By Andrew
H. Malcolm
My earliest brushes with fame were decidedly nondescript. In
a restaurant one distant day during my childhood an old man stopped
by our table to inform my parents that I was without a doubt the
best behaved little boy he had seen in a long while.
This caused much parental excitement because, I was later informed,
the old guy was the famous Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department.
I knew treasures from pirate tales, but treasuries meant little.
(And he clearly did not know my other behavior.) Meeting famed
Satchel Paige, however, in the bullpen of Fenway Park was quite
something else because he was famous to me. I knew his name.
Once upon a time in this America, fame was reserved for relatively
few people who had earned this elite status by doing something
of genuine worth. Served as president, say. Been first to fly
the Atlantic solo. Invented a vaccine. As mass media expanded
with movies, glossy magazines, radio, television and, now, the
Internet, the criteria for conferring fame changed. Some would
suggest it became drastically diluted. All someone had to do,
as one example, was be in a movie, good or bad. That conferred
fame. Or be seen dating someone famous.
No longer was it necessary to have accomplished some feat worthy
of note. These new commercial media with their endless pages and
yawning hours of broadcast time to fill needed a steady flood
of celebrities, real or manufactured, to photograph and write
about for a public presumably eager to consume such material.
Well into the 19th century, it was considered unseemly for U.S.
presidential candidates to campaign and seek votes. Interested
voters and groups visited candidates, often on the front porch
of the politician's home, and then carried the candidate's message
away. Most of the campaigning was done then by the parties and
candidate surrogates, possibly seeking to reap jobs in a new administration,
earn IOUs from party leaders and perhaps develop their own fame
for their own candidacy later.
Absent the immediate demands of media and their awaiting audiences
145 years ago, that little known Illinois country lawyer named
Abraham Lincoln spent his Election Day in Springfield working
on law cases, then voting and shopping for a son's socks. Come
evening, he dropped by the telegraph office to learn initial returns
before retiring. Lincoln took three days to amble his 6-5 frame
over to a local victory rally. There he waved to a happy crowd
but declined to speak because, he claimed, he'd already said pretty
much everything he had to say.
How times, expectations and America change! At no time in history
has there been such a surfeit of fame and deficit of humility
as today. Fame can crop up anywhere, even at neighbors if they
were on the evening news. Anyone and everyone, it seems, can be
famous for a few minutes anyway. Look at American Idol
(alright, don't look but take my word for it). Even the show's
losers are famous for a while. For what? Why? Who knows? Who cares?
Fame is ubiquitous, like the air we breathe. And just like that
air, some fame is good, based on an admirable accomplishment,
and some fame is not so good, based on nothing, on misbehavior,
on a marketing plan or clever media manipulation. People then
make choices on products or candidates, for example, based on
fame and what seems to be true.
But what is fame? Why do we have so much of it now? Is that
good? Should it even matter?
At its base simplest, the dictionary advises us, fame is the
state of being well-known or much talked about. In prehistoric
times there wasn't much fame to be had outside of your own cave.
You might be tribally famous as a good mastodon hunter, but that
was it.
Things changed slowly over time. Following primitive but developing
trade paths, bards and troubadours spread tales by word of mouth,
some perhaps true. But either way it created fame. For such established
centers of power as royalty and the church, for example, the growth
of fame created some undesirable competing sources of power. As
their fame spread, so too did their challenging ideas. Martin
Luther did not tack up his tracts for them -- or him -- to remain
unknown.
In ancient Greece and elsewhere, ancient royalty held lavish
banquets to show off their wealth and gain fame and presumably
power. Posing days on end for oil portraits or statues to grace
public places was not something the shy did to remain ignored.
George Washington -- the Revolutionary general, premier president
and founding father -- was not one to seek the spotlight. After
returning to private life at Mount Vernon in the 1790s, a few
years before his death, the most famous American in early history
noted with touching appreciation in his diary one night that he
and Martha had just had their first quiet dinner alone together
in 20 years. Fame can confer power. It always has. But there's
a price to fame too.
It seems safe to say that Andrew Jackson would not have become
president without the fame of defeating the British invasion at
New Orleans in the War of 1812, even if that battle was militarily
meaningless because it occurred after Britain and America
had signed a peace treaty in Belgium. It took a month for news
of Jackson's victory to reach the nation's capital and start stoking
the cantankerous general's fame factor. About a decade later that
fame translated into political power and election as president.
