The great pioneering director D.W. Griffith hired Rabbi Isadore Myers as the Jewish technical consultant on his great epic, Intolerance, 1916. Griffith was so happy with Rabbi Myer’s expert advice and attention to detail that he said to the good Rabbi:

“How can I ever repay you?”

Replied Rabbi Myers: “I have a daughter who would like to get into pictures.”

Rudolph Valentino at the height of his fame.

True to his word, Griffith extended a helping hand to Carmel, Rabbi Myer’s striking and talented daughter. Carmel Myers (1899 – 1980) appears fleetingly as a dancing girl in Intolerance and after production wrapped, she was signed as a contract Griffith player. A few months later, the future star Colleen Moore arrived in Hollywood, also under exclusive contract to Griffith.

Myers and Moore became close friends. In her excellent memoir Silent Star, Colleen Moore remembers that a club for young actresses—Our Club—was organized as a means of mutual support. The young actresses would lunch on Sunday, discuss movies, books, “boys” and generously feed one another tips on what roles were available at which studios. Myers was an active member. (more…)

“Comrade Karen?”

My wife gazes at me, and she’s like, “Huh?”

“Since I’m watching all these Russian themed movies I feel the need to get in character.”

“Robert…”

“Comrade Robert, if you please.”

My poor wife heaves a weary sigh.

“Comrade Robert, how long will this lunacy continue?”

“Counter-revolutionary! Saboteur! Trotskyite!”

Comrade Karen sternly points to the stairs, and I make my way to a Zhivago-like exile in the living room for the next few hours.

Oh, the sacrifices I make for my comrades at Big Hollywood.

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“I feel a little reactionary,” deadpans Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X, 1940.

On their improbable wedding night, anti-Communist reporter—remember them?—Clark Gable gives Bolshevik Hedy Lamarr a luscious, Adrian designed silk nightgown. Unlike Travis Banton, Adrian was concerned with silhouette and in this exquisitely bias-cut negligee—Gable just happens to have it in his suitcase—Hedy Lamarr’s figure is highlighted to a spectacular effect.

Long live the products of decadent American capitalism.

Capitalist Clark Gable puts Communist Hedy Lamarr in touch with her feminine side in Comrade X, 1940.

Hedy, playing a variation of Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka, is a humorless Soviet scold more concerned with industrial production than with her own femininity, which translates into her humanity.

TCM’s Shadows of Russia series, organized and programmed by my favorite  film blogger Self-Styled Siren and The New York Posts’s fine film critic Lou Lumenick, kicks into a refreshing mode—after the shallow and dopey Reds—as we view the lighter side of the Russian revolution.

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This month TCM is running a fascinating series, Shadows of Russia, a history of Russia and the Soviet Union as seen through Hollywood’s lens. If you care about movies and politics, you should check out these movies.

The idea for this series originated with the fine film blogger Self-Styled Siren and the New York Post’s Lou Lumenick. Self-Styled Siren explains how it came about here.

Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlett Empress, 1934.

First up, Josef von Sternberg’s—real name Jonas Sternberg—The Scarlett Empress, 1934, starring Marlene Dietrich as Catherine The Great. Catherine was born to an obscure noblemen of the tiny and dirt poor realm of Anhalt-Zerbst. She was brilliant, precocious and, ah, not too attractive.

Hollywood being Hollywood—thank heavens—rewrites and recasts history in a big way. Marlene Dietrich first appears as an innocent young girl, all blond ringlets—very Shirley Temple. It’s great seeing Dietrich do a virgin: she pouts and poses, melding innocence and nymphomania. (more…)

Continuing from last week, here’s my list of the Ten Best Classic Hollywood Movies I screened during the past year. I realize that this list seems a bit, er, obscure and maybe even esoteric, but in truth, every film is hugely entertaining and suitable for most everyone.

It is sad that so few contemporary movie lovers are familiar with classic Hollywood movies in general and silent films in particular. Imagine if the history of music was suddenly swept clean of the work by Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach.

Well, it’s the same with classic Hollywood movies. (more…)

Here’s my annual list of the Ten Best Movies I Screened in 2009.

I did not see more than a handful of contemporary releases that came close to the smart pacing, narrative sophistication and honest passion of these older films.

Though I will give a strong nod to 500 Days of Summer and Funny People, two fine films. Both are beautifully written, carefully structured and oh what a relief, they vigorously espouse what can only be described as (mostly) conservative values, a welcome relief in this post-modern age where nihilism passes for, ahem, cutting edge entertainment.

But I roll with classic Hollywood, silent movies and films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Keep in mind that most of the movies on my list were produced on modest budgets, never intended as studio blockbusters.

I’m not claiming that any of these movies are classics like The Crowd or Seven Samurai. I am saying that these ten films are grand entertainment from Hollywood’s great dream factory and well worth seeking out. (more…)

In 1999, a few weeks before The Devil’s Arithmetic went into production, I met with stars Kirsten Dunst, Brittany Murphy, and Mimi Rogers in Dustin Hoffman’s Brentwood office. Dustin and Mimi had rescued my script from development hell—a seven year limbo—and were serving as Executive Producers. Mimi was doing double duty as actress and producer.

