Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor DBE (1932 – 2011)
was an English-American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian. She began her
career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular
stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s.
She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, remaining a well-known
public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend of all time.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in
London on February 27. She received dual British-American citizenship at birth, as both
her parents, art dealer Francis Lenn Taylor and retired stage actress Sara Sothern were from Kansas. She was raised according to the teachings
of Christian Science.
In early 1939, the Taylors were urged by the US ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy to return to the States due to fear of impending war in Europe. Sara and the children left in April 1939 and moved in with her father in California. Later that year, Francis joined his family in Beverly Hills and in 1940 opened a new gallery in LA.
In California, it was often suggested
to Taylor's mother that Elizabeth should audition for films. Her eyes in
particular drew attention; they were blue – almost violet - and framed by dark
double eyelashes caused by a genetic mutation. Sara was initially reluctant,
but after the outbreak of the Second World War made returning to London
unlikely, she began to view the film industry as a way of assimilating to
American society. Francis Taylor's Beverly Hills gallery had gained clients
from the film industry. Through a client and a school friend's father, Taylor
auditioned for both Universal Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in early 1941. Both studios
offered Taylor contracts, and Sara chose
to accept Universal's offer.
Taylor began her contract in April
1941.However, Universal’s casting director expressed a dislike of Taylor,
stating that "the kid has nothing ... her eyes are too old, she doesn't
have the face of a child". Biographer Alexander Walker agrees that
Taylor looked different from other child stars of the era, such as Shirley Temple and Judy Garland. Taylor later said
that, "apparently, I used to frighten grownups, because I was totally
direct". We all know little scares powerful people like an unitimidated
woman (or girl).
Taylor received another opportunity
in late 1942, when her father's acquaintance, MGM producer Samuel Marx, arranged for her
to audition for a minor role in Lassie Come Home (1943), which
required a child actress with an English accent . After a trial contract of
three months, she was given a standard seven-year contract in January 1943.
Taylor was cast in her first starring
role at the age of 12, when she was chosen to play a girl who wants to compete
as a jockey in the exclusively male Grand National in National Velvet. She later deemed
it "the most exciting film" of her career.
Elizabeth was deemed too short and
filming was delayed several months so she had time to grow. In that time, she
learnt to ride expertly. In an attempt to shape her into a new star, MGM
required her to wear braces to correct her teeth, and had two of her baby teeth
pulled out. The studio also wanted to dye her hair and change the shape of her
eyebrows, and proposed that she use the screen name "Virginia", but
Taylor and her parents refused. National Velvet became a
box-office success upon its release on Christmas 1944. However, this marked the
start of Elizabeth’s loss of autonomy and constant scrutiny over looks and
behaviour which would mar the rest of her career.
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Taylor later stated that her
childhood ended when she became a star, as MGM started to control every aspect
of her life. She described the studio as a "big extended factory",
where she was forced to follow a strict daily schedule combing school lessons,
dancing, and script rehearsals. On the success of National Velvet, MGM gave Taylor a
new seven-year contract with a weekly salary of $750. Never to miss a
commercial opportunity based on Taylor’s image, the studio also published a
book of her writings about her pet chipmunk, Nibbles and Me (1946),
and had paper dolls and colouring books made after her.
In 1947, Elizabeth turned 15 and MGM
began to cultivate a more mature public image for her by organizing photo
shoots and interviews that portrayed her as a "normal" teenager who
attended parties and went on dates. Even at this tender age she became a
sexualised figure and film magazines and gossip columnists also began comparing
her to older actresses such as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Life called her "Hollywood's most
accomplished junior actress" for her two film roles that year.
In 1948, MGM set her up with football
champion Glenn Davis and the following year, she was briefly
engaged to William Pawley Jr., son of the US ambassador. Film tycoon Howard Hughes offered to pay her
parents a six-figure sum if they agreed to their marriage, but Taylor declined
(nice that someone thought to ask her!). However, Taylor was keen to marry young, as
her "rather puritanical upbringing and beliefs" made her believe that
"love was synonymous with marriage". Taylor later described that her
sheltered childhood made her "emotionally immature" during this time and
that she believed marriage would bring her independence from her parents and
MGM, which is just kind of sad.
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“It’s not the having it’s the getting.”
Taylor made the transition to adult
roles when she turned 18 in 1950. In her first adult role was in the
thriller Conspirator (1949), playing
the wife of a Soviet spy. It had been filmed when Taylor was just 16 but its
release was delayed until March 1950, as MGM disliked it and feared it could
cause diplomatic problems. Taylor's second film of 1950 was the
comedy The Big Hangover.
