Glitz, Glamour and Grief

The internet, television, social as well as print media often portray a picture of glitz and glamour regarding the lives of the rich and famous. In gratifying an audience's insatiable thirst for news, they seem driven as much by financial reward as by objectivity. This is evident in attention-grabbing headlines as well as salacious images and reporting. We are, as a result, sometimes presented with a somewhat distorted perspective of the truth. This brief account takes a sober look, not without a touch of irony, at several, mostly past, celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe, whose lives have been marked not only by success, but also inner pain and sorrow-lending credence to the saying that "all that glitters is not gold". The account ends by focusing on how the careers of many artistes are brought to an untimely end by ill health the true nature of which is poorly understood but which nevertheless appears to be the inevitable price for outstanding talent.