Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 4, 1991 TAG: 9102020319
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY SHULINS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
For some of the most notable among us, it is an abrupt about-face at the peak of success. Suddenly, inexplicably, some of the best and the brightest have quit acting (Greta Garbo), quit composing (Jean Sibelius), quit publishing (J.D. Salinger and Harper Lee), and quit competing (Bjorn Borg and Bobby Fischer).
Those who relinquish the spotlight at the height of fame often leave an indelible mark on the audiences they abandon. Like spurned suitors, their fans sift through a residue of unauthorized biographies, memoirs and letters in search of clues.
There's no shortage of possibilities, from exhaustion and disappointment to disillusionment and burnout, to explain these untimely retirements. Family pressures, personal tragedies and failed love affairs can all play a role. Perhaps the ideas simply stopped coming - or were eclipsed by desires for a more normal life. Since withdrawing means never having to give another interview, biographers can only speculate.
For a number of highly successful men and women, however, the answer may be none of the above. For all its allure, success can be fraught with anxiety. It's one thing to get to the top. Staying there is something else.
Whatever the reasons, those who turn their backs on success often find themselves trapped in a paradox of their own making. Like Greta Garbo and J.D. Salinger, they become more celebrated than ever - famous for not wanting to be famous.
"He said he wanted neither fame nor money and by this means he'd contrived to get extra supplies of both - much more of both, in fact, than might have come his way if he'd stayed in the marketplace along with everybody else," biographer Ian Hamilton writes in "In Search of J.D. Salinger."
Others may escape the relentless demands of celebrity only to live out their lives under a cloud of unfulfilled expectations.
"Snowed under by fan letters, Harper Lee is stealing time from a new novel-in-progress to write careful answers," Newsweek reported in 1961. The world still awaits word from the woman who wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird" and has published nothing else in the 30 years since.
What became of her novel-in-progress? We may never know. Like Boo Radley, the small-town recluse at the heart of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lee declines to come out and speak.
Why did Salinger, author of "The Catcher in the Rye," abandon the marketplace for the woods of New Hampshire? His last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1965. Why did Garbo forsake Hollywood for anonymity on New York's Upper East Side, hiding her famous face from the public for nearly half a century?
No answers have been forthcoming. Not from Garbo, who died last year at age 84, her privacy still intact. Not from Salinger, who briefly emerged from self-imposed exile in 1987 to block Hamilton from quoting from his private letters - letters that may have shed new light on his behavior.
In lieu of disclosure, the words of Holden Caulfield, troubled adolescent hero of "The Catcher in the Rye," may be food for thought: "I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things."
Even the smallest failure can prove crushing to an ego that's fragile, says clinical psychologist Marvin Aronson, senior supervisor at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York.
"A lot of successful people can have a number of little failures that really wound them deeply. To an outsider, this often seems puzzling. They can't imagine that such little failures in the midst of all that success could have so much impact."
Was it significant that Garbo's last movie was a flop? No one knows. The failure of "Two-Faced Woman" in 1941 is often cited as a possible factor in her decision to retire.
But there's also this: "The only image we have of Greta Garbo is of a beautiful actress," says Daniela Alloro, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles. "Perhaps some people give up at the peak of success to freeze in time their own image - forever young, forever beautiful."
When it comes to achievement, Aronson says, "Many people have some kind of internal quota, though they're often not aware of it. When they reach their quota, they stop." How much success one can handle often is closely linked to the relative success of parents or siblings, he says.
To abort a career already abbreviated by aging's physical side effects seems curious, although a number of outstanding athletes have done it.
World heavyweight champion Gene Tunney called it quits at 31, having successfully defended his title just three times. Heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano was one year older when he retired close to 30 years later, having won all 49 career fights.
With today's seven-figure purses, fewer successful athletes may be inclined to throw in the towel while still in their prime.
One who did was Bjorn Borg, who, having finally lost at Wimbledon after five straight championships then retired from tennis at 26, his talent - if not his enthusiasm - still intact. He wanted, he said, to have fun.
"It must be one heck of a thing to have just cleared up after one's 26th birthday party and to realize . . . the dramatic part of one's life is over with about half a century left to kill time," the Manchester Guardian Weekly commented last year, after Borg was hospitalized for a drug overdose.
