<<Getting up from rocker, tottering across the room with my cane, easing myslef into the computer chair, adjusting glasses>>
Hard to believe I've come to being an "elder statesman" of sorts, but time moves on, no matter what you do to try to stop it. I was born nine months after James Dean's untimely demise, and while I was alive when Marilyn Monroe died, I certainly don't remember her. I DO remember when Elvis died (he seemed "old" to me at the time - 42), but I couldn't stand him, and shed no tears.
One thing to keep in mind about the "Golden Age of Hollywood" (the 1930's & 1940's) is that it was MUCH easier for the studios to control the images and public personnas of their stars. While the mass media did exist, radio and newswire circuits were far too expensive to tie up with gossip about movie stars. Newsreel cameras and their accompanying equipment (mostly batteries) weighed a ton, and used 35mm movie film which had to be developed, edited, printed, and then distributed to theaters.
Hollywood did still get a lot of coverage, but it was definitely "second tier" news for the most part, and consisted largely of informaton fed to the media by studio publicity departments. Also, ordinary people didn't have the opportunity to travel the way they do now, and when they did visit California, they weren't carrying digitial cameras and camera phones. All this meant that the public saw and heard the things about movie stars that the studios WANTED them to hear. As a result, I'm not sure even today we know what some of the stars were like in real life.
Beginning with television in the 1950's, development of the electronic media (already present to an extent in the form of radio) began to snowball. The introduction of satellies in the 1960's made possible worldwide broadcasting, and small format videotape in the 1970's meant it was no longer necessary to wait for film to be developed. By about 1990, the steady stream of advances in electronic media turned into a raging flood. I made the realization that the newsmedia was forever changed when, for the first time ever, I relied primarily on my computer for news when Princess Diana was killed in 1997. There have been plenty of further developments in the 11 years since then.
I guess the point of this ramble is that the stars of today can go almost NOWHERE in the world and not be in the public eye. Their human failings are photographed and recorded, then flashed around the world in a matter of minutes or even seconds. Largely for this reason stars simply aren't going to have the glamor of the "good old days."
Also for the same reason I don't think we're going to see many more stars who are more significant in death than they were in life, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.
I hope SOMEBODY is still awake after reading this ramble!
Lol.
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Originally Posted by hoxharding
i don't rile easily...i'm a so cal girl.
