Viewed in more ruthless economic terms, these movie stars, athletes, artists, journalists and socialites were human commodities, if not quite manufactured for the purpose of tantalizing us with their escapades, at least seized upon and exploited for that purpose.īy the late 20's dozens of these celebrities had appeared on the national screen. Viewed as the first shared references in our mass culture, celebrities constituted a kind of American repertory company in which a Charles Lindbergh or a Mae West could always be counted upon to attract readers. The rise of mass media immediately generated a class of national celebrity - names and faces desperately needed to fill the maws of the new media and keep audiences interested. Twenty years from now it may be Madonna, Tom Cruise, Rush Limbaugh or, quite possibly, all three of them. Today it is Walter Winchell who is a cultural footnote. No matter how deeply one seems to have stuck in the national consciousness, time can always unstick him. But the lives of most celebrities, like that of Walter Winchell, are parables of perishability. Today, less than 25 years after his death, Winchell is one of a legion of celebrities who were once household names and then faded into oblivion - people like the playboy Mdivani brothers, the journalist Arthur Brisbane, the movie stars Tommy Meighan and Tom Mix, even the cracker-barrel wit Will Rogers, who is remembered now more as the protagonist of the Broadway musical "The Will Rogers Follies" than as one of America's top movie box-office attractions and leading political pundits.Ĭelebrities are hardly an endangered species there are more of them these days than ever before. He starred in movies, inspired songs, stirred controversies. His syndicated gossip column and weekly radio broadcast reached an estimated 50 million readers and listeners out of an adult population of roughly 75 million. It was a name that once would have instantly conjured the image of a bantam in a snap-brim gray fedora and summoned a voice, high and staccato, firing words like a tommy-gun.
THERE WAS a time when that name would have hit the ear with the same crisp report as Garbo, Cagney, Bogart or Presley.
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