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Celebrities for Ever: The Most Remembered Legends and Immortal Icons
By
James Gavinn
Contributors:
J.D. Lacroix, Valerie Constand, Soshanna Rosenstein and Josephine Leblanc.
Photo:
James Cagney
Known
as “the little tough guy,” James Cagney’s greatest roles were as the
quintessential tough-guy in such films as “The Public Enemy” and “Angels
with Dirty Faces.” After a string of gangster pictures, he went on to portray
Bottom in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and his classic
performance as George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” won him an Academy
Award, eventually proving to Hollywood his vast range as an entertainer.
Photo:
Marilyn Monroe
The
jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker (1929-1988) drove many people crazy. They
couldn't accept the fact that this cool, beautiful Young Man with a Horn wasn't
the prince of romance his music implied. Instead, he beat women, abused his
friends and stayed stoned on heroin, partly to say "f*ck you" to a
world he despised. Baker's fall from an Amsterdam hotel window was almost surely
a drug-induced suicide but his acolytes insist he was murdered; a fitting end
for a tortured prophet of doom. As long as there are rebel youths, there will
always be antiheroic icons to guide them.
Photo:
Mae West
James Dean (1931-1955) showed the budding youth culture how to spit in its dull, conformist parents' faces. If driving fast cars could kill you -- as it did him -- what was there to live for anyway? Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) roamed the country looking for truer values than those ascribed to a suburban family home. On the Road can still touch anyone who gazes into a future where all is unsure, "besides the forlorn rags of growing old. "Kerouac never did; he drank himself to an early death.
Photo:
Betty Grable
Pin-up girl of all pin-up girls, Betty Grable was the favorite among US soldiers during World War II. Starting as a chorus girl when she was barely a teenager, Betty proved to be a gifted singer, dancer and actress. She made over 40 films during her career, including "How To Marry A Millionaire" with Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall. Long before Mary Hart, Betty's legs were insured with Lloyds of London for a reputed $1 million. During her heyday, Betty was both the highest paid star in Hollywood and one of the wealthiest women in all of America.