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

Marsden Hartley

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

February 24, 2017 by Robert J. Avrech 7 Comments

“I think if you were born with privileges—or given privileges—then you should share them. Like money—it’s to share. I’ve known too many people who just sat and hoarded and were miserable. Just miserable SOBs. I have always believed that giving is one of the reasons that we were put on this earth. I’ve acted on that belief since I was old enough to leave my nest…”
—Elizabeth Taylor

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

November 18, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 7 Comments

Anna Lee in How Green was My Valley, 1939. Lee was among the most prominent female members of the John Ford stock company. Ford's pate name for her was Boniface, her middle name (joanna Boniface Winnifrith). Ford's feelings for Lee were cemented when she had a miscarriage while shooting How Green Was My Valley, brought on, it was believed, by collapsing during the scene where she learns her husband has died. She hadn't told Ford that she was pregnant, but he nevertheless, blamed himself. The result was that on every picture Lee worked on with him, Ford would assemble the cast and crew, then ask her if she was pregnant. ”No sir,” she would reply. “I just wanted to make sure.” —Source: Print the Legend, by Scott Eyman — Anna Lee in How Green was My Valley, 1941.
Lee was among the most prominent female members of the John Ford stock company. Ford’s pet name for her was Boniface, her middle name (Joanna Boniface Winnifrith). Ford’s feelings for Lee were cemented when she had a miscarriage while shooting How Green Was My Valley, brought on by collapsing during the scene where she learns her husband has died. She hadn’t told Ford that she was pregnant, but he nevertheless, blamed himself. The result was that on every picture Lee worked on with him, Ford would assemble the cast and crew, then ask her if she was pregnant.
”No sir,” she would reply.
“I just wanted to make sure.”
—Source: Print the Legend, by Scott Eyman

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

October 28, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 6 Comments

“The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete, but so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man - that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under “M” for mankind—in the Twilight Zone.” —Rod Serling, “The Obsolete Man”, The Twilight Zone — “The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete, but so is the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man—that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under “M” for mankind—in the Twilight Zone.”
—Rod Serling, “The Obsolete Man”, The Twilight Zone

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

August 14, 2015 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

“For all actors know that truly natural acting is rejected by the audience. Although people are better equipped to judge acting than any other art, the hypocrisy of ‘sincerity’ prevents them from admitting that they too are always acting some part of their own invention. To be a successful actor, then, it is necessary to add some eccentricities and mystery to naturalness so that the audience can admire and puzzle over something different from itself.” -Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood (photo via Kobal Collection, c. 1929)American actress Louise Bro. Photo by Eugene Robert Richee, 1928. — “For all actors know that truly natural acting is rejected by the audience. Although people are better equipped to judge acting than any other art, the hypocrisy of ‘sincerity’ prevents them from admitting that they too are always acting some part of their own invention. To be a successful actor, then, it is necessary to add some eccentricities and mystery to naturalness so that the audience can admire and puzzle over something different from itself.”
—Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, Photo by Eugene Robert Richee, 1928.

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

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)