Back in the late 1970s, just after Howard Hughes passed, people would regularly come forward saying with fantastic stories detailing how they met the reclusive billionaire, with him promising them part–or all–of his fortune.
Most, if not all of those stories turned out to be fabrications. As I read the various (and often conflicting) stories on Michael Jackson’s final days (with one report say he was too feeble to rehearse for his upcoming London concerts, while others saying that he was performing in practice at the same level as he had danced in his heyday), I suspect we’ll be subject to the same sort of storytelling about the late King of Pop.
It seems the eccentricity of certain celebrity icons inspires stories even more outlandish than the actual facts of their lives.
CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE: This idea came to me the other day when reading Jim Geraghty’s, Michael Jackson and the Birth of Celebrity Culture.