Quote of the Day (Flannery O'Connor, on Fame)

“If the fact that I am a ‘celebrity’ makes you feel silly, what dear girl do you think it makes me feel? It's a comic distinction shared with Roy Rogers’ horse and Miss Watermelon of 1955.”—Southern short-story writer and novelist Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964), letter to pen pal “A,” Dec. 16, 1955, in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald (1979)

Quote of the Day (Brooke Shields, Suffering a Case of Massively Mistaken Identity)

“The other day, I was in the airport and the flight attendant came up to me and said, ‘Oh my God, you’re Caitlyn Jenner!’”—Actress Brooke Shields, during her debut show at Manhattan’s Café Carlyle, quoted by Jacob Bernstein, “‘Fame Is Weird,’ and She Knows It,” The New York Times, Sept. 21, 2023

(The accompanying picture of Brooke Shields was taken Feb. 21, 2018, by Greg2600.)

Quote of the Day (H. L. Mencken, Defining ‘Celebrity’)

“A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.” —American editor, columnist, and philologist H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing (1949)

Quote of the Day (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., on Fame vs. Notoriety)

“You long to ‘leap at a single bound into celebrity.’ Nothing is so commonplace as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else,—very rarely to those who say to themselves, ‘Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!’ The struggle for fame, as such, commonly ends in notoriety;—that ladder is easy to climb, but it leads to the pillory which is crowded with fools who could not hold their tongues and rogues who could not hide their tricks.” — American physician, teacher, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858)

Quote of the Day (Larry David, on What Fame Has Done for Him)

"I get up, go to work, come home, sit in my underwear, eat a box of Mallomars, watch ‘The Untouchables,’ yell at my wife and go to bed. I’m married, so it’s really not helping me meet any new women—and that was the whole idea.”— American comedian, writer, actor, director, and television producer Larry David, when asked if fame had made him a happier man, quoted by Joshua Hammer, “The Other Costanza,” Newsweek, Jan. 12, 1998

It's good to know that David was kidding when talking to this reporter. Because otherwise, after reading the above, you wouldn’t be surprised to find out that David’s wife later divorced him—though it’s even more surprising to learn that a) it took her another nine years to do so, and b) another woman ended up marrying the real-life inspiration for George Costanza (AND Bernie Sanders double) three years ago.

(This image of the creator of Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm—and Broadway’s Fish in the Dark—was taken at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival by David Shankbone.)

Quote of the Day (Horace Greeley, on How ‘Fame is a Vapor’)

“Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches take wings; the only earthly certainty is oblivion; no man can foresee what a day may bring forth; while those who cheer to-day will often curse to-morrow.”—American newspaper editor, publisher and Presidential candidate Horace Greeley (1811-1872), Recollections of a Busy Life (1868)

Quote of the Day (George Clooney, on Celebrities’ Twitter Presence)

“If you're famous, I don't—for the life of me—I don't understand why any famous person would ever be on Twitter. Why on God's green earth would you be on Twitter? Because first of all, the worst thing you can do is make yourself more available, right? Because you're going to be available to everybody. But also Twitter. So one drunken night, you come home and you've had two too many drinks and you're watching TV and somebody pisses you off, and you go 'Ehhhhh' and fight back. And you go to sleep, and you wake up in the morning and your career is over. Or you're an a--hole. Or all the things you might think in the quiet of your drunken evening are suddenly blasted around the entire world before you wake up.”—American actor-director George Clooney quoted in Tom Junod, “George Clooney's Rules for Living,” Esquire, December 2013

Well, I suppose that the publicist for George Clooney finally persuaded him to the contrary, because four years after this Esquire rant, the actor-director opened his own “George Clooney Official” Twitter page. Nevertheless, Mr. C. must have warned that he would strictly limit his involvement, because the tweets and retweets consist mostly of pictures of himself and his wife, with minimal commentary.

Every other day, if not more often, Clooney must nod his head over his foresight of nearly a decade ago. Though hardly shy about expressing his opinions, he knows that old-time movie stars loomed large for a reason other than the big screens of the Golden Age of Film: that overexposure removes the mystique invested by fans.

Moreover, as someone who admitted to Newsweek 10 years ago that his past life of substance and and womanizing precluded a life in politics, Clooney knows all too well the perils of going online and venting to the world before you’ve had time to think it over and calm down. Even if you’re not a party animal but simply love the sound of your own voice (an occupational hazard in the entertainment industry), you run a big risk of looking stupid.

Bette Midler, that means you.

You’d think that the singer-actress would have learned her lesson from three years ago, when she tweeted that women “are the n-word of the world,” or especially last year, when she mocked Melanie Trump’s accent and called her an “illegal alien”—in both cases, sparking a backlash that led the outspoken entertainer to issue uncharacteristic apologies.

