Olivia de Havilland

Hollywood Star Ads: Buy Me, Be Me

May 9, 2014 by Robert J. Avrech 13 Comments

Marilyn Monroe's cleavage for Jon-Joy cosmetics. — Marilyn Monroe’s cleavage for Jon-Joy cosmetics.

Ever since there were movie stars there have been star product endorsements.

Corporations and their advertising companies were quick to understand that those larger than life figures floating like angels on the silver screen were potent persuaders. Thus, the synergistic relationship between one product, the movie star, and a consumer product — cigarettes, perfume, makeup, whatever — was born, and continues with increasing power and sophistication to this very day.

The idea is simplicity itself: Buy me, be me.

Seraphic Secret Hollywood Star Quiz

December 22, 2011 by Robert J. Avrech 17 Comments

Potato Latkes Closeup — Latkes, AKA Potato Pancakes, AKA “I'm Jewish food, eat me and die young!”

Chanukah is a time for latkes—which I don’t eat out of respect to my heart and my waistline.

It’s also a time of prayer. We sing Hallel during morning prayer, and after sundown, when lighting the menorah, we chant additional prayers.

Chanukah is also a time for games. Spinning the dreidel is the most popular.

So, in honor of Chanukah, we’re rolling out Seraphic Secret’s popular game: “Who The Heck Is That Spooky Looking Kid Who Grew Up To Become a Hollywood Star?”

Joan Fontaine’s Not So Hollywood Wedding Night

September 1, 2011 by Robert J. Avrech 11 Comments

joan fontaine rebecca — Joan Fontaine, Rebecca 1940.

In 1939, Joan Fontaine, twenty-one years old, was slowly making her way up the Hollywood ladder. MGM signed Fontaine to play a small part in the high profile production The Women, directed by George Cukor, starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard. For the young actress, it was a plum assignment.

At the same time, Fontaine was subject to numerous screen tests for the role of the second Mrs. De Winter for David O. Selznick’s Rebecca, first under the direction of John Cromwell and then Alfred Hitchcock. Screen tests are grueling, and the emotional toll is devastating. During this period of her life Fontaine’s nerves were seriously frayed.

Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland lived in the same house in North Hollywood with their overbearing mother Lilian, a failed actress. As always, Joan and Olivia were engaged in a low-intensity conflict. Like so many Hollywood actresses, Fontaine’s father was long gone.

Fontaine freely admits that she had a thing for older men. Ambitious, but deeply vulnerable, the young actress was looking for security, and a “protector.”

She already had a brief affair with her childhood idol, the handsome leading man, Conrad Nagel. Her description of their first intimacy is less than passionate: