What Price Stardom?

The tragic and untimely death of Anna Nicole Smith this week throws up the question: can everyone handle stardom when it is thrust in them? Anna Nicole Smith eventually could not; and we need to ask ourselves why.

Call me old fashioned - and I realize this sounds undemocratic and elitist - but I firmly believe that breeding counts. It may not be essential to be to the manor born, in order to enjoy and cope with the finer things in life, but it certainly helps. Sure, there have been numerous rags to riches stories down the ages, but those people fall into a somewhat different category. They have earned their new found wealth and power; normally by dint of hard work – coupled with a few lucky breaks – and sometimes by being in the right place at the right time.

Then, there are individuals like Nicole Smith who, not so much work, as manipulate themselves to sudden wealth and celebrity status. The problem is that they are not equipped to handle it. Nothing in Anna’s background prepared her for the millions – and the notoriety – that was to overwhelm her. She came from what is uncharitably referred to as "white trash." Her kind of folks survived by scrounging and scheming and – when called for – getting down and dirty. They had no time for – indeed, no concept of - social niceties. Persons like that use whatever weapons are at hand to get ahead. In Anna’s case, she realized at an early age that her most formidable weapons were her physical assets; and she had no compunction about using them.

And she hit pay dirt – the sugar daddy of all sugar daddies. She even got her billionaire to marry her. Truly, there’s no fool like an old fool. When the besotted octogerian conveniently – and on cue – died a few months later; this girl from the wrong side of the tracks suddenly had it all; the money, the glamour and the adulation.

She should have been over the moon with joy; but obviously she wasn’t. In material terms, she had everything she could ever want – and there is no question that she was, in Madonna’s words, a material girl. Trouble was, she was not bred to cope with it. For someone like her, who spent her childhood and adolescence being looked down on – and used – by snooty white folk, this was payback time. She was determined to flaunt her new found possessions and rub them in the face of the class of people who had once treated her like worthless trash. In time, the fantasy became the reality. It was never enough. The parties got wilder; the drinking got heavier; the drugs got more potent – until she literally burnt herself out.

To a lesser extent, the same fate befell Elvis Presley. A small time country boy was suddenly exposed to the kind of overwhelming adulation even a Roman emperor would have envied. Everything came too easily; the Cadillacs, the women, the sycophants. Soon, there was nothing left to achieve. He was omnipotent. He should have felt glorious, but he didn’t. Self destruction was the only option open to him.

Curiously, it works out better the other way round. Old time aristocrats who have lost their estates have become fairly common during the past hundred years. But they seem to cope with it much better. It often seems ludicrous and a bit pathetic, of course: the keeping up of appearances; the genteel behavior; the veneer of aristocracy, without the funds to support it. But it enables them to retain their sanity; to fortify them against rash excesses. Like I said, breeding tells.