Celebrities Who Travel Well

By Pico Iyer

Ah, the wonders of the East! The household goddesses that gaze down from every other wall and stall in Chiang Mai and Mandalay are the very picture of mysterious beauty. Their girlish tresses are dark and lustrous, their complexions delicately olive, their looks a spicy blend of innocence and experience. And the names of these exotic sirens are . . . Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Beals. From the go-slow huts of socialist Burma to the go-go bars of socializing Bangkok, the hands-down pinups of Southeast Asia are the Yale flashdancer with exactly two movies to her credit and the pouting young starlet from Private School. Farrah, Christie, even local actresses hardly get a look-in. Unlike many American fan letters, reports Cates, "the ones from Thailand are all so sweet and complimentary." Ah, the blunders of the West!

In South Africa, blacks are not allowed to own property, choose where they live or vote in national elections. They are, however, allowed to appear as entertainers. Right now, the American king of TV for the country's mostly white audience is Bill Cosby. Favorite consumer items include Mr. T dolls and Eddie Murphy posters. And the Western songsters of choice are Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder. The government-supported national radio station tried to ban Wonder, but gave up after his fans began tuning in to his songs on foreign stations. Still, it is not so keen on the final entry on Stevie's current album. Delivered in both English and the South African tribal tongue of Xhosa, the song is called It's Wrong (Apartheid).

Last month an elegant music store on Omotesando, Tokyo's Fifth Avenue, devoted most of its window space to a formal wedding tableau of Minnie and Mickey Mouse. Wise move. After all, Emperor Hirohito has been spotted in a Mickey Mouse wristwatch, and for 21 years the Mitsubishi Bank has treated new customers to Mickey towels, tissue paper and toothpaste, even Mickey piggy banks. Lately, the round-eared rodent has been challenged across the globe by snappy, snippy Snoopy and indolent, insolent Garfield. But the animated 58- year-old is still reigning over cats and dogs.

Though not exactly Marx, Madonna has sparked a global revolution. From Moscow to Peking, the Material Girl has put a new spin on dialectical materialism. Nothing, however, can compare with her reception in Panama, where people have gone mad over La Donna. For almost two years, 23-year-old Wanna Be's have been curling their hair and donning lace. Both a soft-drink company and a chewing-gum firm have produced ads copying her from-bed-to- verse videos. "Even Michael Jackson did not produce such a frenzy," marvels Jim Truch Gomez, manager of the country's top pop station. When word gets out that the Mistress has a new look, expect another revolution.

His books, exclaimed one French critic, "possess all the passionate excess of Rabelais' Gargantua, the verbal virtuosity of a Joyce, the demonic cruelty of Celine's best work." Mon dieu, who is this born-again Shakespeare? Charles Bukowski. You know, the 64-year-old Los Angeles-based laureate of American lowlife whose Henry Miller-ish paeans to booze and broads (Love Is a Dog for Hell, Notes of a Dirty Old Man) typically sell only around 5,000 copies in the U.S. In France, more than 100,000 copies of the Boho's short and tall stories have left the shelves. In West Germany, the latter-day sinner is carried by eight major publishers, and has sold a staggering 2.2 million copies, more than any American and almost any German novelist alive. What was that name again? B-U-K-O-W-S-K-I.

Mention Bears these days, and many Britons hardly give a thought to Paddington or Winnie-the-Pooh. The biggest bears of all, they know, come from Chicago. Ever since an N.F.L. game of the week started showing up on the country's TV screens four years ago, the "other" game of football throws fewer and fewer people for a loss. A monthly magazine called Touchdown counts 160,000 readers, and one Briton in every ten saw the Bears in this year's Super Bowl. It's not cricket, of course, but football seems certain to gain even more ground this August, when the Bears arrive at London's Wembley Stadium for an exhibition against the Dallas Cowboys. Forget about getting in; all 80,000 seats are sold out.

Confucius wrote that "truly great music is always simple in movement." Which may explain why Andy Williams is the hottest Western vocalist in China. Or maybe it's because Williams crooned the sound track to Dancing on Ice, a 15-min. skating documentary that has been shown again and again and then several times more on Chinese TV. Ever since, people have been downright bullish in China's shops about his Love Story and other ancient chestnuts. It is not just ideogrammatic titles like Moon River that strike familiar chords in Chinese hearts. "His voice and style more closely resemble a Chinese vocalist's than any other foreigner's," explains a young Peking resident. Before long, top-ranking officials may be humming Days of Wine and Roses. After all, Confucius also wrote, "Only the superior man is able to understand music."

He's big, he's rich, he's mighty--small wonder that J.R., the industrial- strength lord of Dallas, is both a universal figure and a universal symbol of America. So it is that in Britain, Larry Hagman often has to sport a fake mustache. On one trip to Italy, the man who plays "Gei Ar" ducked into his Milan hotel room for some peace and quiet, only to find it crowded with Hagmanic paparazzi who had crawled in through the window. "I can only stay for a day in one place," he explains. "People come up to me everywhere and say, 'I have an uncle like you. I have an employer like you.' I say, 'Not like me, honey. Like J.R.' "