That same month, 18 year old Taylor
married hotel-chain heir Conrad Hilton Jr. (heir to the Hilton Hotel chain) in a highly
publicized ceremony organised by MGM as part of the publicity for Taylor’s next
film Father of the Bride (1950). However, Taylor quickly realized that she had
made a mistake; not only did she and Hilton have few interests in common, but
he was also abusive and a heavy drinker. She was granted a divorce in
January 1951, eight months after their wedding.
Taylor's next film, A Place in the Sun (1951), was
the first film in which Taylor felt she was asked to act rather than be
herself. It brought her critical acclaim for the first time since National
Velvet. Taylor played a spoiled socialite who comes between a poor factory
worker (Montgomery Clift) and his pregnant
girlfriend. Elizabeth was cast as the director believed Taylor was "the
only one ... who could create this illusion" of being "not so much a
real girl as the girl on the candy-box cover, the beautiful girl in the
yellow Cadillac convertible
that every American boy sometime or other thinks he can marry". This image
would follow Elizabeth for most of her career.
Taylor next starred in the romantic
comedy Love Is Better Than Ever (1952). It was suggested that she was cast in this "B-picture"
as punishment for divorcing Hilton. Throughout her life, Taylor’s career and
personal life became closely intertwined, as we shall see.
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“I feel so very adventurous. There
are so many doors to be opened & I’m not afraid to look behind them.”
Taylor married her second husband,
British actor Michael Wilding in a low-key
ceremony in London in February 1952. She had first met him in 1948 while
filming The Conspirator in England, and their relationship
began when she returned to film Ivanhoe in 1951. Taylor found
their 20 year age gap appealing, as she wanted "the calm and quiet and
security of friendship" from their relationship; he meanwhile hoped that
the marriage would aid his career in Hollywood.
Despite her grievances with MGM,
Taylor signed a new seven-year contract in the summer of 1952. Although she
wanted more interesting roles, her hand was forced by financial need as she had
recently become pregnant with her first child. In addition to granting her a
weekly salary of $4,700, MGM agreed to give the couple a loan for a house and
signed her actor husband for a three-year contract. Her financial dependency
gave the studio even more control over Taylor and her life.
Taylor soon became pregnant again and
had to agree to add another year to her contract to make up for the period
spent on maternity leave. However, as Taylor grew older and more confident, she
began to drift apart from Wilding, whose failing career was also a source of
marital strife. In 1955, gossip magazines caused a scandal by claiming that he
had entertained strippers at their home while she was away filming. Taylor
and Wilding announced their separation in July 1956 and were divorced in
January the following year.
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“Follow your passions, follow your
heart, and the things you need will come.”
By the mid-1950s, the American film
industry was beginning to face serious competition from television,
necessitating a focus on quality over quantity of films. This benefited Taylor,
who fwas finally given the more challenging roles she had long craved. After lobbying director George Stevens, she
won the female lead role in Giant (1956). However, its filming proved a
difficult experience for Taylor, who was constantly worn down by Stevens ‘who
wanted to break her will to make her easier to direct’. She also suffered from
frequent ill-health during shooting and had to delay production several times.
Furthermore, her co-star James Dean died in a car crash mere days after
completing filming. Taylor still had to shoot reaction shots to their scenes
and was allowed no time to grieve. When Giant was released a
year later, it became a box-office success, and was widely praised by critics. Although
not nominated for an Academy Award like her co-stars, Taylor garnered positive
reviews for her performance. Stevens failed in his mission to break Elizabeth,
who went from strength to strength after this role.
MGM re-united Taylor with Montgomery Clift in Raintree County (1957). Taylor found her character, a mentally disturbed Southern belle, fascinating, but overall disliked the film. Taylor was nominated for the first time for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
Taylor married her third husband, theatre and film producer Mike Todd in Mexico, in February 1957. They had one daughter, Elizabeth "Liza" Frances (b. 1957). Todd was known for publicity stunts and encouraged media attention. He tragically died in a plane crash on March 22, 1958.
Taylor was heartbroken, but was comforted by their friend, singer Eddie Fisher, with whom she soon began an affair. This caused uproar as Fisher was still married to popular actress Debbie Reynolds, and Taylor was branded a "homewrecker". Taylor and Fisher were eventually married at the Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas on May 12, 1959. However, she later stated that she married him only out of grief.
Taylor considered her next performance
as Maggie the Cat in the screen adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) a
career "high point." But it coincided with one of the most difficult
periods in her personal life. She had completed only two weeks of filming in
March 1958, when Todd was killed. Although she was devastated,
pressure from the studio and the knowledge that Todd had large debts she now
inherited led Taylor to return to work only three weeks later. She later said that "in a way ... [she]
became Maggie", and that acting "was the only time I could
function" in the weeks after Todd's death. Yet again this shows Taylor’s
resilience and the lack of care for her mental health and she was forced to
prioritise finance over happiness.
