Nigeria Content Online

Elizabeth Taylor who died in Los Angeles on Wednesday, March 23 at the age of 79, was the last great star of the Hollywood studio system. The citation of her age may have seemed like an inaccuracy at first; she had been famous for so long – seven decades, longer than many lifetimes – that many assumed she was older.

She rose to superstardom in an age when stars of the silver screen were goddesses, and never had a woman seemed more willfully godlike than Taylor. She married eight times, in an alternative career of serial walks up the aisle that involved a cast of seven husbands (she tied the knot with Richard Burton twice). Astonishing, yes, but if you were the most beautiful woman in the world, wouldn’t you live several lifetimes at once?

As news of her death broke, Vanity Fair magazine introduced a photo-study of the great Liz with these words: “No one before or since has been more captivatingly beautiful.” These were not just words inspired by the mushy sentimentality that prevails in the immediate aftermath of a death. Many years ago, this writer viewed ‘The Love Goddesses’, a 1965 documentary about the iconic impact of all the significant female movie stars spun by the Hollywood system. From the birth of cinema, they are shown decade by decade: from Lilian Gish to Louise Brooks, from Greta Garbo to Mae West, Ava Gardner to Marilyn Monroe. When we come to the fifties and a black and white love scene is played from ‘A Place in the Sun’, the narrator says of the face on the screen, “Elizabeth Taylor, probably the most beautiful love goddess of them all.”

Taylor’s famed beauty – violet eyes, smouldering raven hair, perfectly symmetrical features and a beauty spot dropped on one cheek like her maker’s signature – mesmerised all that laid eyes on her. Now in the age of augmentations, injections and implants that allow Hollywood stars to remake themselves according to their plastic dreams, it is a marvel that every feature on Taylor was God-given. Even women were awed by her, as British actress Diana Rigg said last week, “Elizabeth Taylor was the most beautiful woman I have ever clapped eyes on.”

A Place in the Sun

The Love Goddesses’ clip was a fitting introduction to my proper viewing of ‘A Place in the Sun’ years later. In the movie, Montgomery Clift is a working class young man who falls for the irresistible society belle played by Taylor. She is the perfect vision of beauty and class; and driven by his desire for her and a need to escape his social reality, Clift’s character kills his pregnant girlfriend, played by Shelley Winters (cast in the ordinary woman’s role, as happened to her in ‘Doctor Zhivago’ a few years later). A lingering close-up love scene (back then, ‘love scene’ was more suggestive than anything, usually involving no more than a kiss) is preceded by Clift telling Taylor how much he wished he could express his love for her. “Tell Mama, tell Mama all,” she says, eyes glittering like the diamonds that would later become entwined with her legend, and an enduring sex symbol was born.

Hyper-real fame

I am of the generation that saw the Larry Fortensky marriage happen. Taylor contracted her eighth and final marriage to the former builder in 1991, after meeting him at the Betty Ford Clinic. He was 20 years her junior and, while the union may have shown that she did not only go for men who could shower her with diamonds, it also demonstrated the hyper-real soap opera quality of her fame by this time. Her hair through the 90s was of the high volume that had held sway in the shoulder-padded heyday of ‘Dynasty’ and ‘Dallas’ the decade before, and it was all too easy to confuse her with the characters in those soap operas. She launched her own range of million dollar grossing perfumes – White Diamonds and Passion, among others – long before celebrity fragrances became de rigueur among the rich and famous. She was one of two older women who became muses to the late Michael Jackson (Diana Ross was the other). Taylor’s friendship with the Peter Pan of pop survived his child molestation trial (she was one of his most outspoken supporters) and lasted till their deaths (she was buried in the same cemetery as the singer on March 24). It was an unlikely friendship, but Jackson and Taylor had one thing in common: they had both achieved stardom from very young and, some would argue, never lost their inner child.

Potent screen star

In the blur of marriages, diamonds and rehab, it was easy for the press to overlook what a potent screen star Taylor had once been. “When was the last time you saw an Elizabeth Taylor film?” the British media were wont to ask in derisive tones in the 80s and 90s; and only those with longer movie memories could have demurred.