But here she was at it again this week, when frustration over Joe Manchin’s opposition to the “Build Back Better” social spending plan of the Biden administration led her to lash out at the Democratic Senator from West Virginia for wanting to keep all Americans like his state: “Poor, illiterate and strung out."

Less than an hour later, Midler was backtracking with a tweeted apology to West Virginians (“Surely there’s someone there who has the state’s best interest at heart, not his own!”)

No matter. In politics, this would have been considered a gaffe, a statement that, for anyone not named Donald Trump, would have halted any possibility for further advancement.

In entertainment, plenty of people feel that she was right the first time. And therein lies the problem.

Statements like Ms. Midler’s only reinforce the conviction of many in Red America that liberal elites are condescending and unworthy of support (even someone like her, who has funded programs for neighborhood revitalization and wounded veterans). She made it that much harder to move back into the Democratic column a state that had once firmly backed the New Deal.

An additional history lesson might be in order here. Ms. Midler, like all non-indigenous Americans (including me), are descended from groups who, for the longest time after arriving on these shores, were “Poor, illiterate and strung out.” 

Maybe she should get a copy of Oscar Handlin’s The Uprooted so she can better understand how alienated and resentful the recipients of taunts such as hers felt in the 19th century—and how belittling those remarks remain to the underprivileged and marginalized of this country, whoever they are and wherever they live.

(The photo of George Clooney accompanying this post was taken at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9, 2011, by Ed Van-West Garcia.)

Quote of the Day (Margo Howard, on the Devaluation of Celebrity)

“Along with the dollar, we've experienced a regrettable devaluation of celebrity. Anyone over 30 cannot help but wonder: What the hell happened? The news-ingesting public is bombarded with fake news of the faux famous, but...who are these people? Did the mainstream media purposely dumb things down to offer us the current surplus of celebridreck? This is a chicken-and-egg debate, to be sure, trying to figure out how a bunch of anorexic, addled, addicted nobodies morphed into household names. Did the press lead us down this loony path, thinking it profitable, or did the paying customers make known their yen for drivel? Could people be so depressed by national and personal problems that they get a media-delivered serotonin fix by keeping tabs on people who think going to parties is a job? Might celebridreck be taking the place soap operas used to occupy as diversions from dull lives—but with real people?”— American writer and former advice columnist Margo Howard, “Cambridge Diarist: Celebridreck,” The New Republic, Dec. 18, 2006

When Ms. Howard—daughter of Ann Landers and ex-wife of actor Ken Howard—wrote her screed about “the current surplus of celebridreck,” she was reacting to Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and—God help us—Flavor Flav. In the decade and a half since, the proliferation of social media has given birth to countless “influencers.” Is this really a cultural improvement?

(The image accompanying this post, of Jessica Simpson, was taken June 22, 2008, by John VanderHaagen from Grand Rapids, MI.)

Quote of the Day (Jack Kerouac, on Fame and ‘The Enthusiasms of Younger Men’)

“Ah the tears of things, incidentally…I've all these two days spent filing old letters, taking them out of old envelopes, clipping the pages together, putting them away… hundreds of old letters from Allen [Ginsberg], [William] Burroughs, [Neal] Cassady, enuf to make you cry the enthusiasms of younger men… how bleak we become. And fame kills all. Someday 'The Letters of Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac' will make America cry.

“Old letters starting ‘Cher, Cher Jean…’ etc. And O all the youngish preoccupations!

“Cassady’s letters are wildly beautiful and full of Irish Celtic verbal zing. Burrough’s old letters contain the same dry humor, like ‘H.C. is sailing away in a boat with a sail to match his blond hair. Enough to make a man spew.’”—American novelist Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), letter to poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, May 25, 1961, in Jack Kerouac Selected Letters: Volume 2, 1957-1969, edited by Ann Charters (1999)

It was only four years since his On the Road had become the fictional touchstone of the Beats, but in his letter to Ferlinghetti 60 years ago today, Jack Kerouac was already sounding less “beato” (the Italian for “beatific,” his sense of the West Coast literary movement) than beaten.  

The exhilaration of his recent move to Orlando, Fla., had dissipated, and he was now worrying about his mother’s declining health and grousing about left-wing utopianism that he regarded as insufficiently critical of Soviet totalitarianism and inimical to his beliefs as a self-described “Catholic conservative.” (On “Peace Marchers” recently in the news, he grumbled, “I think they should now endeavor to get permission from the Soviet government to march in Russia in the name of the same peace plea.”)

His death from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking was still eight years off, but Kerouac was even now contemplating posterity. He was lamenting the lost “enthusiasms” of him and his companions, the complications of immense success (“fame kills all”), and what time had undone.

