"It took a long time to / Become the thing I am to you"*

Over the weekend, someone forwarded me this fantastic collection titled "Rare Photos of Famous People," although it might be more appropriately called "Pictures of Famous People When They Were Young."  It's a fascinating collection, and I told the person who sent it to me that it seemed like the perfect example of the fact that there's a moment when people become, ineffably, who they are.  Take this picture of Marilyn Monroe:

Maybe it's just the angle, but the lines of her cheeks look almost unrecognizable to me, her eyes aren't looking at the camera with the post-coital hazed gaze she perfected.  She hadn't settled into the look she'd decided worked for her, or at least wasn't deploying it in this photograph.  By contrast, take this picture of Madonna in 1976:

She's 18, the pose is sort of gawky, the flats and the dress entirely of their era.  And yet, she's unmistakably Madonna, with the half-smile, the clear lines of muscles and tendons visible in her legs and arms, the way she's dominating the space, even if it's just the gap between a drinking fountain and a window.  And sometimes folks are entirely unrecognizable:

Perhaps it's just me, or that I'm young or something, but I would not have recognized this guy as Christopher Walken.  Walken's always been sort of otherworldly--it's that quality and his absurdly amazing dance skills that makes the video for "Weapon of Choice" weirdly plausible.  But I never would have pegged him as angelic.

Anyway, peruse the whole collection.  It's great, and revealing.  And further proof that there has never been, and never will be, anyone to equal Clark Gable for smoothness.

*Title courtesy the Indigo Girls.