Tag Archives: Joan Crawford

By Robert J. Avrech | July 4, 2012

July 4 In Hollywood

Tweet The photos seem to be from another planet, or at least a parrallel universe. It was not so long ago that Hollywood was institutionally patriotic. Studio photos always included an Independence Day shot, frequently an innocent piece of cheesecake. Because what’s more American than igniting fireworks while wearing a bathing suit. L.B. Mayer of [...]

Posted in Ava Gardner, Hollywood, Joan Crawford, July 4th, L.B. Mayer, Rita Hayworth | Also tagged Ava Gardner, Betty Boop, Liberty Bell, Madge Evans, Marian Marsh, Marilyn Monroe, Marion Shilling, MGM, Rita Hayworth | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | June 8, 2012

Friday Fashion: The Female Animal

Tweet For as long as fashion has existed, animal metaphors have been an indispensible part of the designers language. Hollywood, during its golden age, a leading arbiter of taste, heightened and refined the animal metaphor with brilliant costume designers turning ravishing movie stars into expressions of animal desire.

Posted in Friday Fashion, Friday Footwear, Friday Fotos, Hollywood, Myrna Loy, Silent Movies, Travis Banton | Also tagged Adrian, Carole Lombard, Cleopatra, Evelyn Brent, Greta Garbo, Joan Blondell, Josef von Sternberg, Letty Lynton, Marlene Dietrich, Robert Kalloch, Shanghai Express, The Torrent, Theda Bara, Twentieth Century, Underworld | 13 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 17, 2012

Movie Posters: Hollywood’s Golden Age

Tweet Have you looked at a movie poster recently and said to yourself: I really have to see that film. Doubtful. In the digital era movie posters are barely there, a minor and frequently mediocre—tedious star shots dominate—element in the white-noise media that is dominated by an ever-shifting social media. There was a time, however, [...]

Posted in Hollywood, Movie Posters | Also tagged Ann Blyth, Elissa Landry, Gun Crazy, He Who Gets Slapped, John Dall, John Ford, John Gilbert, John Wayne, Laurence Olivier, Lillian Gish, Lon Chaney, Lorna Doone, Madge Bellamy, Mildren Pierce, Norma Shearer, Peggy Cummins, Ronald Colman, Stagecoach, The White Sister, The Yellow Ticket, Zachary Scott | 13 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, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Packard, Pierce Arrow, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, Stepin Fetchit, Tyrone Power | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | August 11, 2011

Not the Girl Next Door

Tweet A great deal has been written about the Hollywood glamour machine that flourished between the mid 1920′s and the late 30′s. But perhaps the most articulate—if somewhat caustic—meditation on Hollywood and glamour was made by Joan Crawford, a woman who worked harder at the business of stardom than most any other star of Hollywood’s [...]

Posted in Hollywood, The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood | Also tagged Hollywood Glamour | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | June 26, 2011

Haunted Hollywood

Tweet In Seraphic Secret’s move to WordPress last week, this post was, for a while, lost in cyberspace. Due to the kindness and tech know-how of our faithful reader Alter Ben-Zion, we have been able to snatch this blog out of its spectral prison. Alter also sent all the comments and they are included. In [...]

Posted in Joan Crawford | Also tagged Esther Williams, Hollywood, MGM, Movies | 21 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, Jean Harlow, 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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