Stardust

The death of Elizabeth Taylor on Wednesday arguably leaves only one of the great Hollywood Legends left alive. I count an actor in this category if they were starring in movies from the 30's to the 50's, the heyday of the big Hollywood studios.

This set me thinking how old I really am because when I was starting out at Drama school in the early seventies, most of them were still around. Some of them were still making movies, albeit in most cases of dubious quality.

Bogart, Cooper and Gable has of course gone to comparatively early deaths but I saw James Stewart in a terrible disaster film with Jack Lemmon, who went on to make a great one with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas called The China Syndrome based on the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and he continued to make films into the nineties. My all time favourite actor James Cagney came out of a twenty year retirement in 1982 to make Ragtime with his old pal Pat O'Brien. Cary Grant didn't make films but was active in business and laterly took to touring a one man show. Gene Kelly directed his last film Xanadu in the early eighties. Orson Welles played the vile Louis XVIII in Waterloo opposite the King of OTT Rod Steiger who was still active into the 21st Century.

I personally had the great pleasure of meeting James Mason in 1983 who was strangely dressed from head to foot in denim. Glenn Ford turned up as Superman's earthly father while Tony Curtis had turned to painting. John Houseman and Don Ameche were fabulous as the amoral old bankers in Trading Places and Ameche went on to star in the Cocoon films. John Wayne didn't win his Oscar until 1970 for True Grit. Robert Mitchum got to appear in Scorcese's remake of his earlier Cape Fear and Charlton Heston even appeared in Friends and if that isn't bestriding the generations I don't know what is.

The story of the female Hollywood greats is altogether different. They tended to hang up their wigs and gowns in their thirties. I guess that particular brand of tinsel town glamour did not lend itself to ageing. Apart from Marilyn Munroe as a famously early casualty, (she died at 36), there were Marlene Deitrich and Greta Garbo vying for the role of most famous recluse. Joan Crawford lived till 1977 and she had been a star of the silent era. Wonderful starlets of the great MGM musicals like Ginger Rogers and Eleanor Powell all lived till ripe old ages and my favourite actress Bette Davis proved to be one of the exceptions by continuing to perform and make regular appearances till she was 80 as did Katherine Hepburn who turned up in On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda.

So who is left. Well there was a clue earlier when I mentioned his son making an appearance with Henry Fonda's daughter in The China Syndrome. It is of course the mighty and magnificent Kirk Douglas who was ninety four last December.

Oh damn. I forgot Ernest Borgnine! But let's face it, he wasn't Spartacus.