Peter Sinclair: Legends live on in cyberspace

By PETER SINCLAIR

One by one, the legends take their final curtain calls, accept their last bouquets.

The latest was Loretta Young, screen queen of the 40s and 50s, though she first took her place among the icons amid the flickering, silent shadows of 1927.

Her appeal was enduring, her success universal. She was showered with awards and kissed by the most handsome men of the 20th century, from Ronald Colman and Charles Boyer to Clark Gable. He was rumoured to be the father of her only daughter, although this was never confirmed by the star — it was an age when reticence still had some currency.

Both she and they have more than earned their places on the Classic Dames and Classic Hunks webrings.

The greatest legend of all, his pedestal towering above mere stardom, was honoured in cyberspace on the 23rd anniversary of his death on August 16 at www.elvispresley.com, "a website fit for The King."

In a first for the net, the Estate of Elvis Presley webcast part of the candlelight vigil held annually at Graceland which attracts upwards of 50,000 people.

VigilCast 2000 streamed live from www.broadcast.com — an exercise in global mourning on almost the same scale as the web's response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Candles still flicker for Elvis at shrines across the web, including that extraordinary exercise in Rock Gothic which is Graceland itself, about as far as you could possibly get from the little shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he was born. It looks like a bach at Piha.

Studying it, as I noted in an article on the King a few years ago, "you can't help wondering how it all happened, how this decent little redneck truck-driver was sucked into such a firestorm of flashbulbs and fame, such oceans of cash and temptation, how he's come to be so worshipped that they still erect cybertemples to exalt the chemical-crazed remnants of such a Sad Ol' Boy" (see Fat Elvis).

But there's a point where fame tilts into satire, and the greater the fame the broader the farce. In this case you'll find it on the web at Elimpersonators where worshipping at Elvis' flame involves actually being him. This freaky bunch of doppelgangers, as Rick Marion, president of the Elvis Presley International Impersonators Association, notes, "all look a little like Elvis, but none of us looks like each other."

Here you may wish to make a sentimental investment in a deck of playing-cards featuring photographs of 54 different Elvis impersonators in full colour ($US10 from Kings Kards). Each suit represents a different type of costume — Hearts: jewelled jumpsuits; Spades: black leather; Diamonds: fringed jumpsuits; Clubs: 50s jackets...

I know, I found it hard to believe at first, too. All the queens are real women, by the way, for the desire to be Elvis knows no gender.

Elvis is still negotiable, too, at checksinthemail.com — why not pay your ISP with a respectful rock'n'roll cheque?

Which legend will provide the next sad headlines, mortal after all? Your guess is as good as anyone else's at the various celebrity Dead Pools to be found on the web, where the cheerfully insensitive can win cash predicting the departures of the rich and feeble.

For when you're a star, even death has a dollar value.

Links:

Loretta Young

Classic Dames and Classic Hunks

www.elvispresley.com

www.broadcast.com

Graceland

Tupelo, Mississippi

Fat Elvis

Elimpersonators

Checksinthemail.com

Dead Pools


petersinclair@email.com