Lyrics The Greatest Star Of All - Andrew Lloyd Webber, Daniel Benzali

The Greatest Star Of All

Once, you won’t remember
If you said Hollywood
Hers was the face you’d think of
Her face on every billboard
In just a single week
She’d get ten thousand letters
Men would offer
Fortunes for a bloom from her corsage
Or a few strands of her hair
Today, she’s half-forgotten
But it’s the pictures that got small
She is the greatest star of all
Then, you can’t imagine
How fans would sacrifice themselves to touch her shadow
There was a maharajah
Who hanged himself with one of her discarded stockings
She’s immortal
Caught inside that flickering light beam
Is a youth which cannot fade
Madame’s a living legend
I’ve seen so many idols fall
She is the greatest star of all
When he’d gone, I stood looking out the window for a while.
There was the ghost
of a tennis court with faded markings and a sagging net.
There was an empty
pool where Clara Bow and Fatty Arbuckle must have swum 10,000 midnights ago.
And then there was something else: the chimp’s last rites, as if she were
laying a child to rest.
Was her life really as empty as that?