OPINION:
“I’m gonna live forever, baby, remember my name” — (from “Fame”)
The death at age 54 of Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis, got me thinking again about the two-edged sword that is fame.
Poems, books and even movies have addressed fame, how some people even lust after it and how it seems to ruin more lives than it helps. Once you have attained fame, you can never live as normal people do. Strangers want to approach you, some with good motives, some bad. The famous need security, locked gates, unlisted phone numbers and people around to protect them and feed their egos. Such was the fate of country boy Elvis, as depicted in the current biopic about him. And now it has become the fate of his only child.
Lisa Marie never asked to be famous. It was thrust upon her. True, she had a short career as a singer, but she was always known first as Elvis’ daughter. As with Frank Sinatra Jr., lineage can be a curse.
Neither Lisa Marie nor her father handled fame well. She was married four times, including to singer Michael Jackson. Her son killed himself. She struggled with drugs, as did Elvis, who died of an overdose. Elvis’ relationships with other women were legion. According to legal documents obtained by The Blast, Lisa Marie was spending “$92 thousand a month before her death and owed the IRS $1 million after squandering the $100 million fortune she inherited from Elvis.”
People handle fame in different ways. Singer Pat Boone, who was born in 1934, seven months before Elvis, also had a head start on the King, recording three hit songs before Elvis scored his first.
Mr. Boone has told me and others that Elvis was a Beverly Hills neighbor in his moviemaking days. Mr. Boone says Elvis would often walk one block to his home and seemed envious of Mr. Boone’s family. When Mr. Boone’s four girls heard Elvis was there, they sometimes jumped from the backyard swimming pool and sat on his lap. Mr. Boone said he felt Elvis wished for a family of his own. He eventually had one with his wife, Priscilla, and their daughter, but fame’s dark side got to him. His wife and daughter were also fame’s targets and eventually became its victims.
Mr. Boone has said he thinks Elvis might have lived to a ripe old age, instead of dying at 42, had Tom Parker not been his manager and driven him as he did for the half of Elvis’ profits that Parker frittered away on his gambling addiction.
Mr. Boone’s years of fame included movies and a network TV show on NBC, and he handled his fame much better. There were no “other women” and no drugs. He credits his strong Christian faith and loving wife for protecting him, but Mr. Boone never indulged himself in his lower nature. He wasn’t surrounded by “yes men” who told him what he wanted to hear.
Some mocked Mr. Boone’s clean-cut appearance, but given how he turned out (he is now 88, as Elvis would have been had he lived), his lifestyle looks better every day.
Everyone wants to believe his or her life matters. Some find meaning in externals that can lead to dark and deadly places. Others find it in the spiritual realm, which has led many to light and a happy place.
Another song conveys a lesson to all who seek fame as an end in and of itself: “Fame, if you win it, comes and goes in a minute. Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?”
Lisa Marie’s father loved her so far as he seemingly understood love. He just never appeared to grasp its full meaning. This was his tragedy. Because of the fame he bequeathed to her, it became Lisa Marie’s tragedy as well.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States” (HarperCollins/Zondervan).
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