Posted by:
Tevai
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)
Date: August 29, 2018 06:32PM
Yes. A far too large percentage of people who (in retrospect) become One Hit Wonders, or are previously unknown stars of TV shows that become, for a moment in time, the talk of nation, or of the world.
This is especially true if the person has grown up in a family who has not dealt with the business/economic part of being a celebrity, or they grew up in an a non-show business environment (meaning: at school, or in their communities--somewhere where they have the opportunity to observe others in this position, before it happens to them personally).
The sensible people (Yale Summers at the top of the list; he inadvertently taught me a LOT) live "small" (comparatively speaking), get the best, most sensible, and most honest business/financial manager(s) they can afford, and begin immediately saving and investing wisely (particularly in real estate, and real estate-based business ventures like strip malls).
If necessary, they "borrow" upscale mansions for photo shoots (Judy Garland used to do this all the time), and the expensive automobiles you see them driving in photos are either leased for awhile, or are sensible investments in themselves. (Often, at least in some specific areas, a properly-chosen residence can be an extremely wise lifetime investment all by itself. For example: a house on a piece of property which sold for less than ten thousand dollars once upon a time, but is now worth somewhere around $10,000,000 [this is accurate: I just Googled the current, local, property quotes]. A married couple I know did exactly this over the course of my life from adolescence to now.)
Then there are the "others" ;) , who think the fame and the money and the adulation will never end, and they buy gee-gaws and junk for thousands of dollars, eat in the most expensive restaurants whether THEY are paying the bill or not (in other words: they are not being comped by the restaurant, and are not being paid for via someone else's expense account), and assume they are the reincarnation of Midas.
When I worked for the fan magazines, we worked on the assumption that our cover photo subjects would have an 18-month run, from beginning to end. Sometimes it turned out to be less, and sometimes it was a lot more (a few people stretched it to several years, some to literal decades, and the creative products of some of them are still making money today).
On average and in general though, 18 months was what MOST of them could realistically expect as the active period of their "show business career."
If they were second-tier wise, they at least invested in a house and a piece of property that would keep expanding in value for the rest of their lives--plus: in one way or another, a regular income from SOMETHING (in some cases royalties which could be depended on in the decades going forward, perhaps payments from guild pension plans, or monthly/annual rent receipts from real estate-based investments). [A few, Ron Howard as a shining example, were able to switch over to behind-the-cameras work, and continue to do brilliantly well in their creative accomplishments "forever."]
Most of them did not do this.
Some of the later coverage of people I used to write about is, and continues to be, very sad for me personally to read or to hear about. There are individual people I used to know fairly well (in a business sense) who I physically wince about when I read about them today, in some kind of retrospective article (or someone telling tales that would be much better if they were never told).
So yeah, I know of many people (people I once knew personally) who received "windfalls" of various kinds, and most of them went off the rails. The sensible ones are very much in a minority (and you can trace this back through Hollywood history to the silent era, and I think the same general stats would hold).
It is extremely hard to NOT get caught up in the overwhelming momentum of an "18-month wonder" experience (no matter how many years that particular situation may actually last before it does, eventually, fizzle out). How ANY of these celebrities keep their common sense perspective is amazing to me.
Everyone who makes it to the "stable side of the street" I respect tremendously (even if my respect to them goes out only on this particular level, because a few of them, as personal connections of one kind or another, are definitely not pleasant people for anyone to have in their lives ;) ).
Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2018 04:57PM by Tevai.