Seraphic Secret

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

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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Letter from Jennifer Jones to husband David Selznick, March 1959
Dearest:
Hope you are well and the deal goes but most of all that you miss me a little. Betty Bogart [Lauren Bacall] came through from Klosters on her way to London with her two children in hand and she told me I was pushing my luck. That you are a very attractive guy and in her words there are plenty of dames in wait for an attractive guy. I said I was less concerned since she had left California but I realized the danger, only I had to continue this work [psychoanalysis] with Dr. Meier. Her reply was, if you can take it, exactly as follows. “F— the Doctor, go home and get yourself l— and you won’t need doctors or diets. Greatest thing in the world for the complexion.”
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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I don’t know that I’ve any style at all. I just patterned myself on a combination of Jack Buchanan [musical comedy star of the 1920s], Noël Coward, and Rex Harrison. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point. It’s a relationship.” —Cary Grant
“I don’t know that I’ve any style at all. I just patterned myself on a combination of Jack Buchanan [musical comedy star of the 1920s], Noël Coward, and Rex Harrison. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point. It’s a relationship.”
—Cary Grant
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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“Say anything you like, but don’t say I love to work. That sounds like Mary Pickford, the prissy b***h. Just say I like to pinch babies and twist their legs. And get drunk.” -Mabel Normand (1892 - 1930)
“Say anything you like, but don’t say I love to work. That sounds like Mary Pickford, the prissy b***h. Just say I like to pinch babies and twist their legs. And get drunk.”
—Mabel Normand (1892 – 1930)

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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

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Gene Tierney, 1952 in court during her divorce proceedings against Oleg Cassini.. “I had appalling taste before I met Oleg”, she wrote in her 1979 autobiography Self Portrait. “In my early days in Hollywood, I tried to be economical. I worked with a dressmaker and designed my own clothes, much to my mother’s distress. I had a good deal of fun whipping up what I now realize were atrocities. One night when Oleg came to call I was wearing one of my own creations. I shudder to think of it: a navy blue and pink striped dress, with a navy wool cape lined in the same print. I had on a straw hat, floppy and pink, decorated with a pink rose. I wore pink suede gloves and matching bag, and navy shoes. Oleg strode in the door, took one look at this ice cream confection, and almost passed out. “I won’t take you out dressed like that!”, he bellowed. “First, take off the hat and cape and then go and get a navy bag. Forget the gloves, if you don’t have any navy ones.” Oleg winked at my mother, which made me furious, but I began to suspect that my clothes were getting to be a bit much.” Gene and Oleg Cassini remained friends after their divorce, and Tierney continued to wear his designs for the rest of her life.
“I had appalling taste before I met Oleg [Cassini]”, writes Gene Tierney in her 1979 autobiography Self Portrait. “In my early days in Hollywood, I tried to be economical. I worked with a dressmaker and designed my own clothes, much to my mother’s distress. I had a good deal of fun whipping up what I now realize were atrocities. One night when Oleg came to call I was wearing one of my own creations. I shudder to think of it: a navy blue and pink striped dress, with a navy wool cape lined in the same print. I had on a straw hat, floppy and pink, decorated with a pink rose. I wore pink suede gloves and matching bag, and navy shoes. Oleg strode in the door, took one look at this ice cream confection, and almost passed out. “I won’t take you out dressed like that!”, he bellowed. “First, take off the hat and cape and then go and get a navy bag. Forget the gloves, if you don’t have any navy ones.” Oleg winked at my mother, which made me furious, but I began to suspect that my clothes were getting to be a bit much.” Gene and Oleg Cassini remained friends even after their divorce, and Tierney continued to wear his designs for the rest of her life.
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