Miri Moffat Sports Therapy & Education

01/12/2025

Exactly!

01/12/2025

“Social skills by Carnegie, boundaries by Greene.”

29/11/2025

29/11/2025

29/11/2025

You’ll be okay, one step at a time. ✨

29/11/2025

29/11/2025

Aweaome! No wonder Burt Lancaster is one my all-time favourite actors.

Burt Lancaster opened the Columbia dressing-room door in 1953 with the slow, deliberate stride of a man who had lived too many lives to be frightened by a studio boss. The contract Harry Cohn had left on the makeup table was thick, heavy—almost theatrical. It demanded that Lancaster surrender final approval on From Here to Eternity, handing complete control to the studio.
Lancaster lifted the pages with two fingers. Read the clauses. Closed the folder. And said, quietly but without hesitation:
“I’m not signing away the soul of a picture.”
Harry Cohn—Hollywood’s most feared mogul—responded with a threat he used like a signature:
“I’ll bury you.”
Lancaster didn’t blink. A lifetime balancing on a trapeze had taught him how to face a fall without fear.
Burt Lancaster had never been a man built for obedience. He came into films the strange way—through grit, not glamour: a circus acrobat who knew pain, a soldier who knew discipline, a factory worker who knew how it felt to take orders from men who didn’t deserve to give them.
He rose to stardom after The Killers, and Hollywood expected him to behave like all the other handsome, controllable leading men. Take the script. Smile at the premiere. Stay out of the way.
But Lancaster could smell dishonesty a mile away.
“If I can’t believe the story, the audience won’t either,” he once told a young actor on set.
The biggest battle of his career erupted over From Here to Eternity. Harry Cohn wanted a patriotic, polished military film—a recruiting poster with dialogue. Lancaster, the son of working-class New Yorkers, wanted truth. He wanted the grit, the pain, the quiet betrayals, the moral failures that James Jones had written into the novel.
The studio began cutting everything that felt too raw.
They trimmed the scenes between Lancaster’s sergeant and Deborah Kerr’s officer’s wife—the moments that explained why two wounded, lonely people would risk everything for a brief scrap of affection. They softened the barracks scenes. They polished away the ugliness inside the base.
Lancaster watched the edited footage in silence. Then he pulled a yellow legal pad toward him and began writing.
Twelve cuts.
Twelve wounds to the story.
He carried that list in his pocket like a weapon.
One afternoon, without scheduling an appointment—a crime in the era of tyrannical studio bosses—Lancaster pushed open Harry Cohn’s office door.
He laid the yellow pad on the desk.
And read each item aloud.
Cohn grew red. Then furious. Then cold.
“You want control?” he snapped.
“Sign the contract. Or I replace you tomorrow.”
The room went silent.
Lancaster stepped forward, his voice low and steady:
“Fire me. And find someone else who can carry this picture.”
It was the kind of line actors dreamed of saying. The kind of line most never dared to speak.
For two days, Cohn threatened, raged, and tried to strong-arm the production.
But the director and producers sided with Lancaster.
They told Cohn the movie would collapse without him.
And so the tyrant backed down.
When From Here to Eternity premiered in 1953, the scenes Lancaster fought for were the beating heart of the film.
The volcanic beach sequence.
The hushed, painful conversation in the barracks.
The small, intimate moments the studio wanted erased.
The film swept the Academy Awards—eight Oscars—and shattered the myth that war movies had to flatter institutions instead of exposing them.
Hollywood began to change that night.
Lancaster never forgot the fight. And he never stopped fighting.
He formed his own production company—the first big star to do so—creating a path for independent actors decades before it became common. He championed scripts executives rejected as “too political,” “too dark,” “too smart,” or “absolutely unmakeable.”
Some became classics.
On set, he quietly protected younger actors from the same contract traps he had once battled. He read their scripts. Challenged unfair clauses. Told them,
“Don’t give away what you need to tell the truth.”
In his later years, a reporter asked him why he spent so much of his career at war with studio power—why he willingly risked roles, money, and influence.
Lancaster smiled, the same stubborn glint in his eye he’d had in 1953.
“The truth gives you spine,” he said.
“Once you have spine, they cannot move you.”
And that was his real legacy—
not just the films,
not just the Oscars,
but the unbreakable principle behind them:
Art matters more when you refuse to let power silence it.

29/11/2025

Exactly!

Become impossible to offend.

Criticism? Let it bounce off.
Insults? Let them slide.
Negativity? Let it pass.

The person who can't be rattled can't be controlled.

Your peace of mind is worth more than your need to be right.

When someone criticizes you, you have two choices:

1. React emotionally and give them power over you
2. Evaluate it calmly—learn if it's useful, discard if it's not

Option 2 is a superpower.

Protect your peace. Your quality of life depends on it.

28/11/2025

12 SKILLS THAT WILL PAY YOU FOREVER

28/11/2025

Haifa is already preparing for Holiday of Holidays. Jews, Christians, Muslims celebrating together every year.

All this beauty makes me cry today. I have a feeling we'll celebrate this year like never before.

All the haters - they know nothing about us. Absolutely nothing.

