Myra-Breckinridge-Gore-Vidal

is like the American flag without its stars. No doubt about it,an era has indeed ended and I am its chronicler. Farewellthe classic films, hail the television commercial! Yet nothinghuman that is great can entirely end. It is merelytransmuted--in the way that the wharf where JeanetteMacDonald arrived in New Orleans (Naughty Marietta,1935) has been used over and over again for a hundredother films even though it will always remain, to those whohave a sense of history, Jeanette's wharf. Speaking ofhistory, there was something curiously godlike aboutNelson Eddy's recent death before a nightclub audience atMiami. In the middle of a song, he suddenly forgot thewords. And so, in that plangent baritone which long agoearned him a permanent place in the pantheon ofsuperstars, he turned to his accompanist and said, "Play'Dardanella,' and maybe I'll remember the words." Then hecollapsed and died. Play "Dardanella"! Play on! In anycase, one must be thankful for those strips of celluloidwhich still endure to remind us that once there were godsand goddesses in our midst and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer(where I now sit) preserved their shadows for all time!Could the actual Christ have possessed a fraction of theradiance and the mystery of H. B. Warner in the first King ofKings or revealed, even on the cross, so much as ashadow of the moonstruck Nemi-agony of Jeffrey Hunter inthe second King of Kings, that astonishing creation ofNicholas Ray?10