THE GREATS

My knapsack is my E.V.A. pack... stands for Extra Vehicular Activity. In it at any given time is a book that I have out on loan from the Toronto Public Library. The one I am carrying around at the moment is The Great One - The Life and Legend of Jackie Gleason. Yes, I know, I wrote about this on my posting of December 17th, THE GREAT ONE, and had to renew the book and extend the deadline just so I could finish her up.

I do not know what took so long for me to finish the book. Once I did make a concerted effort to read The Great One, it proved to be one of those "page turners". As Gleason worked in the so-called Golden Age of Television there was much information of interest to this enthusiast. There is no need for a book review here other than relating the fact that the book is a sobering treatise on a talented but cursedly unhappy man.

Gleason had fame, but it wasn't good enough. As a reader you are convinced, by sheer repetition in the stories told of the man, stories told over years, decades, the Great One was just not happy. I had much the same feeling about Lucille Ball when I read the outstanding biography, Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz . These comedic talents did not seem to share in many pleasures in life. Perhaps it would be best explained as a quest to find happiness that never really came. The two were forever miserable... well, almost forever.

That is the impression this reader took away from the above books. Maybe the endless quest for any semblance of regular happiness was in itself doomed from the start; as they, Gleason and Ball, were natural and very animated comedians. And purely suited for entertaining the masses through the technology of television in its most exploratory and experimental days. But where do you go from there? More than likely down hill. Back in the days when Gleason and Ball would capture audience sizes that would put today's 'hits' to shame (where 15 million viewers makes a show a hit now; years ago that all but ensured a show would get cancelled) and you could not top that. You just looked down at the long playground slide -- like the one in the 1964 feature movie, The Longships (starring Richard Widmark); the one which consists of a blade... more than slide.

Page after page I thought "just what is your beeping problem?... Mr. Gleason and Ms. Ball".

The other strong and sobering truth about those who explode onto the scene with the attached line, often perpetrated by the press and overly eager press agents, "an overnight success!", is that in actuality they were artists who had been long learning the ropes; plying their trades; earning their dues, until...

Everything came together for them. They had in fact "worked a lifetime" before making it big. Perhaps everything after was some sort of compensation.

Payback time. Of sorts.

All those years of neuroses churning, circulating, and tumbling like a lottery ball, exploded when fame and complimenting wealth eventually reared their ugly heads -- allowing indulgence.