The Eddington Limit
“I am out with lanterns looking for myself.” Emily Dickinson
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington was a British astronomer and mathematician in the early 1900s. He proposed that the maximum amount of light a star can produce occurs when the force of the radiation going out equals the gravitational force pulling in. At that point, the luminosity of a star has reached its limit.
Stars shine vibrantly above, and they seem eternal, but they’re not. Stars have life spans just like everything, and sooner or later, the brightness of a star will diminish as gravity takes over.
In our world, celebrities of all types are called stars. Like the objects in the sky, the brilliance of these stars grows in intensity until it finds its limit. What happens next could be anything, but whatever it is, it will pale compared to the white-hot flame of stardom.
The actor who came to be known as Gig Young was born Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota in 1913. He was raised in Washington D.C. where he developed an early interest in acting.
When he finished high school, he drove to Hollywood with a friend to try his luck with the movies. After obtaining a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse, he was signed to a supporting actor contract by Warner Brothers.
In 1942, he was given a role in the film, “The Gay Sisters,” where he played a character named Gig Young. On preview cards, audiences highly praised the actor “Gig Young,” and the studio decided that it should be his professional name.
He became known as a likable second lead, usually playing the brother or best friend of the star. In a 1966 interview he said, “Whenever you play a second lead and lose the girl you have to make your part interesting.”
In 1951, Young played an alcoholic in “Come Fill the Cup,” and for his performance he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
He lost, and he would later tell gossip columnist Louella Parsons, “So many people who have been nominated for an Oscar have had bad luck afterwards.”
Through appearances on film, television, and Broadway, Young cultivated the personality of a charming, sophisticated, slightly boozy intellectual who could deliver a sardonic line if one was called for.
After playing such a character in 1958’s “Teacher’s Pet,” Young received his second Oscar nomination.
But while this was going on, Young was suffering from serious mental issues. Despite his congeniality on set, his third wife, actress Elizabeth Montgomery, described him as having an “internal loneliness.”
Ex lover Harriette Vine Douglas said, “He did everything to keep his mind off his own emptiness. He could win an Oscar and two weeks later feel as if he were a total failure.”
In 1969 he was cast in Sydney Pollack’s “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?” Young played Rocky, the inebriated, sadistic emcee of an exhausting depression era dance marathon where desperate people competed for a cash prize.
For his part, Young finally received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. According to his fourth wife, Elaine Williams, “What he was aching for as he walked up to accept his Oscar was a role in his own movie – one that they could finally call a ‘Gig Young’ movie.”
But that didn’t happen. “For him,” Williams said, “the Oscar literally was the kiss of death. The end of the line.”
However, Young stated at the time that winning the Oscar was “the greatest moment of my life.”
The demon of Gig Young’s soul was alcohol. It cost him jobs. It cost him marriages. Always free with a drink, his addiction got worse over time. It fueled depression and melancholia and turned them into fear and paranoia.
Close friend Paul Steiner told the National Enquirer, “When big parts, great parts, didn’t roll in he started a sad descent into disaster.”
Cast in Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles,” he was fired on the first day after collapsing drunk on the set, and he was carried away by an ambulance with convulsions.
Isolated, cut off from success, his mood grew darker as he was surrounded by his own failures. As with the stars in the sky, his light dimmed until the gravity of his being caused his star to collapse on itself.
On September 27,1978, he married his fifth wife, 31-year-old German magazine editor Kim Shmidt. They moved into the Osborne Apartments building on West 57th Street in New York City. On the morning of October 19,1978, he taped an interview show and then went home.
Hours later, three weeks after their marriage, Gig Young and his new wife were found dead in their home after gunshots were heard by a building employee.
Young was discovered face down on the floor of his bedroom, a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver in his hand. His wife was found face down beside him.
When the police arrived, they concluded that Young had shot his wife in the back of the head, then shot himself in the mouth.
There was no suicide note. Young left a diary whose last entry was on September 27. It read “We got married today.”
Police were taken aback by three other guns found in the apartment, as well as 350 rounds of ammunition. After investigating, police decided that Young had acted on the spur of the moment and that his actions were not planned. The incident was ruled a murder-suicide. No motive was explained.
The Oscar he received for “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?” was lying at his feet. Gig Young was 64 years old.
O’Connell Driscoll
April 2024
oconnelldriscoll@gmail.com