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The style of the former Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone has evolved through three decades from a teenage dancer with the prestigious Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe to an internationally-acclaimed show business celebrity. She has won scores of awards, as well as considerable income from multi-million-selling recordings and albums, personal appearances, TV specials and stardom in major motion pictures. As her experiences have deepened, Madonna has also added to her accomplishments her own recording company, movie production, and authorship of children's books.

After breaking into show business with rock bands in the 1970s, a producer at Sire Records was impressed by her singing and style. In 1982, she was signed by the company, and was encouraged to work as a single. Soon she was topping the music charts and winning Grammy awards with such hits as "Material Girl", "Like a Virgin", "Express Yourself" and "Ray of Light". At first, her sexuality was muted, and her personality was not much different than other beautiful girl singers of the era.

Then, as her popularity and self-awareness grew and the age of MTV and DVDs exploded on the show business industry, With blonde hair and heavy make-up, Madonna's already suggestive style on camera became more and more explicit. In her "Like a Virgin" production, Madonna and a crew of male dancers left little to the imagination as they gyrated, rubbed and writhed throughout the number.
Her revolutionary break away from suggestive to explicit in the 1980s had the same kind of show business impact as when Elvis wiggled onto the scene with jerky hips in the 1950s. Needing to up the ante as the years pass, she periodically gets herself back into the publicity spotlight by doing outrageous things in public and on stage, such as mouth kissing another singer on a TV award show, and wearing obviously revealing, sado-machistic costumes. Maybe the most shocking was performing suggestively while imitating Christ's crucifixion on a huge cross.

Her continuing superstardom on stage and recordings has also given her entry to the world of feature films. My favorite is 1992's "A League of Their Own", where she was not Madonna the sexy singer, but Mae Morabito, a feisty dark-haired girl baseball player of the 1940s. It was an ensemble story, and Madonna stood out as an excellent actress without any attempt to upstage the other very talented cast members, including Tom Hanks and Gina Davis. Some other movies she made were duds, but she clearly had hits with "Desperately Seeking Susan", "Dick Tracy" and won a Golden Globe for her starring and singing role in "Evita".

Still making headlines as she approaches the half-century year of her life, Madonna's most recent scandal is making headlines because of her involvement with a married New York Yankee. Just the other day, candid news photos show her without make-up and looking every bit of her 50 years. However, as Madonna ages, as everyone must, even in the most unflattering photos, her timeless beauty, dancer's grace and proud posture seem to defy the calendar. While supermarket tabloids, critics and late-night comics continue to make jokes about her often tumultuous personal life, Madonna has achieved more high-level multi-career accomplishments than any other woman in the history of modern show business.

At this moment, Madonna is in the ninth year of a shaky marriage, her fourth, to British film director Guy Ritchie. They live mostly in London, where the former Ms. Ciccone has picked up a British accent, a new religion, two natural children and one African adoptee. During her domestic moods, she writes picture books for kids, and one perhaps prophetically describes her career today, with the title, "Too Good to be True."

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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