Jackson's famous face still resides on the $20 bill, albeit a
visage clearly experiencing a bad hair day.
Then came the revolutionary mechanization of fame. The printing
press and telegraph eased its spread and speed. The photograph
boosted fame's velocity even more. Movies, of course, came along
and created a new pantheon of famous people. We first saw those
faces on the screen and eventually heard their soon-familiar voices.
Radio was a novelty at first, then helped create a broad list
of stars and characters who told jokes and stories and became
familiar -- and famous -- for doing so. Fred Allen, Jack Benny.
Bob Hope. The Lone Ranger. George Burns. The list goes on as fame
spread.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was famous as president. But his brilliant
use of radio and those national fireside chats helped turn that
fame into enhanced political power -- and additional fame.
Across the Pacific in 1945 the first time the Japanese people
ever heard any emperor speak was Hirohito's emergency radio plea,
following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that
his countrymen accept the unacceptable, surrender. Hirohito was
famous, of course. But his unfamiliar voice was not. So rumors
of fraud, fueled by diehard militarists, spread quickly and widely,
prolonging some resistance.
Then -- BAM! -- at midcentury along came television. The faces
and voices of comedians once known only to select vaudeville or
radio audiences became famous overnight as regular visitors on
the TV screens of millions of households. The same fame applied
to products advertised on TV, which gave them fame and credibility
simply by being seen. Stores everywhere put up signs: "As Advertised
on TV." As if having the money to buy TV advertising time conferred
some innate value on a product.
What TV did was confer fame, invisible yet powerful. To witness
the power of TV and its amazing fame-granting talents, the next
time you're at, say, a major football game, I could not imagine
where, watch what happens to hundreds of otherwise intelligent
human beings when the TV camera swings to award a passing moment's
fame on the paying throng. Many fans have become deft too at composing
signs they know will draw the camera's gaze and garner a momentary
flash of fame.
The last 15 years saw the introduction of the Internet, an anarchic
advance that permits transmittal of personal messages, images,
rumors, urban legends, myths and outright lies instantly around
the planet well ahead of the ability to verify. Jokes and stories,
some of them true, become instantly famous there daily.
What this means is it's an awful lot easier to be well-known
or talked about in 2005. Indeed, to satisfy the voracious maw
of hundreds of round-the-clock TV channels with their need to
personify every story, producing fame has become a necessity.
As Jay Leno once said selling a snack chip, "Eat all you want.
We'll make more."
Few think much about fame, so integral has it become to our
daily existence. But there is in America today a thriving industry
based on manufacturing, monitoring, prolonging, bemoaning and
celebrating fame. You've heard of the Auto Industry. The Defense
Industry. The Fashion Industry. Like it or not, we have witnessed
the post-World War II creation of a sprawling Fame Industry totally
devoted to creating new fame, praising it, savoring it and even
its clothes, and to monitoring old fame and chronicling its demise
into unfashionableness.
It seems like simple empty entertainment but also conveys a
broad array of society's values to its members, especially attentive
young people.
Fame coverage encompasses the often meaningless activities of
those chasing fame, of those who lost fame and of those still
living within it (does it really matter if we witness the opulence
of famous bathrooms?). We see them at charity events, receiving
endless awards, changing spouses like jewelry. Their loaned clothing
is detailed more than a state treaty. We also see the stumbles
enroute to and within fame, each chapter providing further opportunities
for coverage and comebacks.
Examine the guest lists of the late night TV shows, where so
many say they now receive their news. Many of those famous visitors
have a new movie, show, book or scandal going on, an event that
might suggest the real reason they're there: to sell something.
The questions have been negotiated in advance. Try to recall why
these celebrities are celebrated. Many, say, Carmen Electra, are
simply famous for being famous. The process ends up feeding on
itself.
Oh, and chances are the new movie or show is being distributed
by another arm of the corporate conglomerate that owns the network
that broadcasts the late-night show. A coincidence, eh?
Or take Paris Hilton. Please. The comely blonde and rich member
of the famous hotel family became initially famous for a grainy
videotape of certain activities once considered private. The explicit
tape was widely distributed on the Internet.
Now she's interviewed on the red carpet of numerous awards shows.
She has a TV show chronicling her fashions, ignorance, social
ineptness and conceits as she wanders the country encountering
regular people who get their few minutes of fame encountering
this young woman who gained initial fame for doing something ordinary.
