The death of Marlene Dietrich

The death of Michael Jackson and a video I just saw reminded me of something: When the news came on TV that Marlene Dietrich died in 1992, I was in a coffee shop in a hotel, I think, in Boston. I saw a tall bald man who must have been in his mid-seventies, with a tan shirt and round horn-rim glasses standing in front of the TV. He was looking up at it, with an espresso cup in his hand, and tears streaming down his face. Was he crying because of what she had meant to him? Over his lost youth? Over something else that connected him to her? I don’t know. But it was pure and touching and one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.