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“There ought to be a law against any man who doesn’t want to marry Myrna Loy.”
—Jimmy Stewart
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![“Why, she was pressed, does she think she provoked such strong feelings of empathy from her audiences? After all, she was not a sex symbol (‘I sure wasn’t’), so what was it - her beauty, her vulnerability, her sense of humor, her sensitivity? - that gave her that special aura? 'It’s impossible for me to know,’ [Audrey Hepburn] said with hesitation, 'but if you asked me what I would like it to be, though it may sound presumptuous to say so, it’s an experience I’ve had with other performers who somehow make you open up to them. For me, it always has to do with some kind of affection, love, a warmth.’ 'I myself was born with an enormous need for affection and a terrible need to give it,’ she went on. 'That’s what I’d like to think maybe has been the appeal. People have recognized something in me they have themselves – the need to receive affection and the need to give it. Does that sound soppy?’” -excerpted from New York Times interview, April 1991](http://i1.wp.com/www.seraphicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/audreyh.jpg?resize=500%2C670)
“Why, she was pressed, does she think she provoked such strong feelings of empathy from her audiences? After all, she was not a sex symbol (‘I sure wasn’t’), so what was it – her beauty, her vulnerability, her sense of humor, her sensitivity? – that gave her that special aura?
‘It’s impossible for me to know,’ [Audrey Hepburn] said with hesitation, ‘but if you asked me what I would like it to be, though it may sound presumptuous to say so, it’s an experience I’ve had with other performers who somehow make you open up to them. For me, it always has to do with some kind of affection, love, a warmth.’
‘I myself was born with an enormous need for affection and a terrible need to give it,’ she went on. ‘That’s what I’d like to think maybe has been the appeal. People have recognized something in me they have themselves – the need to receive affection and the need to give it. Does that sound soppy?’”
-excerpted from New York Times interview, April 1991
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Swedish poster for Ecstasy, starring Hedy Kiesler AKA Hedy Lamarr.
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Peter Pan, 1924, directed by Herbert Brenon
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Gold Diggers of 1933 directed by Mervyn LeRoy, choreography by Busby Berkeley
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Sylvia Sidney in Sabotage 1936, directed by Alfred Hitchcock
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Swedish poster for Blonde Venus, starring Marlene Dietrich
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Marilyn Monroe & Montgomery Clift on the set of The Misfits 1961, directed John Huston
Photo by Eve Arnold. The film was written by MM’s husband Arthur Miller expressly for her — and it is terrible. This was Clark Gable’s last movie.
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![“[Herrmann’s score for the sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still] was another scoring milestone that anticipated the era of electronic music with its then unheard of instrumentation for electric violin, electric bass, two high and low electric theremins, four pianos, four harps and a ‘very strange section of about 30-odd brass.’…What the film needed was an extraterrestrial strangeness, a sense of the bizarre and unsettling; this Herrmann achieved through his wisely sparse electronic soundtrack. If the music’s impact is lessened today, the reason is not the score itself but the host of inferior imitations its success spawned.” -excerpted from A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann by Steven Smith](http://i0.wp.com/www.seraphicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/day.jpg?resize=500%2C375)
“[Herrmann’s score for the sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still] was another scoring milestone that anticipated the era of electronic music with its then unheard of instrumentation for electric violin, electric bass, two high and low electric theremins, four pianos, four harps and a ‘very strange section of about 30-odd brass.’…What the film needed was an extraterrestrial strangeness, a sense of the bizarre and unsettling; this Herrmann achieved through his wisely sparse electronic soundtrack.
If the music’s impact is lessened today, the reason is not the score itself but the host of inferior imitations its success spawned.”
-excerpted from A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann by Steven Smith
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Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Photographer: Burt Glinn
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Swedish poster for The Clairvoyant, 1935, starring Claude Rains and Fay Wray.
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Jean Harlow on the set of Red Dust (1932) directed by Victor Fleming
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Anthony Perkins in The Trial (1962) directed by Orson Welles.