28/11/2025

Cambridge, Maryland. 1930s.
Bernice Frankel was twelve years old and already towered at 5'9"—the tallest girl in her entire school.
She felt awkward. Conspicuous. Too different to fit in.
But what Bernice had couldn't be measured in inches: razor-sharp wit that earned her the title "Wittiest Girl" at school.
That wit—and the commanding presence that came with her height—would eventually make her a television icon.
But first, she'd have to survive decades of being told she was too tall, too deep-voiced, too unconventional for show business.
Her parents owned a dress shop. They were practical people. Show business wasn't practical.
So Bernice became a laboratory technician. Then World War II arrived, and she did something unexpected:
She joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
She drove trucks. She worked as a typist. She served her country while most women stayed home.
After the war, she married writer Robert Alan Aurthur. The marriage lasted until 1950.
Finally, at nearly 30 years old, Bernice told her parents she was going to pursue acting.
To her surprise, they supported her.
She moved to New York, enrolled in drama school, and changed her name to Beatrice Arthur—adapting her ex-husband's surname to something stage-friendly.
She started in serious roles. Shakespeare. Classical theater. Drama.
Her voice was powerful. Her presence commanding. But comedy? That hadn't occurred to her yet.
The theater work came steadily: The Threepenny Opera in 1954. Fiddler on the Roof in 1964 as Yente the Matchmaker—a small role where she stole the show every single night.
Her comic timing, her delivery, her physical presence—audiences remembered Yente long after leaving the theater.
Bea Arthur, who'd started in dramatic roles, had found her calling: comedy with intelligence.
In 1966, she was cast in Mame as Vera Charles—the witty, sharp-tongued best friend opposite Angela Lansbury.
She won the Tony Award.
But Bea Arthur still wasn't a household name. She was respected on Broadway, known in theater circles—but not famous.
Then came 1971.
Producers of All in the Family needed someone to play Maude Findlay—Edith Bunker's outspoken, liberal cousin who could verbally destroy conservative Archie Bunker with one withering look.
They cast Bea Arthur.
The guest appearances were explosive. Audiences loved watching this tall, commanding woman deflate Archie's bluster with sharp wit and unapologetic politics.
The character was so popular that CBS gave Maude her own show.
Maude premiered in 1972—and Bea Arthur became a television star at age 50.
An age when most actresses were told their careers were ending.
Maude ran for six groundbreaking seasons, tackling abortion, divorce, alcoholism, mental health, and women's rights—topics other sitcoms wouldn't touch.
At the center was Bea Arthur, making Maude simultaneously abrasive and lovable, opinionated and vulnerable, funny and deeply human.
She won an Emmy in 1977.
When Maude ended in 1978, Bea was 56. Most assumed her biggest days were behind her.
They were spectacularly wrong.
In 1985, NBC pitched her a new sitcom: The Golden Girls.
The premise: four older women sharing a house in Miami, navigating life, love, friendship, and aging with humor and heart.
Bea would play Dorothy Zbornak—the tall, sarcastic, intelligent one with the deep voice and devastating wit.
Her castmates: Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty.
(Irony: Estelle Getty, who played Dorothy's elderly mother Sophia, was actually a year younger than Bea.)
Bea Arthur was 63 years old.
Hollywood typically discards women at that age. Roles dry up. Leading parts vanish. Actresses become invisible.
But The Golden Girls changed everything.
The show premiered September 21, 1985—and became an immediate, massive hit.
Four older women—older than the typical sitcom demographic—became America's favorite characters.
Dorothy Zbornak's sarcastic one-liners. Her exasperated reactions to Rose's stories. Her complex relationship with mother Sophia. Her intelligence, her vulnerability, her strength.
All became iconic.
The show ran for seven triumphant seasons. All four main cast members won Emmy Awards.
The Golden Girls proved that stories about aging women could be funny, poignant, and commercially successful.
It proved that women don't expire at 40, or 50, or 60.
That wit and intelligence have no age limit.
That audiences will embrace older characters if you give them something real, something honest, something human.
Bea Arthur, at an age when Hollywood typically renders women invisible, had her biggest success yet.
She continued performing after Golden Girls ended, including a triumphant one-woman Broadway show. She became a passionate advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and animal welfare.
She died on April 25, 2009, at age 86.
What Bea Arthur's career teaches us:
Success can come at any age. Her biggest hits came in her 50s and 60s.
Being "different" becomes your signature. The height and deep voice that made her feel awkward became her power.
Smart comedy matters. Bea never played dumb. Her characters were intelligent, sharp, opinionated—and beloved for it.
Women's stories about aging, friendship, and life deserve to be told honestly.
Bernice Frankel was the tallest girl in school who felt too different to belong.
She drove trucks in the Marines during WWII.
She didn't start acting until almost 30.
She didn't become a TV star until 50.
She didn't become an icon until 63.
She proved that the things that make you "too much"—too tall, too sharp, too unconventional, too old—might be exactly what makes you unforgettable.
Dorothy Zbornak wasn't played by a young actress pretending to be older.
She was played by a 63-year-old woman who'd been told her whole life she was too different—and finally, gloriously, proved them all wrong.
Thank you for being a friend, Bea.
It's never too late to find your golden role.

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