What is it about those fabulous mid-fifties icons? The three whose names instantly come to mind—James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and the young Elvis—are as idiosyncratic as can be, unique, sans pareil, but remain evanescent. Stars from the previous decade were glamorous, talented, and they had heft. We love Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Bette Davis or Katherine Hepburn but we don’t feel sorry for them. But the three named above carry with them a fragility, a loneliness, an otherworldly lack of fulfillment that keeps them in our hearts and minds half a century later. Of course, around the bright lights of the three-star pantheon of the mid-fifties shone lesser individuals who, in their heyday, were as famous and as beloved, though relegated to obscurity by our short memories.