The Chris Moeller Archives

An early obit?

One of my coddled old videotapes is a self-recorded ABC special honoring Sammy Davis Jr.'s 60 years in show business in 1990. Sammy was only 64 when the benefit for the United Negro College Fund was organized, which tells you, among many other things, just how early Davis' career began when he joined his father and uncle as "the Will Maston Trio" on the old black vaudeville, or "Chitlin,'" circuit. The real goal of the televised tribute was to honor Sammy Davis' entire life, as he was coping by then with the late stages of throat cancer. He was no longer capable of speaking above a whisper, and he wore an ascot around his neck to hide the rather gruesome effects of his illness. He would be dead within four months.

The entertainment revue was a "who's who" collection of some of the biggest names of the 20th century, and it was absolutely the greatest gathering of 1980s stars that ever assembled in one venue during the era. The old-guard names, appearing live or in archived film, have almost all past-- Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Milton Berle, even some of the younger performers like Gregory Hines and Richard Pryor, but the fates of these stars are relatively envious compared with some of the younger stars who performed or paid tribute to Davis that night. Watching the special now, I realize, first and foremost, how much African-American culture influenced the childhoods of white kids during the 1980s, but also how the culture exacts a heavy toll on the black community, and how difficult it can be at times to see clearly into the lives of seemingly successful people.

When I give you the list of participants that night, I suspect you'll be hard pressed to decide which is the most tragic figure-- Mike Tyson, or perhaps Michael Jackson? You could make a strong case for either. Certainly, Bill Cosby's walked through hell on earth, but he remains a source of pride and strength to all people, and likewise, Magic Johnson and Stevie Wonder. But my choice for the most devastating case of personal and professional decline, perhaps socially-, but undoubtedly self-induced, is Whitney Houston.

Her voice was angelic. When she sang that she "want(ed) to dance with somebody," I dreamed that I would one day be her partner. When she was "saving all (her) love," a tiny part of me believed that she was saving it for our blessed wedding night. When she delivered the National Anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl, I came the closest I ever had, or ever would again, to enlisting in the Marines. And when she appeared on a solo television concert in the mid-1990s, wearing a floor-length, form-fitting gown held up by the thinnest of spaghetti straps, and the dress hung from her shoulders and sweaty bosom like a gift waiting to be unwrapped on Christmas morning, it was one of two times in my life that I thought God might have been speaking to me. (I'll share the other with you in the next day or two.) I'll paraphrase God: "This is why you should be grateful you're a man."

This discussion is all just an end-around to provide you with a link to a much more coherent article about Houston's fall from the top of the music world. It would be hard for me to ever accept that it wasn't her marriage to Bobby Brown that proved to be her unraveling. In retrospect, the coupling looks like one of those Kevin Federline situations in which the vulnerable starlet chases the puddle-deep poseur just to piss off her business managers. "Where do broken hearts go," indeed? At least I still have Lisa Bonet.

posted by CM @ 10:49 AM