Fame: Today's Stars Lack the Glamour and Class of Yesterday's Celebrities

Recently, while browsing eBay, I came across a seller who was auctioning off his collection of autographs made up primarily from film stars of the past 20 years: people like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Kevin Kostner, Jackie Chan, Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and so on. It was a large collection of autographs, and initially it sounded very exciting.

But as I read through the list of the people whose signatures made up the book a kind of malaise took over. It was hardly the sort of feeling that's elicited on programs like the Antiques Road Show when people come across a dusty old book full of black and white/sepia photographs of vintage actors with articulate signatures complimenting their glossy poses. Imagine if you will if this book had been full of artists from the '40s and '50s (perhaps even the 60's). Imagine signed photos or documents of Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Noel Coward, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Vivian Leigh, Billy Holliday, Dean Martin, James Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor and so on. Of course age gives things like this a certain charm and scarcity but I can't imagine 50 years down the road people wanting to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for autographs from today's so called stars. A lack-luster media-hyped no-man's land of forgettable faces whose names will probably sink into oblivion by that time.

For me the last truly famous person who was worth having an autograph from was Elvis Presley. Say what you will about his bulky last days but his unique character and sheer presence is something today's stars can surely only dream of having. Even without the media hype he could elicit enough excitement merely by the prospect of him showing up at a venue.

Film stars nowadays seem comparatively unglamorous, unexciting and generally uncouth as well as being unappealing (yes, that's a lot of un's!) personality deficient facades compared to Hollywood hey-day when people actually worked hard to maintain an image, even if there were obviously many lurid secrets in their respective closets. Back in those days you had the John Wayne Swagger, the Bettie Davis smart one-liners, the dapper David Niven gentlemanliness, the glamour of Marilyn Monroe, the intensity of Brando or James Dean, the voice of Humphrey Bogart, the austere beauty of Lauren Bacall, the vaudeville style entertainment of Hope and Crosby or Abbot & Costello and Martin & Lewis. You had dependable leading men with faces full of character rather than the pretty-boy parade of today. Charlton Heston, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck. I could go on and on of course and even as a relatively young man of 44 I'm already hankering for a nostalgia that ended probably a decade before I was born.

Things just ain't what they used to be and unfortunately neither are the stars. Increasing technological advancements are probably partly to blame in that they've generated generations of movie-goers with ever shortening attention-spans. Unless there's an explosion or machine-gun editing it seems that Hollywood doesn't think we can cope with a solid storyline. As well as this people just don't sound the same as they used to both audibly and in their phrasing. You can make good money if you can imitate the speech-patterns of the 30's-40's both in the States and in Britain and even though the time-period was one of more death and mayhem in the real world than at any other time in our history paradoxically in the movies it was filled with more warmth, charm and character than any other time in cinematic history.