Cinema: Meditations on Celebrity

ZELIG Directed and Written by Woody Allen

"Cole Porter was fascinated by him," recalls a witness. "He wrote a song: You 're the Top, You 're Leonard Zelig. But he couldn't find anything to rhyme with Zelig."

Cole Porter was not alone. In his time, the '20s and '30s, the whole world was bewitched by the strange case of a human chameleon so eager to be liked that he developed the capacity literally to change accent, shape and even color in order to ingratiate himself with whomever he happened to be with. One day Scott...

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