Seraphic Secret

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

Thurston Hopkins

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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Days of Heaven, 1978
“At [director Terence] Malick’s insistence certain parts of the film were made at what he calls the ‘magic hour’, that is, the time between sunset and nightfall. From the point of view of luminosity, this period lasts about twenty minutes, so that calling it a ‘magic hour’ is an optimistic euphemism.
The light really was very beautiful, but we had little time to film scenes of long duration. All day we would work to get the actors and the camera ready; as soon as the sun had set we had to shoot quickly, not losing a moment. For these few minutes the light is truly magical, because no one knows where it is coming from. The sun is not to be seen, but the sky can be bright, and the blue of the atmosphere undergoes strange mutations.
Malick’s intuition and daring probably made these scenes the most interesting ones visually in the film. And it takes daring to convince the Hollywood old guard that the shooting day should last only twenty minutes. Even though we took advantage of this short space of time with a kind of frenzy, we often had to finish the scene the next day at the same time, because night would fall inexorably. Each day, like Joshua in the Bible, Malick wanted to stop the sun in its imperturbable course so as to go on shooting.”
-excerpted from A Man with a Camera, by Néstor Almendros
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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can’t take it all in at once.” —Audrey Hepburn
“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can’t take it all in at once.”
—Audrey Hepburn

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Suddenly, the platform tipped, wobbled, bounced, and flipped upside down. All I remember is the start of the fall and seeing the floor coming toward me. Whatever else I know of the incident is what people have told me. Unconscious, I was sprawled out under the fabric of my yellow chiffon dress, lying face down, crumpled and broken. A pool of blood formed under my head and flowed onto the stage.” —Ann-Margret, My Story, 1994. On September 10th, 1972 while performing in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Ann-Margret plummeted 22 feet from a raised platform to the stage below, breaking her left arm and completely shattering the left side of her face (her cheek, jaw, and brow bones were in little tiny pieces). Her devoted husband Roger Smith stole an airplane in Los Angles, flew to Lake Tahoe, and transported an unconscious Ann back to L.A. where she was treated by doctors. After extensive reconstructive surgery which required fusing the bones on the left side of her face back together and wiring her jaw shut, Ann posed for this photo in her bedroom reading the get well wishes she received from friends and fans. Through sheer force of will, Ann returned to the stage ten weeks later. Her beloved father was dying of cancer, and she wanted him to know she was okay.
“Suddenly, the platform tipped, wobbled, bounced, and flipped upside down. All I remember is the start of the fall and seeing the floor coming toward me. Whatever else I know of the incident is what people have told me. Unconscious, I was sprawled out under the fabric of my yellow chiffon dress, lying face down, crumpled and broken. A pool of blood formed under my head and flowed onto the stage.” —Ann-Margret, My Story, 1994.
On September 10th, 1972 while performing in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Ann-Margret fell 22 feet from a raised platform to the stage below. She broke her left arm and shattered the left side of her face. Her cheek, jaw, and brow bones were fractured into little pieces. Her husband, Roger Smith, flew from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe, and transported an unconscious Ann back to Los Angles. After extensive reconstructive surgery which required fusing the bones on the left side of her face and wiring her jaw shut, Ann posed for this photo in her bedroom reading the mail she received from friends and fans. A true professional, Ann-Margret returned to the stage ten weeks later.

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