The Loss of STARDOM and the Rise of Celebrity

1932-2011

by Marc Freden, Author of “Really!?!”

Stardom died on March 23^rd.  Is it a coincidence that was the very date that famed and fabled Dame Elizabeth Taylor also died?  Hardly.  You see the two were not mutually exclusive.  In fact, each was the other.  Taylor was the last great star.  And with her passing, so passed stardom.

            I say that neither with sarcasm nor with tongue-in-cheek (and that is a traditionally comfortable place from which I like to pontificate) as I speak from the perspective of a great Hollywood astronomer, an actual stargazer—an entertainment reporter.  It was my job for many a year to chart the heavens, or at least the heaven on earth known as Hollywood.  And if in its heyday, MGM could claim more stars than in those same heavens, than it is fair to say there is a black hole these days in the hills of Beverly. 

            We do not make stars anymore.  We make celebrities.  And there is a difference.  There are of course the fifteen-minute of fame media whores who would sell their very souls for a reality show and subsequent paid endorsements from speaking engagements, book deals and club hopping ‘one-nighter’ appearances.  They are the worst of the bottom dwellers as they pay the least in dues for the maximum return.  Yet, much to their surprise, they are as disposable as an old VCR and are as close to yesterday as they ever were a moment of today.  But that doesn’t stop them from stepping up to the plate for their turn at bat.  And we, the entertainment industry in total, recruit, use, abuse and dispose—not quite the assembly line that Ford envisioned but just as effective in churning out the product.  It is effective because today’s audience has little attention span and needs immediate gratification—the Roman forum of the new millennium.  Make me feel better about being me, by understanding that, at the very least, I am not you.  Who doesn’t love a spectacle and certainly when the joke is on someone else?

            You accept the lottery win of reality celebrity as a moment of today.  But what about those other folk, those who would gladly and openly dispute my hypothesis—the 10, 20 and higher millions per picture “A-listers”.  Sure they are more hit maker than Hilton, more cash in the bank than Kardashian but that doesn’t make them any more glamorous in this world where sweat pants are considered fashion.  You see today’s film actor is no star.  A star had fidelity to the industry and loyalty to the fans.  In the old days a star stuck with the very genre that made them a star, as opposed to today’s actor who bitches about a 30 million paycheck for the sequel and the fear of being pigeonholed.  Yesterday’s star wore couture and jewels.  Today’s have stylists and borrowed karats.  Today’s moneymaker calls the paparazzi to forewarn of scandalous outings in ‘of the moment’ local hotspots with the hopes of being a 30 second headliner on gossip blog.  Yesterday, they partied and played behind gilded gates at chic dinner parties that served up, among other things, a code of silence.

            Elizabeth Taylor was the last of those from yester-year.  Not the last to experience it but certainly the last to exploit it.  She was glamour personified—those eyes, those jewels, the scandal of several husbands, which could easily be explained away with her excuse that she never slept with a man she didn’t marry.  Suddenly eight marriages seemed downright puritanical.  She was never the everywoman but managed to be the woman every woman wanted to be.  She was Royalty in that way that said even if you got close enough to touch her…you would never dare.  But I did and I have.

            Years ago, as I was putting myself through college in Boston, I waited on tables in a restaurant that was the city’s equivalent to Sardi’s in New York—one of those before and after theater haunts that served both fine dining and late night nibbles.  It was 1984 and La Liz and former flame Richard Burton had come together, at least under the footlights, to tour in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives”.  On a regular basis, both Burton and Taylor would come in for a before performance meal.   He sat across the restaurant, almost daintily, with a bib tucked in as to not disturb his makeup and had a sole cup of tea.  She on the other had grazed through five courses of heavy fare and choked it down with a double scotch or two.  Although she denied ever drinking before a performance, I can honestly say that I personally handed her those drinks on more than one occasion.  I am not condemning the woman, but grew quickly to understand how much she loved the spectacle of her fame, how bawdy behavior never diminished her but rather added to the mystique.  It is as if her missteps only made her more sympathetic than pathetic. Back then, the bosses forbade us workers from leaking the happenings of Taylor or Burton to the press.  For she was a star and you protect stars.

            Years later, by now trapped in a wheel chair but still bejeweled and beguiling, she would occasionally be chauffeured to a West Hollywood gay bar where she would enjoy a good Cosmopolitan and sliders.  She wheeled passed by one afternoon as I was sitting on a bar stool and I said “hi” and may have rudely suggested that the dog on her lap may qualify as over accessorizing. These days, in a world of camera phones and email, a shot of Elizabeth with ketchup on her chin and a Cosmo in her hand could have landed the predatory patron a hefty several thousand dollars pay day in showing the demise of the diva.  But it didn’t happen.  Just as with years ago, we protected the star…because she was a STAR. 

            Pick someone, anyone; we feel the same way about today. You would never have caught ET in sweatpants but we do see Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, et al similarly clad darting in or out of a Starbucks or Pilates class.  You would no sooner keep mum Tom Cruise popping into a gay bar for a cocktail.  That shot could be worth millions.  We protected stars and respected stars because they earned our respect.  Today celebrities earn a paycheck and as such are fair game.  I miss the days when we created stars and there was an elegance and mystique about Hollywood.  There was so much more to talk about when everything wasn’t already talked out. 

            Will anyone really care about owning a piece of the life of Reese Witherspoon, should her estate someday come up for auction, in the same way we will clamor to own even the catalogue of such an estate sale should there be one for Taylor? Probably not. Why?  Because Taylor is Hollywood history and Witherspoon is little more than a talented flavor of the moment. Ironically, when MGM boasted more stars than in the heavens, we never really thought that that is where they would eventually end up…in heaven.  So it’s R.I.P. to the V.I.P. for we mourn the loss of Elizabeth Taylor but moreover the death of stardom.