Johnson's body of production is amazing. Year after year he has been published, in many cases, admirable pieces of work (Modern Times, for example, is a tremendous construction).
Have the impression, nevertheless, that he is or was not the kind of dull and cloistered scholar at all but, on the contrary, one of those impressive characters with a hidden resort to stop the time and live days as two in one. He can read and write like crazy; give birth, support, contribute and be awarded by a score of acclaimed publications; raise four children and attend a bunch of grand kids; paint; and all looking like he is afresh, enjoying the life of a well-to-do bachelor. Me, on the contrary, get uptight about my pending chores and have the sense of wasting life 2 out of 3 times I put seriously myself to something.
In 1997, the beautiful Gloria Stuart came to the spotlight, after 50 years, playing the sweet old Rose in Titanic. She'd been gone since 1946 until 1982, and made only 3 unnoticed appearances until she jumped secondly to stardom. One year after, in 1998, she publicized in Daily Express her extra-marital affair with Johnson, apparently highly erotic and sexual, over more than a decade. (Annoying enough, I would not spend one more second on the Internet seeking the traces of the time when such relationship took place. If you do, please, let me know, will be most valuable).
My question is: why? Why did Gloria, who was 88 years old at the time, do such thing? (She just recently passed away, in 2010).
Remarkable is the fact that Paul Johnson was 18 years Gloria's junior, which accounts for the level of self-confidence and ambition this Englishman from Manchester had. He recalled the episode in an interview last year for The Telegraph by paraphrasing Shakespeare's verses in The Tempest: "the dark backward and abysm of [the past]".
... A storyteller of characters' life and history makes himself history and becomes a character...
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
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