Word: fading
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Nowadays what lurks beyond the sunset is the floodlit plain of American celebrityhood. Where do -- where can -- Ollie and wife go from here? The movies end with a fade because to show what follows is to demystify what precedes. Imagine Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly raising chickens and changing diapers in a High Noon sequel (Quarter to Four ?). You can't. "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished," laments Tennyson's Ulysses after his return home from heroism to sit "by this still hearth, among these barren crags...
...worse than the disease. It is celebrityhood. Last winter a Washington radio station began a news roundup with this: "Joe DiMaggio, baseball hall of famer, former husband of Marilyn Monroe, and also Mr. Coffee, had surgery today." Hero status, unless arrested by artistic device (the fade-out) or tragedy (an early death), decays. There is a trajectory to fame, and it points downward...
...Europe. The fresh faces of James Madison High School in Vienna, Va., cheer him off from the sweet sweep of the South Lawn. The creaky jet still has some spirit as it thunders up through the gray clouds and is away. The Iran-contra mess seems to fade to a whisper, the deficits and the trade struggle to diminish magically. At 37,000 ft., the world looks green and serene, even manageable...
...sense believe that Professors Bailyn, Fleming and Handlin are infallible. I have known them much too long to believe such a thing. Nevertheless, their reservations about loading a department with specialists in flowers that bloom in the spring and fade in the summer seem to me to do them credit. The back offices of history departments which did not resist pressure to be up-to-date are now full of such worthless rubbish, which by law they must keep until death do them part. J.H. Hexter Professor of History Director Center for the History of Freedom Washington Univeristy...
...career began to fade. Though she had proved herself a capable actress, she was given few parts. She began to look tired, and a line from Fire Down Below (1957) -- "Armies have marched over me" -- seemed sadly appropriate. By the early '80s, Alzheimer's disease was diagnosed, and Yasmin, who has been active in raising funds for Alzheimer's research, was appointed her conservator. Hayworth was perhaps the best judge of her life. "I haven't had everything from life," she once remarked. "I've had too much...