The program's advertisers gain valuable commercial fame among
the sizeable audience watching. And here I am adding to that notoriety.
Look at the newsstands. The number of magazines discovering,
creating, nurturing, monitoring and chronicling the rise, the
pregnancies, the clothes, the loves, the breakups, the addictions,
the falls and, best of all, the comebacks of the famous is dominant.
And amazing. And it all sells well.
Even when Princess Diana died, her famous face and seemingly
shy smile were marketed for years in this Fame Industry that both
creates and strives to satiate its customers' curiosity about
famous people. Some of the highly-touted details may even have
been accurate.
Check your TV schedules for Entertainment Tonight and
its countless cloners of fame. Even cable channels now convey
pervasive fame coverage through biographies and alleged documentaries
on famous performers whose music, check it out, just may be marketed
through the parent company of the cable channel.
Even trying to avoid fame can add to your fame because your
appearances seem rarer. Think Marlena Dietrich. Or billionaire
recluse Howard Hughes. Mystery also manufactures fame. Why did
singer Michael Jackson wear one white glove? Why did his sister
Janet bare one breast on the Super Bowl? Who cares? you might
intelligently ask. But it created more fame.
The search for fame can be desperate, even perverse, and so
much easier now than actually doing anything heroic or even worthwhile.
Capturing a moment's fame somehow legitimizes and celebrates an
otherwise ordinary life. The fiction of fame makes the seeker's
life more real.
Infamy sells better at times than plain old innocent fame. Think
Dennis Rodman, basketball bad boy par excellence. His social infamy
gained him many more millions from his athletic infamy. In infamy,
he sold more tickets. With no time yet to become infamous, soccer
phenomenon Freddie Adu can barely drive legally. Yet he's a millionaire
unproven athlete lending his new fame to a shoe company to multiply
his earnings several fold.
Martha Stewart, who gained fame and fortune (those words do
seem to go together, don't they?) as a queen of household tips
and decorations, also gained infamy and a prison sentence for
insider trading. A famous TV producer merely mentioned his desire
to do a new Martha Stewart show upon her release and her company's
stock price jumped significantly. Yet none of this is real.
Seventy years ago booking agents vied to get clients' names
mentioned in gossip columns. Movie studios staged fake romances
between their stars to provide fodder for fame-making, ticket-selling
publicity. Today, platoons of publicists and communications advisers
seek to insinuate clients' images onto home screens.
Some cleverly find fame for one thing -- think Marilyn Monroe
posing nude for Playboy -- then translate that public
awareness into a more lasting, lucrative activity such as acting.
For many, fame is fleeting. Or hollow. Think Darva Conger. She's
the blond nurse who married a millionaire on television, annulled
the relationship immediately, posed nude for Playboy
and then appeared on Celebrity Boxing, proving in the
process that it is possible to be a has-been before being an ever-was.
But in today's Fame Industry there is money to be had at every
stage. There's always a guest appearance on Hollywood Squares
when everything else dries up. And, of course, maybe someday a
comeback story.
Besides a third of a century in journalism, interviewing the
famous, the infamous, the unfamous and the hope-to-be-famous,
I also worked in politics for years. There, fame is a coveted
currency that draws crowds to work together on issues, to hear
the political sales pitch, to donate time and money. Without fame,
no one would go to vote. Without fame, there'd be no assassinations.
Safe to say, John Lennon could still be alive had someone not
been drawn to him by his fame. Same for stalkers of famous people
like Jodie Foster.
Fame, I found with genuine fascination, causes both the famous
and those seeking their attention to do strange things -- to listen,
to prattle, to act silly, silently, respectfully, lasciviously.
You can spot fame followers like moths headed for a candle. They
angle through crowds to encounter the famous like an accident
that is meant to be. They have a case to present, a point to make,
an autograph to capture, a picture to take and hang at home to
display that they once were in the presence of fame. And perhaps
were brushed by a sprinkle of fame dust in the process.
Those who are famous develop -- or should develop -- alarm systems
and defense mechanisms. Never, for instance, leave a famous person
alone with a stranger; the famous always want witnesses just in
case of false charges someday.
