FAME AND FORTUNE – The book by Margaret Nicholas, “The World’s Wealthiest Losers,” enumerates just that, losers blessed with fame and fortune.
There’s the chapter “Too Much Fame, Too Much Money.” Ms. Nicholas opens it with: “Pop-stars, movie heart-throbs and film starlets…whose dazzling rise to fame and fortune only led them into a world of heartache and despair.”
She quotes Fred Allen: ‘A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become known then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.”
Who are they?
The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll Elvis Presley, who died of drug overdose. The sex symbol without equal Marilyn Monroe, whose death remains a mystery. Drug overdose, suicide, murder? The great tenor Mario Lanza, whose death also remains a puzzle.
MORE ‘LOSERS’ – Nicholas names more “losers” in the chapter “Born Into a Fortune.”
But first these words: “Tragic heiresses…born into great wealth, but poorly endowed with the priceless riches of love, emotional stability and real friendship.”
And then a quote from John Dryden: “All heiresses are beautiful.”
Those “poor little rich girls” are Gloria Vanderbilt (mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper), Barbara Hutton (she married Cary Grant), Henrietta Guinness (of English royalty), and Evalyn Walsh McClean (who wore the Hope Diamond, but was really more of Diamond of Despair).
HIGH PRICE – Nicholas writes at the back of the book: “Who wants to be a millionaire? – so the song asks. While most of us would probably say, ‘I do,’ bobbing along on a sea of champagne isn’t necessarily a guarantee of true happiness. The stupendously rich often have to pay a high price for t h e privilege.”
Wise words. Amen to that.
Whenever someone writes a book mentioning Elvis Presley that is not fact based from all sides of an issue, I assume it is either that the person who wrote does not know enough about him or that he or she is just misinformed. Here is what Elvis contributed to the world before he reached the age of 30, no matter how he then died. The first of his greatest advocacies was probably the one where he touched the most quantity of lives. Millions. At 5pm on October 28, 1956, he became the primer mover in the exponential increase in the immunization level of all americans when he took the third version of Dr. Jonan Salk’s anti polio vaccine. He did that in front of the entire world’s press, and by April of 1957 the aforementioned level had risen from 0.6% to 80%. This took place 4 hours before he faced 55 million viewers who watched his second appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, and not during it, as erroneosly reported. The first two versions had caused deaths. People knew about it. And that is why the percentage was so low. Until they saw with their one eyes that the most celebrated youngster in the USA was willing to give it a try. According to an article which appeared in 2011, the person that helped save the most money in the US healthcare industry in the last century was in fact, him. They even say that that no other single individual has had that kind of impact on healthcare in the US, ever. https://nexusis.wordpress.c… Now, since this coincided with the double invasion of Hungary by the then Soviet Union, of October 24 and 31, Presley took it upon himself that by his next appearance on the Sullivan Show, which was on January 6, 1957, a mere two months later, he would launch an appeal for emergency assistance to lessen the plight of what by then he knew had become a true nightmare for some 250,000 Hungarian refugees fleeing for their lives. The appeal, which was NOT followed up by the mainstream media, nor the major newspapers, yielded some US$6 million in 6 months, the equivalent of US$49.5 in 2018 dollars which the International Red Cross in Geneva distributed, throughout 1957, after converting them into perishables and non persihables to the quarter million in Austria and England, where they happily settled for life. These are in addition to the couple of thousand refugees who made it to both Canada and the US, under DIFFERENT auspices. Now, in 2011, the Mayor of Budapest, who by his own admission does not own a single Presley record, honoured him posthumously, as a gesture of gratitude, for his advocacy, naming a park after him, as well as making him an honorary citizen, thus making Presley the only US born individual to be so honoured, and joining a list that includes Swedish Diplomat and WWII martyr, Raul Wallenberg (Schindler multiplied by 10, in the number of lived he saved), Polish activist then Head of State and Nobel Laureate Lech Walesa and, US naturalized-Hungarian born Edward Teller, known as the Father of the hydrogen Bomb, the latter two, coincidentally, former recipients of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now can anone herecreading this comme nt care how he died, when he alread had accomplished all of the above, before he thurned 22 eard old? But Presley’ s