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Saul Bass

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

Saul Bass

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

December 6, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 10 Comments

“I’ve never had a dull moment in my life. I’ve always wanted to try something new. When I was a child, I wouldn’t wear what the other kids had. I won’t now. I had the first pantie girdle, the first broadtail suit, the first sack dress — from Givenchy. I was even the first Gloria. Everybody named their children after me. I can always tell how old Glorias are.”
—Gloria Swanson
Photo by Charles Sheldon, 1925

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

October 4, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 7 Comments

Myrna Loy & William Powell in *The Thin Man*, 1934
She grinned at me. “You got types?”
“Only you, darling — lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.”
—Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man (1929)

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

September 27, 2019 by Robert J. Avrech 4 Comments

“When we were at MGM, we worked years before anybody called us stars. Louis B. Mayer brought us along in little parts – even ‘Love Finds Andy Hardy.’ Then, if we showed promise, he would put us opposite the established stars – like Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Spencer Tracy – who could lend us the power of their names.
“Then, when we became established, he would costar the rising young players with us.
“Believe me, when the time came for us to move from the featured players’ building into the building of the star’s dressing rooms, it was a thrilling event in your life. It was like entering a new kingdom in which you were the queen.”
—Lana Turner

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

July 27, 2018 by Robert J. Avrech 5 Comments

“[I] have never worked with an actress who was more co-operative, less temperamental, and a better workman — to use my term of highest compliment — than Barbara Stanwyck.”
—Cecil B DeMille

[Read more…]

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 Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man - that state is obsolete.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

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

Sixteenth: August 25, 2019
“Torah Dedication in Memory of Ariel Chaim Avrech Z’L”

Blog Post | Audio: TBD

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)