Beloved and Notorious: A Theory of American Stardom, with Special Reference to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra

Gilbert features the dichotomy of American cultural icons furnishing many patterned instances looking to the most indigenous art forms. Among others, their relations are marked by profound differences in image and attitude. Bing Crosby and Bill Cosby both established a relaxed, easygoing persona whose familiarity and relative unchangingness made them islands of stability in tumultuous times. By contrast, Frank Sinatra and Richard Pryor are each associated with personal struggle, scandal, crime, and other forms of notoriety. Both had careers marked by crises, disasters, renewals, and reinventions; more important, both men openly dramatized those upheavals in their own work. Finally, where Crosby and Cosby were generally happy to assume the role of entertainers while Sinatra and Pryor actively sought the mantle of artists and have often been described with words like "genius" and "poet."