For what it's worth, Anthony Slide tells a similar story about Lillian Gish in Silent Players. He mentions an occasion when they were visiting the Motion Picture Country House and ran into Harriet Nelson and Mary Brian. Slide introduced them to Lillian, who apparently had never heard of them. If someone back then didn't listen to Ozzie Nelson's orchestra and didn't listen to/watch the family's sitcom, I could possibly see why they wouldn't know about Harriet Nelson. But for someone active in the movie industry during the mid-late 1920s, not knowing about Mary Brian is a little harder to comprehend, because she made some not-inconsequential films and was usually treated by the press as more than just another ingenue. Perhaps Lillian isn't the best example, because she clearly didn't travel in the same circles as most West Coast movie people, but this anecdote does show that there doesn't need to be a large divide in age (or even era of chief activity) for a lack of familiarity to be present.
It's also worth remembering that in 1956, it was probably a lot easier to ignore pop culture than it is today. There were no 24-hour news channels, no personal computers and entertainment news likely wasn't mixed with world/national news quite as much.
-HA
Who do you think mirrored Norma Desmond.....
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Harold Aherne
- Posts: 2011
- Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2007 1:08 pm
- Location: North Dakota
Re: Who do you think mirrored Norma Desmond.....
That's a good point. For one thing, not until the '70s do I even recall a dramatic increase in books examining pop culture past and present.
Re: Who do you think mirrored Norma Desmond.....
Perhaps they were lucky in not knowing anything about Elvis et al - unlike nowadays where you can't help but know about the Lady Gaga's, etc.
Re: Who do you think mirrored Norma Desmond.....
This can be kicked into a whole other topic, really, on how the lack of such 24/7 blather on stars and celebrities only perhaps enhanced their "magical" status as performers. Hard for us to imagine what it was like to be in a 1920s/1930s town with a decent movie palace and be immersed in the otherworld of those moving shadows on the screen. Fan magazines conveyed only so much. Were those silvery shadows real people?
