Seraphic Secret

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

Lielle Meital

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I made my own image because I refused to change my name or my hair. They wanted to change me completely when I first came over because that was the standard thing to do. They took stars from Hungary, Germany, France, and tried to change them – to make them more beautiful to American eyes, I suppose. But then they became just like all the other American stars that were there. Lots of publicity stills in bathing suits and hats and all that.”
—Ingrid Bergman

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Nobody knows anything.”
—William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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In 1950 when 17 year old Elizabeth Taylor showed up in the Paramount lot to shoot A Place in the Sun, people were so astonished by her beauty that there was a subdued silence wherever she went. But then she entered the Writer’s Building and writer-director Billy Wilder glanced at her and cracked: “How the hell did she ever get into motion pictures?”

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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The head of publicity of the Hollywood studio where I was first under contract told me, “You’re a piece of meat, that’s all”. It wasn’t very nice but I had to take it. When I made my first screen test, the director explained to everyone, “Don’t listen to her, just look”. —Kim Novak
“The head of publicity of the Hollywood studio where I was first under contract told me, ‘You’re a piece of meat, that’s all’. It wasn’t very nice but I had to take it. When I made my first screen test, the director explained to everyone, “’Don’t listen to her, just look.’”
—Kim Novak

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Sukkot, The Past is Never Past

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A Yemenite Jew named Yehia holding a lulav and etrog—the four species— in a succah, Jerusalem, 1939.
A Yemenite Jew named Yehia holding a lulav and etrog—the four species—in a Sukkah, Jerusalem, 1939.

As Jews all over the world make last minute preparations for the holiday of Sukkot, here are a few wonderful pictures of Jews celebrating this joyous holiday in Israel (and Samarkand), a reminder that Torah Judaism is eternal. All photos are from The Library of Congress.

You will dwell in booths for seven days; all natives of Israel shall dwell in booths.

—Leviticus 23:42

On the first day, you will take for yourselves a fruit of a beautiful tree, palm branches, twigs of a braided tree and brook willows, and you will rejoice before the L-RD your G-d for seven days.

—Leviticus 23:40

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