greed is not good
by Burt Prelutsky
As a rule, I get my back up when some people start accusing other people of being greedy. Generally, all that really means is that some people are jealous of everybody who has more money than they do. As a result, these fools spend an inordinate amount of time resenting and bad-mouthing folks like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Steven Spielberg, Rupert Murdoch, and Sumner Redstone, for no other reason than they happen to be very rich.
For my part, I never begrudge what others have -- whether they’ve earned it by the sweat of their brow, through sheer brilliance, or simply because they were lucky enough to have wealthy ancestors. This isn’t to suggest I don’t recognize the existence of greed, but that it doesn’t make me angry or envious; rather, it saddens me.
Being a huge fan of Buster Keaton, for instance, how can I help but feel sorry that he didn’t set aside a few of his millions for a rainy day? I suppose that Keaton, when he was riding high and spending money like a fleet load of drunken sailors, simply assumed silent films would never give way to sound and that his own career would roll merrily along. He wasn’t the first person or the last to believe the gravy train would never pull into that final depot.
But poor judgment isn’t the same as greed. My idea of greed is best exemplified by two of the greatest humorists America has ever produced. The first of these was Mark Twain, the other was Preston Sturges.
Most people are aware of the former, but only a handful can identify the latter. Writer-director Sturges was a comet who blazed through the early 1940s, turning out such classic comedies as “The Great McGinty,” “Christmas in July,” “The Lady Eve,” “Sullivan’s Travels,” “The Palm Beach Story,” “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,” and “Hail the Conquering Hero.” An amazing career made all the more amazing because it was accomplished in a mere five year span.
Whether it would have continued if he’d stayed at Paramount we’ll never know. Instead, he was lured away by Howard Hughes and the promise of untold wealth, to be a partner at a new studio called California Pictures. The ink on the contract had hardly time to dry before the bizarre partnership dissolved.
Sturges made only a few more unsuccessful pictures around town before moving to Europe, where he survived pretty much on pipe dreams and memories.
For me, it wasn’t his joining up with crazy Howard Hughes that I find greedy. After all, it probably wasn’t money alone that made him leave Paramount. Like most creative people, he dreamed about being the boss. Which, I’m convinced, is something that writers, even those who also direct, should never, ever be.
Sturges was already the highest-paid writer in Hollywood when he opened his own restaurant, The Players. So, obviously the man had a self-destructive streak a mile wide to begin with. Everybody knows, after all, that restaurants are very risky, very expensive, enterprises, unless you open one with the idea of torching it for the insurance, or you happen to be in the Mafia and are looking to launder a ton of cash.
But not satisfied to lose his shirt with The Players, Sturges blew his entire wardrobe financing his inventions -- the most expensive of which was a diesel engine that he planned to call the Silent Sturges. Before he finally stopped shoveling money into it, it turned him into the insolvent Sturges.
Two generations earlier, Mark Twain, not satisfied with being the richest writer in the world, decided that enough was not nearly enough. In an insane quest to be as wealthy as the robber barons, Twain, over a period of four years, sank most of his hard-earned royalties into developing a printing machine. That was such a bad idea that it forced him to venture forth on an exhausting lecture tour in his 50s simply to make enough to hang on to his home.
So, as I look at it, it’s greed when you foolishly risk your wealth and your family’s future in an attempt to turn a good-sized fortune into one that would make Midas drool.
When more than plenty still doesn’t suffice, you’re suffering from the fatal sickness known as greed. And, sadly, when such comic geniuses as Twain and Sturges are infected with the virus, the end result isn’t comedy, but tragedy.
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