Seraphic Secret

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

Moshe Zabari

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Hollywood, what a place it is! It is so far away from the rest of the world, so narrow. No one thinks of anything but motion pictures or talks of anything else.” —Dolores del Rio
“Hollywood, what a place it is! It is so far away from the rest of the world, so narrow. No one thinks of anything but motion pictures or talks of anything else.”
—Dolores Del Rio

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions, Passover Edition

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Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor passed many hours arguing furiously about who was more Jewish.
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor passed many hours arguing furiously about who was more Jewish.

When Mike Todd (b. Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen) was killed in a plane crash, Elizabeth found comfort in Judaism. “I am absolutely Jewish now in my beliefs and feelings,” she said.

At her conversion, Elizabeth Taylor took the Jewish name Elisheva Rachel.

In the compulsively readable Furious Love, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger report on the frequently drunken arguments in which Richard Burton and Taylor indulged over—get this—their respective Jewishness.

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions, Passover Edition

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Eleanor Parker (’22 – ’13) was a brilliant actress who played comedy as deftly as she played drama. Her voice was film noir husky, and she used it like a musical instrument. Raised a Protestant, she converted to Judaism. “I think we’re all Jews at heart,” she told columnist Kay Gardella. “I wanted to convert for a long time.” Her daughter spent a summer working on a kibbutz, married an Israeli, and settled in Israel permanently. Parker’s best films are: Caged (’50) Detective Story (’51) Scaramouche (’52) Interrupted Melody (’55), and The King and Four Queens (’56).
Eleanor Parker (1922–2013) was a brilliant actress who performed in comedy as deftly as she played drama. Her voice was film noir husky, and she used it like a musical instrument. Raised a Protestant, she converted to Judaism. “I think we’re all Jews at heart,” she told columnist Kay Gardella. “I wanted to convert for a long time.” Her daughter spent a summer working on a kibbutz, married an Israeli, and settled in Israel permanently. Parker’s best films are: Caged (’50) Detective Story (’51) Scaramouche (’52) Interrupted Melody (’55), and The King and Four Queens (’56).

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