Her prime began in the fifties, notably with films like ‘Father of the Bride’ (1950). In ‘A Place in the Sun’ the following year, she was cast alongside the brilliant method actor, Montgomery Clift; and so began her film trysts with three iconic homosexuals of cinema. The other two were Rock Hudson and the short-lived James Dean, both of whom shared the screen with her in ‘Giant’ (1956). Hudson’s highly publicised death from AIDS in 1985 prompted Taylor to become a life-long activist and humanitarian for the disease. She founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, tirelessly raising money to support sufferers and HIV research.

Born Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor in London on February 27, 1932, her dual American-UK nationality meant she could be made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (2000). The investiture by her namesake, the Queen of England, took place on the same day as Julie Andrews was honoured.

As a child, Taylor had been trained in ballet and once danced for the British royal family. But it was after her return to the US with her parents that her film career started, notably with the hit film ‘National Velvet’ (1944). The actress won the first of two Oscars for playing a high class call girl in 1968’s ‘Butterfield 8′ (her second was for ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’). She also got good notices for ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof’ (1958) in which she appeared with Paul Newman.

Cleopatra in love

During the filming of the 1963 epic, ‘Cleopatra’ in Rome, Elizabeth Taylor’s romantic and cinematic lives collided in spectacular fashion. Playing Antony opposite the actress’s Egyptian queen was the fiery Welsh actor, Richard Burton who would become her fifth and sixth husband. Taylor had already been married four times. The husbands: hotel heir Nicky Hilton; Michael Wilding (with whom she had two sons); producer Mike Todd for whom she converted to Judaism but who tragically died in an air crash; and crooner Eddie Fisher, who she divorced to marry Richard Burton.

Many talk now of how Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston to run off with ‘the temptress’ Angelina Jolie – but a little history will show that Taylor and Burton had been even more flagrant. Eddie Fisher had been Mike Todd’s best friend, and, after the latter’s death, rushed to comfort his widow – Taylor – and fell for her. Fisher was married to Debbie Reynolds and they had two children (including Carrie, future Princess Leia in the Star Wars films), but went off to marry Taylor, in a major scandal.

The affair with Burton caused an even bigger scandal that drew the ire of the The Vatican, since the two lovebirds were carrying on their romance openly in Rome while married to other people. Burton and Taylor left their respective partners and married in 1963, in the most enduring union of the actress’s life. The public’s fascination with the pair reached fever pitch. They embarked on a jet-set lifestyle punctuated by the fabled diamonds he gave her. Princess Margaret, according to popular lore, admired the famous Burton-Taylor diamond on the actress’s finger and remarked about how “vulgar” it was, but it was clear she wouldn’t have minded having it for herself.

The film that brought Burton and Taylor together, ‘Cleopatra’, is infamous for its astronomical cost, nearly bankrupting the studio, Twentieth Century Fox, despite being the highest grossing film of 1963. Watching ‘Cleopatra’ today, it is not at all a bad film; and stands as a testament to the tempestuous love between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, while showing her at her most beautiful. The couple divorced in 1974 only to remarry in Botswana the following year, then going their separate ways for the final time in 1976.

Movie phenomenon

A few days before his death in 1984, the now remarried Burton wrote a letter to his Elizabeth from his home in Switzerland. It arrived at her Bel Air, Los Angeles home after she returned from his memorial service and is the only letter Taylor kept secret till the end of her own life. Other letters were released in the book, ‘Furious love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century’ (2010). It was an all-consuming love, as Burton wrote to her: “I am forever punished by the gods for being given the fire and trying to put it out. The fire, of course, is you.” He articulated her essence thus: “You are probably the best actress in the world, which, combined with your extraordinary beauty, makes you unique.”

Oft quoted in the last few days has been Victor Canby’s statement about the film star, published in The New York Times in 1986: “More than anyone else I can think of, Elizabeth Taylor represents the complete movie phenomenon – what movies are as art and an industry, and what they have meant to those of us who have grown up watching them in the dark.”

A fitting tribute, but perhaps the last word should go to her great love, Richard Burton, who said, “That girl has true glamour. If I retired tomorrow, I’d be forgotten in five years, but she would go on forever.” And in a sense, she did.

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, born February 27, 1932; died March 23, 2011.