The Third Man

They say that the newspapers are dying in Los Angeles. Well, I guess it's Art imitating Life.

I went on a short hop to Las Vegas last week. These trips are usually notable not for what transpires but for what I miss in the Real World. In my personal tradition, when I return I always receive a surprise residual envelope and am confronted by news events that may or not be fresh to the world, but are to me. In this case I did indeed receive a residual (but one that did not even pay for my airport parking). I also was confronted by a mention in a newspaper I brought onto the plane that Ed McMahon had passed away. Sad, but not unexpected.

While waiting at McCarran Airport I also learned of the passing of Farrah Fawcett, a pretty one-note celebrity whose long decline from some dreadful cancer was morbidly documented on a cable series. Her demise was also far from unexpected. I did appreciate her position as a '70s Betty Grable icon, and can still visualize her famous blown-hair toothy-grin pose. I also recall the very strained pun of that time, when she was married to Lee Majors--what do you call students of ancient Egyptian plumbing? Pharoah Faucet Majors! So it went.

I was wondering, though, while on the plane, who the "third one" would be, knowing the old, oft substantiated tradition that celebrities died in threes. It did not take long to discover who that third man was, of course. By the time I got home and turned on my computer, the TMZ report of Michael Jackson's sudden death was already surging through the Web. I did my subtle version of a double take, knowing that the world would consider this a major news event, even if I did not.

My first impression was poor Farrah Fawcett; her passing would certainly be subsumed by Michael Jackson hysteria. And indeed it was. All the news networks, even MSNBC, which is All Obama All The Time, put aside political commentary for instant news updates and entertainment pundits discussing one very weird career. To my mind Jackson's death was unremarkable for someone of his high maintenance. He outlasted, age-wise, other popular icons such as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland and James Dean. Self-destructive as his gaudy life style was, he was able to stay in the public's eye despite (or rather because of) some very unseemly behavior regarding children.

That his life and death provide a cautionary tale about the extremes of the music business and of celebrity is axiomatic and obvious. I don't care enough to belabor a psychological study of what made this very strange person tick, but I am reminded of Charles Foster Kane and his desire to recapture his childhood as emblemized by his sled "Rosebud." Jackson never had a real childhood and seemed intent on sustaining what he could of its trappings; hence "Neverland," its zoo, the carnival rides, and the "company" of all those little boys. Why is the "Peter Pan" song "I Won't Grow Up" reverberating in my mind now? Duh.

Usually after a spate of high-profile deaths there is a hiatus beforfe the next series, unless it is December, when so many people are called to their Reaper. But suddenly this weekend we had another threesome this time of D-list celebrities who barely made it onto the obit page of the Los Angeles Times. They were cable/UHF huckster Billy Mays, who apparently died of air turbulence; Fred Travalena, a competent but unexciting impersonator who often appeared on the Tonight Show next to Ed McMahon; and Gale Storm, long off the stage, but who graced the early sitcoms of the 1950s as "My Little Margie" and "Oh Susannah", the social director of a cruise ship who shared the screen with Zasu Pitts as Nugie the Beautician. Yeah, I'm showing my age now, but what's the point of reading these obits without exhaling a little nostalgic regret?

I'm approaching my 60th birthday, which in itself makes me acutely aware of the passing of time and of my own mortality. Well so far I've outlived Jackson and Mays, am approaching Fawcett and Travalena, and have a ways to go to equal McMahon and Storm. Not that anybody keeps track. About twenty years ago a writer with the same name as me and similar credits passed away, and I'm pretty convinced that most people in the town think that that was me, so I am existing anyway as a sort of a living ghost.

Well, Los Angeles is a town where the dead are worshiped more than the living, where Forest Lawn has served as the background to movies, and where every Halloween revelers gather near the graves of Marilyn Monroe and Harry Houdini to conduct seances and confab with the spirits of these former sacks of protoplasm, as though anything could be gained. Evelyn Waugh is not likely spinning in his grave, but he is very possibly chuckling.