Rosy Glow – Award Season

By

Andrew DeMarco

With the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and Grammy Awards season completed and officially over, there is no more hype on who was or wasn’t nominated, who should have won, who got the short end of the stick, and how they celebrated their victories or defeats. No more pre-game red carpet shows and who is wearing borrowed clothes and jewelry from which designer and who looks good and who is absolutely hideous, while these stars are being asked some of the most inane questions.

I have always been amazed at people’s fascination with movie stars and celebrity.  Even celebrities are amazed at how people are fascinated with them. For instance, I am not a fan of Alec Baldwin and I never thought I would agree with him but a few months back he summed it up pretty well.

Mr. Baldwin was involved in a case where a woman was accused of stalking him and his family. According to the woman they had a romantic fling and why she stalked him nobody knows. She was convicted and sentenced to 210 days in jail. But she was just a minor annoyance for Mr. Baldwin. During the trial the paparazzi, which is Italian for people who need to get a life, camped out in front of the Baldwin apartment building and hounded Mr. Baldwin, his wife and new child. It got to the point where he assaulted a camera man and asked, “What is your fascination with my family and my business?”  I could not have asked it any better, and does anyone really have an answer?

Mr. Baldwin was in the news even more recently and said, “To be a New Yorker meant you gave everybody five feet. You gave everybody their privacy.”  This reminded me of all the stars who came into my father’s store on the Upper West Side and why they continued to shop with us because we never made a fuss over them. They were customers and in many cases more than that they were friends, all because we treated them like any other customer. I never asked any one of them for an autograph and in retrospect maybe I should have.  Long after my father sold that store, the family received Christmas Cards every year from 2 Academy Award winners and a world famous mezzo-soprano.

Maybe this frenzy is fed by the media, and our 24 hour news cycle with shows like Access Hollywood, Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight and even local news, occasionally on a slow news day keeps track of which celebrity got into trouble that day. Then there are the newspapers which have added gossip sections like Page Six in the New York Post and Confidential in the Daily News adding to all this madness. All of them keeping track of the comings and goings of the likes of George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock and Scarlett Johansson and minor celebrities like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Rhianna and whoever else makes the paper that day.  It is no wonder that people have become infatuated with celebrity.  We are talking about people who make far too much money for what they do, and in many cases do not deserve all the attention that is lavished on them.

Perhaps because of my contact with stars on a regular basis when I was younger is the reason why I cannot understand all this frenzy.  So between Mr. Baldwin, all the award shows and with the recent passing of Shirley Temple I was reminded of a quote by one the greatest actresses of all time.

“Acting is the most minor of gifts… After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four. “

While I agree with this quote, I have to make a correction or two. Shirley Temple was actually just three years old not quite four when she made her acting debut and won a special “Juvenile Academy Award” at the age of seven. The quote by the way is by none other than Katherine Hepburn, who with 12 Academy Award nominations and 4 wins all for Best Actress would know something about acting.  Miss Hepburn tried to keep her life private, at a time when it was a lot easier, but even back then found it difficult and her relationship with Spencer Tracy was big news.

Further proof that Kate was right on with her assessment are Academy Award winners Tatum O’Neal winning at the age of 10, Anna Paquin at 11 and the old timer Jennifer Lawrence at 23. If you still need more proof on how minor a gift acting is Lassie, Rin-Tin-Tin and Mr. Ed all had long careers.

So next time I hear all the commotion about some actor and see all the paparazzi going crazy, I will think of all the stars I have met and fondly remember my time working with my father and how we treated those stars just like everyone else, and how they appreciated it. Maybe when we all realize that all they want is to be treated like everyone else and have a little privacy this frenzy will end. I will watch an old movie with no fuss. I will remember that these overpaid stars and paparazzi are just like you and I and think of those words by Katherine Hepburn. You know those words will fill me with that feeling that Cousin Bob would call that…… Rosy Glow.