Overrated in her prime, and that prime was very brief, followed by a sad, sharp decline. Kind of like Carrie Fisher in a way -- celebrities you look at and say "Hey, she's kind of ho . . ." and then the moment passes.

She was the subject of a fairly amusing Playboy cartoon. She was dating Jerry Brown (Governor Moonbeam) at the time; he had made a comment about the mid-1970s malaise that had swept America and remarked "Sometimes less is more." The cartoon shows Brown lying in bed, with Ronstadt lifting the sheet and saying "And sometimes Jerry, less is less." Thing is, she looked better in that Playboy cartoon than she ever did in real life. Strange.

My Carrie Fisher moment of disillusionment came when I saw the Blues Brothers. She didn't look bad in the movie, but just looked about ten years older than she did in Star Wars. Broke my heart, though.