Apparently Borg agreed. Beset by emotional and financial problems, he changed his mind about retirement, and announced a comeback, to begin at the Italian Open this spring.
There's been no such change of heart for Bobby Fischer, who overwhelmed Boris Spassky in 1972 to become the first American to win a world chess championship, but who hasn't played in public since.
In today's exploitive climate, the constant invasion of privacy that accompanies fame can be reason enough to retreat.
"You cannot control fame. You cannot boss it around. You can't get mad at it and hit it with a hammer. You're saddled with it," says actor Bruce Willis in the January issue of Vanity Fair.
"I used to wonder why [actor James] Cagney quit at the height of his career. I used to wonder why so many people quit at the height of their career." Now at his own peak, Willis intimates that his days in front of the camera may be numbered.
The supermarket press, paparazzi and other trappings of 20th century celebrity that top Willis' list of irritants weren't a problem for composer Gioacchino Rossini, whose works included the 1815 masterpiece "The Barber of Seville." Rossini lived to be 76 but produced virtually no new music after retiring at age 37 to devote himself to travel, romance and lavish entertaining.
Nor did popping flashbulbs cloud the vision of 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who published his first work, to critical acclaim, at 15. Rimbaud abandoned his writing career five years later, and spent the rest of his life as a soldier, wanderer and trader, dying at 37.
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius produced seven symphonies and 16 works for the theater in a flurry of creative energy that ended abruptly at age 61. For the next 30 years, until his death in 1957, the world awaited an eighth symphony. Biographers have speculated that soaring popularity and lofty claims by musicologists may have had an inhibiting effect on the highly self-critical composer.
"Most people on their way up are invulnerable," says Ken Reinhard, a clinical psychologist who runs an anxiety disorders clinic at FDR Veterans Administration Hospital in Montrose, N.Y. "They can afford to be aggressive, to take risks, because they have nothing to lose. They believe that the worst they can do is fail.
"That's OK until you never fail. Then you become afraid of failure. Once you're at the top and the spotlight is on you to stay there, you're suddenly very vulnerable. All you can do is fail."
An artist who produces a masterpiece can be stymied by its perfection, Reinhard says. "If you wrote one of the five best books ever written, the chances of writing anything comparable is minute. You might be 25 years old, but your life, for the most part, is over." Rather than rack up a series of failures in a futile attempt to surpass it, he says, some people stop trying.
At first glance, this seems odd. After all, perseverance and success are deeply entwined in the American psyche. Winners never quit and quitters never win, we admonish our children. If at first you don't succeed, try again.
What could be better than success, we reason, unless it is more success?
That's not necessarily so.
Exceeding one's success quota can carry a high price, payable in loneliness, guilt or both. "A lot of people were brought up with the idea that they should not try to be too ambitious, too fancy, to have a swelled head," Aronson says. "If you fly too high, you may crash."
You also may sacrifice the good will of others. Just ask Donald Trump, or the New York Yankees. As talk show host Tom Snyder once said, "America was built on the fact that if you get your head and shoulders above the crowd, someone's there to shoot you down."
"There's tremendous power in watching somebody fall," Reinhard says. "For those of us who can't reach the brass ring, it helps to know that even people who do don't hold on very long."
One doesn't have to be a Sibelius to suffer success anxiety. Executives who've had one good year may find themselves unable to pick up the phone the next. People who win promotions frequently worry about living up to them.
It's lonely, not just at the top, but at all segments of society for people who exceed their quotas. "A guy with a $10 raise more than his co-workers can have problems," Aronson says.
Multiply that by millions, subtract privacy, add an army of fans and it's easy to see why "the novelty has really worn thin" for Bruce Willis.
Retirement, on the other hand, "has an exceedingly beneficial influence on our peace of mind," philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote, "and this is mainly because we thus escape having to live constantly in the sight of others, and pay everlasting regard to their casual opinions."
Daniela Alloro, the psychogolist, agrees. "It takes an exceptionally strong person to retain his own individuality within the spotlight, especially today," she says. "The star has to play whatever the audience wants him or her to be, and not just for two hours of a movie. He has to create a false self, to be judged within the small details.
"Imagine, to be constantly under the scrutiny of others. Maybe the surprising thing is not that people walk away but that they stay."
by CNB