Muammar Gaddafi: Condi’s #1 Fan Bites the Dust

Well, the world is now rid of another brutal dictator. The demise of Muammar Gaddafi (or Kadafi or Qaddafi -- take your pick) is not something I feel the need to mourn. But I can reflect on what goes through the minds of powerful guys with too much time on their hands. In the case of Gaddafi, the world has just learned that he filled a well-stuffed scrapbook with scores of photos of his political fave: Condoleezza Rice. Which reminded me, of course, of passionate movie fans, then and now.

I just recently learned that the Library of Congress’s film and TV reading room collects the occasional fan scrapbook, like the beautiful one from the 1930s I browsed on my last trip to Washington DC. Its focus was on Greta Garbo, but other celebrities too were incorporated with loving care. Such scrapbooks tell us a good deal about how movie fans of all ages put their screen idols on a pedestal, especially in the days before 24/7 Internet gossip. My own childhood scrapbooks contained the occasional Hollywood reference: a clipping about the re-release of The Wizard of Oz, a souvenir program from a new Danny Kaye flick. But I never put together an album devoted solely to movie stars.

I did, however, make one special scrapbook. It dates from the days when I was about seven. As a student at Lester Horton Dance Theater, I was totally in love with lead dancer Carmen de Lavallade. Like the other little girls in my classes, I diligently clipped newspaper photos of the Horton troupe and pasted them into a homemade “Carmen book.” To further adorn my album, I solicited autographs, complete with personal messages, from the senior dancers. The ones addressed to me by pioneering choreographer Lester Horton (who died suddenly in 1953) and by the late Alvin Ailey are probably valuable today.

Less valuable, I’m sure, are the autographs I occasionally came home with after attending public events. I went to some big charity show at the Shrine Auditorium, and afterwards spotted two of the featured performers, Jerry Colonna and Marilyn Maxwell. She, in particular, meant nothing to me (once I figured out that -- despite the initials and the blonde hair -- she definitely wasn’t Marilyn Monroe). But a star was a star, and I’m sure those two scribbled names are still somewhere at my mother’s house, tucked away for safe keeping.

Then of course there were those special times when I was photographed with a celebrity. As a UCLA student journalist I went to a press luncheon, and someone took a photo of me with Harry Belafonte, my mother’s absolute hero. I was sent an 8x10 glossy to commemorate the event, and it has been up on Mom’s bulletin board ever since. (I myself occasionally got covered up by other memorabilia, but Belafonte’s smiling face has always had a place of honor.) Why do these photos and scrawled names mean so much? I think because it’s proof that you and I occupy the same world as the stars, that we breathe the same air, that for one brief moment our lives have intersected. Too bad for Muammar Gaddafi, though: he and Condi Rice are no longer on the same planet. If, of course, they ever were.