No longer washing anyone out of her hair, Mitzi Gaynor has gone to ‘join the film studio in the sky’. Yet she remains a presence as do the other stars of the past - Sinatra, Crosby, Noel Coward, Gene Kelly and more, all available on streaming services the world over, voices and images reaching across the years.
For those of my generation they were a backdrop to childhood, the people our parents admired. People I came to admire too, once teenage rebellion allowed me to see the older stars as having something to offer - I confess to being scornful of Sinatra as a teen, only coming to recognise his special talent as I matured. Now it seems that as the last of that era leave us it’s a reminder of what we have lost.
As her death was announced the papers were full of another death, someone responsible for many deaths in the conflicts of the age. Killers and war criminals are aways with us and generate much newsprint, or the electronic equivalent. For myself, I’d sooner remember the entertainers, the film and theatre stars, the musicians and the singers - including Mitzi.
death and destruction in the ether a song
Image courtesy of JazzGuy/flickr4jazz
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