The Greatest Star of All

Once, you won't remember

If you said Hollywood

Hers was the face you'd think of

Her face on every billboard

In just a single week

She'd get ten thousand letters

Men would offer

Fortunes for a bloom from her corsage

Or a few strands of her hair

Today, she's half-forgotten

But it's the pictures that got small

She is the greatest star of all

Then, you can't imagine

How fans would sacrifice themselves to touch her shadow

There was a maharajah

Who hanged himself with one of her discarded stockings

She's immortal

Caught inside that flickering light beam

Is a youth which cannot fade

Madame's a living legend

I've seen so many idols fall

She is the greatest star of all[JOE, voiceover]

When he'd gone, I stood looking out the window for a while. There was the ghost of a tennis court with faded markings and a sagging net.

There was an empty pool where

Clara Bow

and

Fatty Arbuckle

must have swum 10,000 midnights ago. And then there was something else: the chimp's last rites, as if she were laying a child to rest. Was her life really as empty as that?