I've often thought of famous people -- movie and political stars,
their wannabes and the latest lineage of American royalty, the
professional athletes -- as living in sumptuous cages like the
different breeds of lions and tigers we would see on a day walking
through a zoo. We let these personalities live there in a surprisingly
confining luxury, albeit one beyond our dreams, as long as when
we walk by they wave or at least nod in recognition and appreciation,
give us that friendly hello or maybe even an autograph through
the golden bars of fame's coveted captivity.
Bernie Kosar, a famous college and NFL quarterback, was told
by his father to treat every autograph-seeker as if it was Bernie's
first request. He did, signing as long as anyone was asking. He
often reached the post-practice shower two hours after his teammates.
But when he visited children in hospitals, he had one stipulation:
No publicity, please.
Some live within fame with grace and dignity. Some resist and
rebel. Some revel. Some show off and indulge. Those who live in
fame gracefully with dignity and charity can make more money from
the fame by lending their name, visage, presence and attention
for positive purposes.
And fame figures in society's ubiquitous advertising, where
knowing the face or voice lends credence to the commercial pitch.
Ever see, say, a famous athlete pause to acknowledge an adoring
youngster? One of the most famous fame commercials showed a little
boy offering a famously mean football player some of his Coca-Cola.
In gratitude the player tossed the boy his game jersey. Michael
Jordan, the famous basketball legend, once shared french fries
with the same emotionally disarming effect.
To be sure, fame can mean more money. And more fame. It also
can mean intrusive scrutiny, jealousy, phony friends, much less
privacy. Some of fame's price seems negligible to those not asked
to pay it. Devoted fans may ask a hero for only one autograph
each. But for the hero, that could be No. 65 so far that day.
Yet each supplicant expects a friendliness the tired name-signer
is not feeling at that moment. And not every supplicant is polite
or appreciative. It takes a patient and generous famous person
to accommodate all requests with a smile.
When I was researching a biography of Theo Fleury, once the
National Hockey League's smallest player, I traveled long days
with him and his Calgary team. They are cared for, fed and transported
with meticulous attention so they might focus on their job, playing
a rugged game better than mere mortals. On a sunny cold January
day in Pittsburgh he had just finished a tiring game-day skate
in Mellon Arena, about four long blocks from the team's downtown
hotel. The players would all spend the afternoon resting in their
rooms. But first came the required team dinner together at noon.
It was 11:25 a.m at the arena.
"We better get going," said Theo.
"Why?" I said, "You've got 35 minutes to go four blocks."
"You'll see," he replied.
We walked out the arena's underground delivery entrance. There,
as always, atop the truck ramp, silhouetted against the wintry
sky was a fan sentry. He promptly signaled others. They came running,
pens and cameras in hand. They surrounded the famous player, holding
out pads, trading cards, hats, shirts, wanting for one moment
to be there with fame and gather some piece of evidence to prove
that to others later. Theo signed everything, even the stacks
of trading cards held by youngsters hired by professional collectors
who knew youngsters are harder for famous people to turn down.
(And the women who bare their chests to arriving busloads of professional
athletes may have something else in mind.)
He also made small talk with each supplicant, asking their advice
on defeating their team that night and generally joking with the
fans on the windy sidewalk for perhaps 10 minutes. Every minute
or two he took a gentle step to politely break free. More joined
the crowd as some departed. "Thanks, Theo," some said. "You bet,"
he said without looking up.
On the next block another gaggle awaited. And a third on the
third block. The fans of fame knew the hotels and the route. Their
requests, chatter and items were all the same. Finally, after
more than 100 autographs, the hockey player reached the door to
his hotel, where the telephone switchboard puts no outside calls
through to famous people. But there was one more sidewalk request:
a father wanted his little boy photographed next to the little
player. Theo kneeled down on the snowy sidewalk, put his arm around
the youngster he knew not and would never see again and they both
smiled broadly. Click went the camera.
The fame dragon had been fed for another morning.
Later on that chilly January game day in Pittsburgh I was walking
out of the team hotel to board the bus to the evening's contest.
I do not resemble a professional athlete. Still, several excited
youngsters with notebooks ran up. "Are you famous? Are you famous?"
they demanded.
"Uh, no," I said. "I'm not famous."
And in the end, after all that, I'm happy for it.
Andrew H. Malcolm is a veteran author, newspaper correspondent
and communications adviser who often contributes to this magazine.
After several years residing in Southern California, he is an
aspiring hermit who writes editorials for the Los Angeles
Times.
(January 2005)
