“Glory is fleeting,” Napoleon is supposed to have said, “but Obscurity is forever.” Fame is a lot like glory in that respect. You can’t be too well-known if people don’t remember who you are.
Some time back, a younger person was asking who the Beatles were, and the explanation came back that it was Paul McCartney’s band before he joined Wings. (It wasn’t my answer…)
Ouch. I would have figured the Beatles as beyond forgetting. But what about their predecessors, popular singers like Eddie Cantor and Paul Anka? I’ll admit I can’t name even one Eddie Cantor song, and at the moment, I’m drawing a blank on Anka as well.
Elvis is remembered, I guess. I haven’t done any surveys. I was nervous about buying a Marilyn Monroe book collection for fear that no one remembers her anymore, and I’d be stuck with them. (I’ve pretty much sold them all.) Napoleon is supposed to have finished his Fleeting Glory saying with: “I choose obscurity.” Ironically, the French military leader maintains his fame more than two-hundred years later.
A research project had me going through the archives of Billboard magazine, a trade publication that has been in print for over a century. Most people have heard of the Billboard music charts, but the magazine actually reports on a myriad of entertainment fields. One of the covers from the 1940s caught my attention.
The slim fellow behind the microphone was so well known in his time, that he could be identified just by his initials – N.T.G. – sort of like presidents JFK and FDR.
Inside the magazine is an item serving as a caption to the front cover, and the final line reads: Nils Thor Granlund is one of the great showmen of our time.
And I bet you’ve never – ever – heard of him.
For those of us looking the article over from a distance of more than half a century, even the accomplishments attributed to the showman are obscure.
“It was NTG who conceived the elaborate movie premiere, with lights, news-cameras and personal appearances of stars. It was NTG who exploited and advertised the first full-length motion picture in this country. When radio began to gain a foothold it was NTG who brought Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor and Harry Richman to the listening public. He also presented radio’s first amateur program.”
The item goes on to point out that Granlund was born in Lapland and by age eighteen had already made his mark as a race car driver, an aviator, and press agent – then went to work for movie pioneer Marcus Loew.
“His greatest fame, of course, has been gained in the night club field,” claimed the Billboard writer. “The famed Paradise Restaurant in New York was also his creation.”
A lot of “fame” being thrown around there, but all these years later, his name, his restaurants, and his night club adventures are lost to memory. Granlund’s name was largely forgotten by the public at the time of his death, in a 1950s car accident. His was a rags to riches to rags story. Fame is fleeting. Obscurity is forever. When no one can even recall your name, it doesn’t matter how famous you once were.
And NTG was at the top of the heap in his time.
The Billboard item starts: “No history of show business could be complete without a long chapter devoted to the incomparable NTG, star-maker, pioneer, and precedent-setter extraordinary.”
Wow.
Maybe the most famous person you’ve never heard of.
Somebody ought to write a book about the guy!
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