Seraphic Secret

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

Louise Brooks

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Hollywood sold its stars on good looks and personality build-ups. We weren’t really actresses in the true sense. We were just big names–the products of a good publicity department.”
—Ann Sothern

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Mr.Hitchcock taught me everything about cinema. It was thanks to him that I understood that murder scenes should be shot like love scenes and love scenes like murder scenes.”
—Grace Kelly

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Keaton had a great influence on me. A lot of his moves I intuitively copied in doing some numbers. I know I was thinking of him when I did a dance with a squeaky board and a newspaper. I didn’t look like him, but I often wish I did. He was a complete genius, and there was a lot of dance inherent in his movements.”
—Gene Kelly

Once again Friday Photos appears on Wednesday due to the last days of Sukkot which begin tonight and then run into Shabbat. Enjoy!

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Flashback: Hollywood Celebrates Christmas

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Hollywood pioneer Mary Pickford makes Christmas official, 1920s.
Hollywood pioneer Mary Pickford (1892 – 1979) b. Gladys Smith, makes Christmas official, 1920s.

During Hollywood’s Golden Age, the studios, via newspapers, fan magazines, and trade publications, published photos of their stars celebrating Christmas. In this way, Hollywood—though founded by poor immigrant Jews—informed the public that the motion picture industry was in harmony with Christian America.

Seraphic Secret—Karen and I—are Orthodox Jews. We observe the Sabbath and eat only kosher food. Our lives and values are built around the Torah, written and oral. But we enjoy this season, and honor Christmas. We shudder at the relentless postmodern assault on this most Christian of holidays. We want America to remain a steadfastly Judeo-Christian country, for without G-d individual liberty vanishes, replaced, inevitably, by a powerful centralized state, the cult of personality, and various forms of paganism currently exemplified by climate change (AKA the weather) fanatics.

We urge everyone to pray for the Christians who are being murdered, tortured and oppressed by genocidal Islamists all across the Middle East and Africa.

Here’s a sample of Hollywood and Christmas as it used to be.

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions, How to be Beautiful

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Greta Garbo’s dramatic eye make-up was the inspiration for many a Hollywood starlet – including Marilyn Monroe – and not without good reason. To create the look, she would apply a super-thin layer of petroleum jelly over the eyelids, cover with neutral skin-toned powder all the way up to the brow line and blend a dark shade into the crease for a theatrical, deep-set appearance. She’d also line the upper lid with eyeliner made from a blend of petroleum and charcoal pigment, and finish with mascara.
Greta Garbo’s dramatic eye make-up was an inspiration to many of her female fans. To create the look, she would apply a thin layer of petroleum jelly over her eyelids, cover with neutral skin-toned powder all the way up to the brow line and blend a dark shade into the crease for a deep-set appearance. She’d also line her upper lid with eyeliner made from a blend of petroleum and charcoal pigment, and finish with mascara.

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