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

Joan Bennett

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

December 27, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 3 Comments

“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

November 29, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 3 Comments

“Whenever you hear the beat of my feet, it is really the beat of my heart saying, Thank you and God bless you.”
—Eleanor Powell

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

September 20, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 4 Comments

“I turned my hair dark and have received much better parts ever since… I was sometimes greeted as Miss Lamarr in dimly lit restaurants. Personally, I liked the idea of escaping from all that bland, blonde innocence and thought the whole thing was very funny, but I don’t think Hedy found the comparisons very amusing.“
—Joan Bennett

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

May 12, 2017 by Robert J. Avrech 4 Comments

Fortunately, before I was due to make a final commitment to the Actor’s Studio, I was invited to sit and watch eight classes there. As I studied Lee Strasberg and his approach to his hapless students, I was appalled. One student was instructed by Strasberg to pretend to be a dog and lick the floor beneath his paws. He complied… I quickly concluded that the Actor’s Studio approach was not for me. I much preferred the Bette Davis school of acting. She was kept waiting one day to do her scene at the Studio while another actor interminably discussed his motivations for taking off his shoe, his mood, his emotions. In the end, an exasperated Bette burst out, “Just drop it on the floor. It’s only a goddamn shoe!”
—Shirley Jones, A Memoir

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

Sixteenth: August 25, 2019
“Torah Dedication in Memory of Ariel Chaim Avrech Z’L”

Blog Post | Audio: TBD

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)