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.
