It was a question that would occupy biographers, novelists and the public to the end of the century and beyond. It would spawn theories of conspiracies and cover-ups that would range from Hollywood to Washington. The imagery of Marilyn Monroe would survive to be reinvented and recycled in ways none of us could have imagined in 1962. Yet after 15 years, we might have learned something about that process when the news of Elvis Presley arrived in August 16 1977. I was on vacation that month. If the death of Marilyn seemed sensational, it was sedate compared to Presley's passing, which became a story of crowd control. Now, a good obituary invokes nostalgia in some, curiosity in others and no one could manage both better than my colleague Charles Kuralt, but he couldn't peer into the future and see all the peculiar ways in which Presley mania would persist. Almost two months later to that day, the top story on the CBS Evening News was the death of Bing Crosby. Now, he, Sinatra, Reagan, Churchill and others whose obituaries have been written all lived long enough to see their debts to fame settled.Monroe and Presley did not. They were given the riches, but they were cut off before their time. I don't know if they were unhappy, but for their public, it was easy to imagine their youth and self-destruction as a kind of romantic, self-inflicted martyrdom. To many, that aura is at least as fascinating as the person, or the work, but it only materializes after the obituaries have been filed, as life goes on, even in death.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It was a question that would occupy biographers, novelists and the public to the end of the century and beyond. It would spawn theories of conspiracies and cover-ups that would range from Hollywood to Washington. The imagery of Marilyn Monroe would survive to be reinvented and recycled in ways none of us could have imagined in 1962. Yet after 15 years, we might have learned something about that process when the news of Elvis Presley arrived in August 16 1977. I was on vacation that month. If the death of Marilyn seemed sensational, it was sedate compared to Presley's passing, which became a story of crowd control. Now, a good obituary invokes nostalgia in some, curiosity in others and no one could manage both better than my colleague Charles Kuralt, but he couldn't peer into the future and see all the peculiar ways in which Presley mania would persist. Almost two months later to that day, the top story on the CBS Evening News was the death of Bing Crosby. Now, he, Sinatra, Reagan, Churchill and others whose obituaries have been written all lived long enough to see their debts to fame settled.Monroe and Presley did not. They were given the riches, but they were cut off before their time. I don't know if they were unhappy, but for their public, it was easy to imagine their youth and self-destruction as a kind of romantic, self-inflicted martyrdom. To many, that aura is at least as fascinating as the person, or the work, but it only materializes after the obituaries have been filed, as life goes on, even in death." in the context of "Walter Cronkite for NPR News in an article entitled "The Art of the obituary" , and as published in their April 20, 2006 edition." to mean that wisdom is timeless.