[MAX]
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?
[sound of NORMA sobbing]