The Best Years of Their Lives

 I freely admit this blog often highlights once-famous movie and TV stars who are now on the fast track to obscurity, but that's my whole point. Fame is ephemeral. The household name of today is the senile babble of tomorrow. But if one of those once-famous, now-obscure people had a certain amount of talent, as occasionally is the case, then I want to remind everybody of that before the individual is inevitably overcome by anonymity. As Mrs. Loman once said in a different context (talent itself being somewhat ephemeral), attention must be paid! What's got my attention today, however, is an instance of being on the fast track to obscurity and then jumping the rails in an unexpected way. Google Estelle Getty, who played Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls, then click on "Images", and you will get a bunch of pictures of, not surprisingly, Estelle Getty. Or maybe it is a bit of surprise. After all, she died 11 years ago, and it's been 27 years since the last original episode of The Golden Girls aired. Yet as of this writing, anonymity is still a ways away for her. Sophia lives! But it doesn't stop there. Of late, if you google Getty's name and click on "Images", you're likely to get at least one picture of the once-famous, now-obscure film actress Myrna Loy. It seems someone on the Internet, either knowingly or unknowingly, is trying to pass off a picture of Loy as being that of a young Estelle Getty. If you have any inkling at all as to what Myrna Loy once looked like--she died in 1993--see if you can find her in the above image (which I snagged from elsewhere on the Information Highway.) It will be fun. Kind of like playing Where's Waldo?