advocacies continued in 1957, when he agreed to fill up an entire stadium with donors, which he did on the night of June 28 of that year, at the request of Danny Thomas, whose dream of building St Jude’s by organizing a benefit show had yet to materialize in spite of two tries, big ones, in the previous biennium. Presley stood there that night, in an open air stadioum and with the weather preducting the worsst thunderstorn in Memphis history, As announced, he did not sing, just spoke to the 11,000 donors who came from TN, MS and AR, and, by December of 1957 enough funding had been received to start the planning towards the construction of Thomas’ dream. Another dream that had yet to materialize, in 1961, was that of the Memorial for the 1,177 sailors who perished during the Japanese Imperial Air Force’s attack on Pearl Harbor of December 6 1941. On March 26, 1961 Presley heralded a benefit concert whose gross turned out to be 17% of he Memorial’s total cost, leading to its speedy contruction by 1962, when it was dedicated NOT by another posthumous recipient, then Pres. John F. Kennedy ( as should have been the case), but by then Texas Congressman and Chairman of Veteran Affairs Olin E. Teague and Hawaii”s Governor John A. Burns. Since that day, some 67 million have toured it, from every corner of the world. In early 1964, Presley gifted the USS Potomac, FDR’s Presidential yatch to St Jude’s so that they could auction it for a big profit, which they did, late that same year. It is a testament to the good judgement Presley exercised in his advocacies, as well as in his 50 other charities, that the historic vessel, once visited by George VI and Queen Elizabeth, mother of the current Queen, sailing as they all did, with FDR and his wife, Eleanor from Washington, D.C. to Mount Vernon on June 9, 1939 and which for 3 decades after its being auctioned was misused, and had even sunk, then salvaged by the Coast Guard which renovated it, is now NOT JUST anchored at a dock in Oakland, but does a magnificient job at taking marvelled tourists on a lovely ride to the Golden Gate and back. And it all started with Elvis’ giving it to St Jude’s. Finally, I leave you with these thoughts. Just a couple of months ago, the personal and CONFIDENTIAL letters from, and to, the South African activist, then jailed for life, then freed, then elected to become his country’s Head of State, then Nobel Peace prize laureate, Nelson Mandela have been assembled and published in London. There, from his solitary confinement at Robben Island, and in his own handwriting, he delighted at the love her then 12 year old daughter, now Princess and South African Diplomat Zenani Mandela-Dlamini had for Elvis, her constant reminders to him to hold on ( her 1971 scribble in an envelop to be strong (“be like Elvis, go man, go” ), a particularly touching moment, yielding his approval as he noted to her that he loved his music too. Now, can any one reading this message imagine Mr. Richards having an idea of an of this BEFORE he wrote it. Or has he ever seen a clip where Ali the best informed and proudest of all African Americans in the past century said this about him. And I quote “We black people are kinda funny about music. We aren’t going to follow someone unless they’ve got some Soul. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Michaal Jackson, but, the only white boy that had soul and could sing as good as ANY of them was Elvis. A lot of great singers who are black, but, one man literally as good as anybody, put all those brothers together there’s none any better than Elvis Presley. Singing ability, he a had everything, and he was pretty, I know. And when it comes to boxing nobody has the class, the style, the wit, the speed and beauty of Ali. And when it comes to singing nobody had everything like Elvis. And the last thing, we must understand, he did lot for poor people, he cared for people, he had a good heart, he just wasn’t a person who was great with talent, but he was great in spirit and with God in his heart, and this is great to realize. I wouldn’t praise nobody if he don’t deserve it, because I am the greatest of all time in boxing, in boxing. I said boxing !But I’m telling you, not just you all, the Elvis fans, so naturally you praise Elvis, he’s of European race as you are, but I’m Black, I’m a Islamic, I’m 100% different from you. But I’ll tell the world Elvis was the greatest of all time. I’m a Muslim who’s black who stands up for what he believes. I don’t have to say what I don’t feel, I’m not false, I don’t have to say this. I have no Bosses. I’m free. He to me, is one of the greatest singers, actors and all round men of all time.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO8Kq_3KTyI. Now, as I stated earlier, can anyone care a fig for how Presley, ended up, when he achieved all of these, in his mere 22 years as a public person? Notice I have not mentioned his professional achievements, or his service in the US Army, Just what he did for others.