor.

Of course Fay Wray, who played in over eighty motion pictures, is only remembered for her role in King Kong. Thus, for better or worse, Wray is the eternally shrieking woman.

Less common is the actor who is identified and remembered for a single brief scene.

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Career is too pompous a word. It was a job and I have always felt privileged to be paid for doing what I love doing.”
—Barbara Stanwyck

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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Q. Your zombies have always walked with a meandering shuffle, but modern zombies seem to be becoming more aerobic. Why is that?
George A. Romero: I think it’s video games, man. Zombies are always moving fast in video games. It makes sense if you think about it. Those games are all about hand-eye coordination and how quickly can you get them before they get you. So the zombies have to keep coming at you, crawling over the walls and across the ceiling.
Zombies are perfect for a first-person shooter game, because they exist to be damaged…Filmmakers saw what was happening in video games and started thinking, “Well, we’ve got to keep pace and make our zombies fast too.”
I still don’t agree with it. If zombies are dead, how can they move fast? My guys don’t run. They never have and they never will. They’re just lumbering oafs that are easy to dispose of unless you make a mistake. Those are the rules, and I’ll stick with what I’ve got. via: Vanity Fair, 2010. RIP George Romero, 1940 – 2017

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