But he was also thinking of restoration—of how preserving his correspondence would enable a deeper, kinder appreciation of his circle in all their humor and humanity.

To a large extent, Kerouac’s faith in these letters was justified. They could not arrest his inexorable physical and creative decline, but they have played their part in the more generous consideration of his early work that has occurred in the last few decades. Moveover, they allow readers to see, without the filter of a biographer, the novelist in all the complications and salvific compassion that governed his life.

Or, as he wrote in his 1958 novel The Dharma Bums, “One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”

TV Quote of the Day (‘Barney Miller,’ In Which Harris Learns the Limits of Literary Fame)

Louise Austin [A librarian, played by Miriam Byrd-Nethery]: “We have your book.”

Det. Ron Harris [played by Ron Glass]: “Oh, do you?

Louise: "Blood on the Badge—364.12 in the crime section.”

Harris: “Well uh, look, I certainly hope people are bringing it back on time.”

Louise: “It's never left.”— Barney Miller, Season 7, Episode 13, “The Librarian,” original air date Feb. 19, 1981, teleplay by Frank Dungan, Jeff Stein, and Tony Sheehan, directed by Noam Pitlik

Quote of the Day (Saul Bellow, on How Being a Celebrity is Like ‘A High-Voltage Cable’)

“To be a celebrity is like picking up a high-voltage cable which you can’t release. I saw it with Marilyn Monroe, she lived in a state of horrible excitement, and died of it. I didn’t want to be ignored or obscure, but I didn’t want to kill myself.” — American novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Saul Bellow (1915-2005), "Saul Bellow Interview: 'My Agonies Over Writing,'" interviewed by David Pryce-Jones for Telegraph Magazine (UK), Oct. 3, 1975, reprinted June 10, 2015

Quote of the Day (Jo Ellison, on Madonna and Other Aging Celebrities)

“None of us will be spared from eventual obsolescence, but while most of us only learn the extent of our irrelevance when we realise we are mentally incapable of programming the Sky box, or have become the last refusenik to subscribe to the office's new ‘collaboration hub,’ it's a far bleaker world for creatives who suffer the ignominy of age while simultaneously having fame wrested from their fingertips by younger models.”—Jo Ellison, on Madonna and other aging celebrities, in “Trending: Have You Hit the Age of Irrelevance?” The Financial Times, June 15-16, 2019

John Wayne was over 60 when he wore an eyepatch for his Oscar-winning role as Sheriff Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. I'm not sure why Madonna's wearing one at roughly the same age, except maybe to do what she's always done: acted unconventionally.

If she wanted another hit, she evidently got it, as her latest collection of tunes, Madame X (yes, you can see that letter) ranks #1 on the Billboard chart. But the musician who ranks #2, Bruce Springsteen, is almost 10 years older, and he didn't need any eyewear.

(Photo of Madonna taken by MTV International during the world premiere of her music video "Medellin" on MTV, Apr. 24, 2019.)

Quote of the Day (Robert Morley, on Why ‘Americans Make the Best Fans’)

“Americans make the best fans, perhaps because they always seem to have time on their hands. The native young pound along behind, thrust a cigarette into one’s hand, and are off back to the shop. Worst of all are the temporarily incapacitated who demand you sign the plaster on the fractured limb. I find it well nigh impossible to scratch on plaster of Paris, yet others seem to manage.”—English stage and screen actor (and longtime fixture in British Airways commercials) Robert Morley (1908-1992), The Best of Robert Morley (1981)

Photo of the Day: The ‘Fame’ High School, NYC

A little over a week ago, while visiting Lincoln Center, I photographed this building at the corner of 66^th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. But millions of music and television fans would scoff at the idea of the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts as any old building.

The easiest way to remember it is as the inspiration for the fictional setting of the 1980 film Fame, as well as the TV series spinoff that ran from 1982 to 1987. But even that might not indicate the full star quality of this specialized secondary school. The following is an extremely partial list of famous alumni: Jennifer Aniston, Adrien Brody, Ellen Barkin, Hal Linden, Cy Coleman, Carole Bayer Sager James Burrows, Liza Minnelli, Janis Ian, Laura Nyro, Suzanne Vega...I could go on and on.

If the school has an unwieldly name, it’s because it’s actually the union of two institutions founded separately: the High School of Music and Art, founded by New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia in 1936, and  the School of Performing Arts, created in 1948. Lincoln Center's creation in the 1960s provided the impetus for amalgamating the two institutions into this, one of four specialized high schools in New York City.

The building that you’re looking at now opened in 1984, with a state-of-the-art concert hall and theater. Well, the best and brightest who enter this highly competitive high school deserved no less.