The Devil’s Arithmetic is a Holocaust time travel drama based on the best selling book by Jane Yolen.

Brittany Murphy, left, and Kirsten Dunst in The Devil’s Arithmetic, 1999.

The script called for authentic Jewish characters and settings.

To aid the two young actresses I brought Offspring #3 to the meeting, a knowledgeable and adorable eleven year old yeshiva student.

Offspring #3’s job was to coach the actresses in, well, being Jewish. Offspring #3 taught the actresses a few Jewish songs, and helped their Hebrew pronunciations.

I watched as Kirsten and Brittany soaked up Offspring #3’s essence. (more…)

Lilian Gish, Broken Blossoms, 1919, a genuine Hollywood star.

Americans admire excellence and authenticity.

The rise of the Hollywood movie star was built on powerful performances that projected the idea of authentic emotions. Film audiences experienced a magical connection—often, deeply intimate—with scores of charismatic actors.

Lillian Gish’s heartbreaking performance as the abused daughter in Broken Blossoms (1919) cemented the image of a sensitive and vulnerable child/woman. It did not matter that Gish was, in fact, rigid and hard-headed. The huge shadows on the silver screen settled the matter in the public’s mind. (more…)

Lupe Velez, The Mexican Spitfire.

The lives of Hollywood stars are frequently tragic and messy tales of absent fathers, cruelly ambitious mothers, and madly dysfunctional families.

Mexican-American actress, Lupe Velez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944) “The Mexican Spitfire” was a beautiful, passionate, emotionally unstable woman best known for a series of 1930’s B movies in which she plays a delightfully scatter-brained character who speaks broken English mixed with streams of rapid fire Spanish.

Her first feature-length film was in the Douglas Fairbanks blockbuster, The Gaucho (1927), where she plays a high spirited Spanish dancing girl. Velez performed in a further eighteen films before settling into comedy—she had a Carol Lombard vibe, a  flair for screwball situations, but her accent limited her appeal—most notably in the seven “Mexican Spitfire” series of films (1939-1943). (more…)

This is not Yael, our beautiful Israeli sharpshooter. Security forbids us from posting her real name or image. But you get the idea, right?

“How long did it take you to qualify as a sharpshooter in the IDF?”

“Not too long. I had a natural aptitude with the rifle. I started out at 15 meters, then moved up to 30, 50, 100, 400 then all the way up to,” she hesitates, “classified meters.”

Israeli soldiers are famously and appropriately tight-lipped regarding training and operational details.

Yael—not her real name—is an unbelievably beautiful young Israeli woman. Her moca skin—flawless, like dark glass—testifies to a Bukharin father and Yemenite mother, a genetic mix I strongly recommend. She looks like the American supermodel Tyra Banks, only slimmer, more beautiful — and far more lethal.

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Actress and author Patsy Ruth Miller.

In 1924 while shooting a film in New York, actress Patsy Ruth Miller (1904-1995) developed a close friendship with author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Frequently, Fitzgerald and Patsy Ruth would go out for dinner while Zelda remained home pleading fatigue. Patsy Ruth eventually realized that Zelda’s fatigue was acute alcoholism.

Observes Patsy Ruth:

It didn’t seem to me that Scott drank more than most of the men I knew. He seemed intoxicated on words, and sometimes we would sit, our after-dinner coffee growing cold, while Scott tried to make me see some fine point of writing, or understand why an emotion had been ill or well portrayed. But often I had the feeling that he was unsure of himself as a writer, that he was afraid of that one day he’d have nothing left to say, and I also had the impression that Zelda did little to build his confidence, even sometimes, in a perverse way, seemed to enjoy his battle with self-doubt.

Fitzgerald’s agonies of self-doubt are common among writers. The fear of having nothing left to say will, inevitably, be paralyzing. And a non-supportive spouse can act as a fatal poison to a vulnerable writer. Most witnesses observe that Fitzgerald was an alcoholic by the time he attended Princeton. There is no doubt that by the time he landed in Hollywood he was a hopeless drunk. It’s a measure of how common was alcoholism in early Hollywood that Patsy Ruth didn’t think Fitzgerald’s intake was all that unusual. (more…)

Meet Larry, my buddy from Bensonhurst. Okay, so it’s not Larry. For reasons of security his identity cannot be compromised. But take my word for it, Larry looks exactly like William Powell in The Thin Man. Or not.

Shabbat in the Israeli town of Efrat is a deeply spiritual experience.

The sun falls, gently folding itself into the surrounding hills and valleys. The same Judean hills where Jews have lived, worked and fought since Biblical times.

The unearthly light makes a final golden splash.

My wife Karen and I are visiting Karen’s brother David, his wife Elana, and their four children, residents of Efrat.

