Manners And Morals: The Groupies

Stage-door Janies have always been more demonstrative than stage-door Johnnies. Juvenal railed bitterly against flirtatious Roman ladies in whose eyes any gladiator, however ugly, was "transformed into a Hyacinthus." No Ziegfeld girl ever inspired a male reaction remotely comparable to the mass hysteria of Sinatra's swooners in the 1940s or Elvis Presley's frantic fanatics in the 1950s. Such adulatory demonstrations were mild, however, compared with those of a new and even more liberated breed of female hero-worshipers. They are the "groupies." Their heroes are rock musicians—and their worship knows no bounds....

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