Parting, 1921–1934

Abstract

Celebrity weighs heavier on those who hold it than on those who hold them in awe. “A punishing last act in the career drama of the celebrated restores our sense that good luck is not lasting,” in Richard Schickel’s words.² Jib Fowles sees stars as victims of a “brutally simple, ineluctable process of aging.”³ Decay and dying in public satisfy curiosities of crowds that in former times would have had public executions to watch, or seen loved ones dying at closer range than many of us do now.

It is a tremendous thing to live—dying is next to nothing. Beasts and birds die—living is everything. The universe is sensitive to the merest touch and therefore it is possible to set wheels in motion that shall outrun the world.

John Wanamaker, American department store magnate (1911)¹