Word: superstardom
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Perhaps the most puzzling question surrounding Cosby is why, after a long career that seemed to have plateaued somewhere short of superstardom, he suddenly found himself the proprietor of TV's biggest hit of the decade. By most objective standards, The Cosby Show is an unlikely candidate for through- the-roof success. In contrast, say, to the Norman Lear comedies of the early '70s, it breaks little new ground in style or subject matter. It has none of the gag-writing brio of The Mary Tyler Moore Show or a half a dozen comedies that followed it. Indeed, The Cosby...
...first album's ten cuts, six were ballads. This chanteuse had to fight for air play with hard rockers. The young lady had to stand uncowed in the locker room of macho rock. The soul strutter had to seduce a music audience that anointed few black artists with superstardom...
...tans, big parties, beach reading, girl-group music. The stars are bigger than they have been in a long time, selling more billions of dollars worth of records and movie tickets than ever before. Celebrities are more numerous, but their fame is briefer: the half-life even of putative superstardom can be as short as a year. Fads are announced, exploited and abandoned even before Good Morning America can cover them. Philanthropy has turned into a series of prefab, single-issue Woodstocks (Live Aid, Farm Aid, Hands Across America), and the U.S. has twice elected to the presidency a marvelous...
...then largely abandoned for social relevance and downbeat realism in the '60s and '70s. "I think the public has been starved for glamour for a long time," says Joan Collins, 51, who was a well-traveled but undistinguished movie actress before achieving superstardom on Dynasty (and posing in the nude for Playboy last year). "I grew up watching beautiful actresses like Ava Gardner, Hedy Lamarr and Elizabeth Taylor. Getting away from one's mundane existence into a fantasy world of beautiful clothes, jewels and Rolls-Royces is very appealing...
...show with straightforward and unpretentious performances. Although they carve out individual styles, the performers never subvert the joy of the music. The feeling of community conveyed by the band and cooperative performers reflects the original Motown environment in Detroit which vaulted so much young. Black talent to superstardom...