Q: A critic who admires your work very much said that, in The Trial, you were repeating yourself…
Welles: Exactly, I repeated myself. I believe we do it all the time. We always take up certain elements again. How can it be avoided? An actor’s voice always has the same timbre and, consequently, he repeats himself. It is the same for a singer, a painter…There are always certain things that come back, for they are part of one’s personality, of one’s style. If these things didn’t come into play, a personality would be so complex that it would become impossible to identify it.
It is not my intention to repeat myself, but in my work there should certainly be references to what I have done in the past. Say what you will, but The Trial is the best film I ever made…I have never been so happy as when I made this film.“
-excerpted from Orson Welles: Interviews
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Rare and damaged Kodachrome of Greer Garson, 1945
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Swedish poster for Anna Christie (1930) starring Greta Garbo.
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Douglas Fairbanks (center) with director Allan Dwan (right) on the set of Robin Hood (1922). Giant megaphones were used to direct large crowds of extras.
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Gary Cooper buys ice cream, 1930s. The public loved these publicity photos that presented their screen idols acting like regular people. We admire the ice cream ladies’ uniform.
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Dorothy Dandridge on the set of Porgy and Bess, (1959) directed by Otto Preminger.
“Dandridge was a staggeringly beautiful actress. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, in an upper-middle-class family. In the late 1940s or early 1950s, one of her uncles died and the family went to Augusta, Georgia, for the funeral. She described the utter terror she felt in that small Southern city – the looks the people gave her, the comments they made, the blatant racism and hatred she encountered there.”
-photographer Phil Stern
Image may be NSFW.
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Above, poster art for The Golem (1920) directed by Carl Boese & Paul Wegener); below, still from The Golem.
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Jimmy Stewart & Grace Kelly on the set of Rear Window (1954) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
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Rudolph Valentino & Alice Terry in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) directed by Rex Ingram.
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Polish poster for Shane (1959).
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Jeanne Eagels in The Letter (1929) directed by Jean de Limur.
“My retribution is greater. With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.”
-W. Somerset Maugham, The Letter (1925).
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Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward vacationing across Israel during the filming of Exodus (1959) Photographer: Leo Fuchs
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![Theda Bara b. Theodosia Goodman, in a publicity shot for A Fool There Was (1915, dir. Frank Powell) (via) “I was held up as one who delighted in the lure of destruction and evil-doing…hardly a day passes that the postman does not bring me letters written along similar lines. Many of them attack me most unmercifully. Some intimate that no woman could portray [femme fatales] without having had the actual experience. Here is a letter I received during the past few months: You are a menace to the human race. Man is a mere toy in your hands or those of women like you. Your type inevitably leads to ruin and destruction. Those glittering eyes are like those of the serpent, except they are more dangerous. Such letters hurt. It is impossible to accustom myself to them. Why do people hate me so? I try to show the world how attractive sin can be, how very beautiful, so that one must be always on the lookout and know evil even in disguise. I am a moral teacher then. But what is my reward? I am detested. People seem to forget that I am only an actress; that an actress should never show her real self to an audience, else she ceases to be an actress.” -Bara, quoted in The Pittsburgh Press (April 1916)](http://i0.wp.com/www.seraphicpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/theda.jpg?resize=500%2C646)
Theda Bara b. Theodosia Goodman, in a publicity shot for A Fool There Was (1915) directed by Frank Powell.
“I was held up as one who delighted in the lure of destruction and evil-doing…hardly a day passes that the postman does not bring me letters written along similar lines. Many of them attack me most unmercifully. Some intimate that no woman could portray [femme fatales] without having had the actual experience.
Here is a letter I received during the past few months:
You are a menace to the human race. Man is a mere toy in your hands or those of women like you. Your type inevitably leads to ruin and destruction. Those glittering eyes are like those of the serpent, except they are more dangerous.
Such letters hurt. It is impossible to accustom myself to them. Why do people hate me so? I try to show the world how attractive sin can be, how very beautiful, so that one must be always on the lookout and know evil even in disguise. I am a moral teacher then. But what is my reward? I am detested.
People seem to forget that I am only an actress; that an actress should never show her real self to an audience, else she ceases to be an actress.”
-Bara, quoted in The Pittsburgh Press (April 1916)
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Polish poster for Sunset Boulevard (1950).
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Lielle and Maayan wish all our friends and relatives a lovely and inspirational Shabbat.
