Who Ought To Be In Pictures

What's the deal with these posters featuring Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Humphrey Bogart?  A local diner has several, as they seem to see them as the way to get their 50's vibe on. (That previous sentence involved a collision of the slang from at least three decades, I apologise for it.) I thought maybe it was one artist with a weird fixation, but I've found at least two artists making them.

You can get them playing poker, singing karaoke, even working on an anachronistic stock car. Which is at least less morbid than Dean with the car he died in.  And perhaps most famously, you get get them replacing the original subjects of Edward Hopper's classic Nighthawks.

But I have to wonder, why them?  If you want to evoke the fifties, there are plenty of other choices. Even if you specifically wanted to show bitter-sweet heroes embodying America's lost innocence, you could have used, say, Buddy Holly.  The page I linked to at the start of this post also included a number of suggestions.  I'm guessing that the reason is that descendants of celebrities may have a problem with how they are depicted, and perhaps these four have less legal problems.

I also wonder what people other decades might turn into poster stars.  I need to know for when I go into business with my retro 80's fast food joint.  Michael Jackson is an obvious choice.  Madonna and Prince have probably stayed around too long to represent the era. Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon would work as an 80's symbol, but is probably not well-known enough as an individual. Who else? How about:

• Michael J. Fox
• Boy George
• Corey Haim
• Molly Ringwald
• Cindy Lauper
• Mr. T
• Brooke Shields
• Pee Wee Herman
• Max Headroom

Those are my suggestions. Painters, get to it; I'll be by in a few years to pick up my painting of four of the above playing Trivial Pursuit.