Completely Morbid Thought of the Week

I've been so sad about Paul Newman all week. Now, everyone has to go at some point ...that's the way of life. And no one could argue that Newman, at 83, didn't have a full one. But it got me to thinking about how few truly massive screen stars remain among us. I'm talking classic film stars that were with us before the cultural upheaval of the '60s which brought a large wave of new stars to the cinematic forefront (Nicholson, Redford, Fonda, Christie, Eastwood, Streisand, Dunaway, Deneuve, Beatty, and more...) many of them still working steadily. Though Newman's work in the 1960s (Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke) is his most revered he actually ascended in the mid50s just as he was entering his thirties. Films like Somebody Up There Likes Me and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof made him a star.


There are so few stars left from the days when cinema was BIG in that way... and I'm not just referencing CinemaScope. Many still-living once household name actors have very low profiles; Olivia DeHavilland, Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Van Johnson, Karl Malden, Jennifer Jones, Mickey Rooney, Luise Rainer (all well into their 80s or 90s) aren't topics of conversation much anymore unless you're in the good, nay, glorious company of true cinephiles.

The truth of it is that most celebrated actors don't maintain the kind of decade after decade Name in Lights prominence that Paul Newman did to his very last. Shirley Maclaine and Sophia Loren who rose to fame roughly concurrently with Newman still walk the earth (in heels), god bless, both at 74. But the closing chapter I fear the most will be losing Elizabeth Taylor. La Liz, who is 76, has been internationally famous for sixty-two years now. To me she's the last of the Immortals. She's had so many health scares for so many decades that it became a joke to think of her as being perpetually at death's door. It's not at all funny anymore. I hope there's a great screening room in heaven. When Taylor finally arrives -- and I hope that's a long long time from now -- Newman, Monroe, Brando, the Hepburns, Bogie and Garland will undoubtedly have a seat ready for her: diamond encrusted, the one right between Richard Burton's and Montgomery Clift's.
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