Attending Sabbath services in an Efrat synagogue, out of the corner of my eye, I spot “Larry.”

Security requires that I do not use his real name.

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Esther Ralston at the height of her fame, 1920’s.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

To read Part II, please click here.

Broke, with her second marriage in shambles and blacklisted by studio boss L.B. Mayer—Esther wouldn’t trade amorous favors for movie roles—Esther Ralston flees to New York in 1939 to find work and rebuild her shattered career.

Esther, in her slim but resonant 1985 memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, tells us that she was forced to leave her daughter Mary behind in California with her mother.

Working in Summer Stock and radio, Esther meets a young entertainment columnist named Ted Lloyd.  Everywhere she plays, Ted is in the audience. With characteristic understatement Esther notes that Lloyd “seemed to follow me.” (more…)

This is not a picture of yours truly with My Chinese Spy. It’s star-struck me with the great Chinese actress Gong Li on location in China. I confess, I use any excuse to publish this photo.

American Journalism Goes Dark—Voluntarily

Journalism died in America when Barack Hussein Obama was running for President.

The dinosaur media gleefully surrendered to the cult of personality—standard for leftist politics—and since then normally skeptical journalists have turned into nothing less than a collective Pravda for the Obama White House.

It’s not hard to fathom the reasons for this herd-like behavior. Elite journalists and editors recognize in Obama a kindred spirit, a hard left, big government ideologue who is adept at mouthing—endlessly, tediously and vacuously—all the politically correct rhetoric.

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An Ethiopian Jewish woman soldier takes aim. Both men and women serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Thus, there is a weapon in almost every Israeli home.

Before our son Ariel Chaim ZT”L passed away, age twenty-two, in 2003, we spent a good deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Ariel was amazed that so many American Jews—overwhelmingly liberal and secular—aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens.

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Skillfully written screenplays are frequently structured around a series of setups and payoffs.

The most rudimentary example is, of course, the pistol in the desk drawer: revealed in Act I, and then in Act II, the gun is used to kill someone.

For an intensive workshop in cinematic setups and payoffs you should screen the Back to the Future series, where setup and payoff are elevated to an entirely new level.

It’s kind of fascinating, watching Obama construct the setup for his Afghanistan policy. He follows a familiar dramatic structure:

1. Anguished self-reflection, all quite public in order to display nobility of character. (more…)

Esther Ralston at the height of her fame, mid-twenties.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

Blessed with a lovely, melodic voice, it’s something of a puzzle why Paramount dropped Esther Ralston’s option in 1929. Esther was a rising star who, between 1924 and 1929, starred or co-starred in twenty-five films. She would seem a natural for talkies.

But the mystery is soon cleared up as Esther explains:

Since I had only a year to go on my Paramount contract, the studio sent me a new contract with a talkie clause to sign. Knowing I had been brought up in the theater before going into pictures, George decided I should ask for a hundred thousand dollars to sign this talkie clause. He sent me alone to talk to Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor. They were courteous as always, but explained that the new talkie panic had them worried and they didn’t feel they should have to increase my salary until they were sure I would be adequate in talkies.

Once again, the destructive Svengali-Trilby relationship asserts itself as the guiding principle of Esther and George. (more…)

Several days ago, I was invited by One Jerusalem, to attend a private briefing by Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., whose important new book, The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West, has just been published.

There were about fifteen of us—bloggers mostly, including my good friend, the brilliant blogger, Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric—gathered in the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills.

Ambassador Dore Gold

Ambassador Gold, looking like a sleepy walrus, spoke in measured, diplomatic tones. But he was fiercely passionate and profoundly knowledgeable about Iranian history, culture, and diplomacy, past and present.

Point by point, Gold emphasized his main thesis: (more…)

Esther Ralston, at the height of her Hollywood stardom in the 1920’s.

They called her: The American Venus.

She lived in a Hollywood mansion with a staff of servants. Her chauffeur drove a limited edition limousine. But she ended her days in an upscale trailer park in Ventura, California.

One of the enduring mysteries—for yours truly—are the scores of Hollywood starlets, innocent young women, who are attracted to bad men: drunks, gamblers, liars, tinsel town sociopaths.

Esther Ralston is a prime example of an early Hollywood star who showed great promise as an actress—she played drama and comedy with equal craft—but three ill-considered marriages effectively derailed Ralston’s career and drained away her considerable fortune. (more…)

Offspring#2 steps into our bedroom and says:

“Do you know what’s going on in New York?”

My wife Karen and I look at each other, baffled.

“Better turn on the TV,” says Offspring#2.

Black smoke is rising from one of the Twin Towers. A newscaster tells us that a passenger jet airliner has hit the World Trade Center.

Ariel, our son, senses that something is happening. He tears himself away from his Talmud study and steps into our bedroom, gazes at the TV screen.

“How many people work there?” Ariel asks.

“Thousands, tens of thousands, it’s an entire world.” (more…)