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“You learn who your true friends are
when you’re involved in a scandal”..
Taylor's personal life drew more
attention when she began her affair with Fisher. MGM used the scandal to its
advantage by featuring an image of Taylor posing on a bed in a négligée in the
film's promotional posters. Cat grossed $10 million in American cinemas
alone and made Taylor the year's second-most profitable star. Taylor was
nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA.
Taylor next starred in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
alongside Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn. She was paid half
a million dollars for the role of a severely traumatized patient in a mental
institution. Although the film was a serious drama about mental illness,
childhood traumas, and homosexuality, it was again promoted with Taylor's sex
appeal; both its trailer and poster featured her in a white swimsuit. The
strategy worked, as the film was a financial success. Taylor received her third
Academy Award nomination
and her first Golden Globe for
Best Actress for her performance. She, like many female stars, was again
reduced to nothing more than a hot body despite her critical acclaim as an
actress.
By 1959, Taylor owed one more film
for MGM, BUtterfield 8 (1960), a
drama about a high-class sex worker. The studio correctly calculated that
Taylor's public image would make it easy for audiences to associate her with
the role. She hated the film for the same reason, but had no choice in the
matter. The studio did agree to her demands of filming in New York and casting
Eddie Fisher alongside her. As predicted, BUtterfield 8 was
a major commercial success and Taylor won her first Academy Award for Best
Actress for her performance. Again in popular discourse she was seen as little
but a whore, despite her acting ability and the dual culpability of her new
husband.
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“When people say, 'She's got
everything', I've got one answer - I haven't had tomorrow.”
After completing her MGM contract,
Taylor starred in arguably her most famous role - 20th Century-Fox's Cleopatra (1963). She
became the first actress to be paid $1 million for a role;she was also granted
10% of the film's profits, as well as shooting the film in Todd-AO, a widescreen
format for which she had inherited the rights from Mike Todd. The film's
production – infamous for its costly sets and costumes, constant delays, and a
scandal caused by Taylor's extramarital affair with her co-star Richard Burton – was closely
followed by the media. Filming began in England in 1960, but wad delayed
repeatedly owing to bad weather and Taylor's ill health. In March 1961, she
developed nearly fatal pneumonia, which
necessitated a tracheotomy. Once she had
recovered, Fox decided to abandon the existing material and move production to
Rome, changing its director to Joseph Mankiewicz, and the actor playing Mark Antony to
Burton. Cleopatra was finally completed in July 1962. The film's
final cost was $62 million, making it the most expensive film ever made by then.
Cleopatra became the
biggest box-office success of 1963 in the United States; the film grossed $15.7
million at the box office. Nonetheless, it took several years for the film to
earn back its production costs, which drove Fox near to bankruptcy. The studio
publicly blamed Taylor for the production's troubles and unsuccessfully sued
Burton and Taylor for allegedly damaging the film's commercial prospects with
their scandalous affairs. The film's reviews were mixed to negative, with
critics finding Taylor overweight and her voice too thin (puke), and unfavourably
comparing her with her classically trained British co-stars. Despite Taylor becoming synonymous
with the role, Taylor called Cleopatra a "low point"
in her career and said that the studio had cut out the scenes which provided
the "core of the characterization".
Despite public condemnation, film
producers were eager to profit from the scandal surrounding Taylor and Burton,
and they next starred together in Anthony Asquith's The V.I.P.s (1963), which mirrored the
headlines about them. Released soon after Cleopatra, it became a
box-office success. Taylor was also paid $500,000 to appear in a CBS television
special, Elizabeth Taylor in London, in which she visited the
city's landmarks and recited passages from the works of famous British writers.
The dual standards of the media and film industry haven’t change all that much
in 50 years.
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“I don't entirely approve of some of
the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me.”
After completing The V.I.P.s,
Taylor took a two-year hiatus from films, during which Burton and she divorced
their spouses and married each other. Hollywood’s
new power couple continued starring together in films in the mid-1960s,
earning a combined $88 million over the next decade; Burton once
(problematically) stated, "They say we generate more business activity
than one of the smaller African nations." Biographer
Alexander Walker compared these films to "illustrated gossip
columns", as their film roles often reflected their public personae, while
film historian Alexander Doty has noted that Taylor's films during this era seemed
to "conform to, and reinforce, the image of an indulgent, raucous, immoral
or amoral, and appetitive (in many senses of the word) 'Elizabeth
Taylor'". Taylor and Burton's first joint project following her
hiatus was Vincente Minelli's romantic drama The Sandpiper (1965), about
an illicit love affair between a bohemian artist and a married clergyman
in Big Sur, California. Its
reviews were largely negative, but it grossed a successful $14 million in the
box office.
Their next project, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) became
the most critically acclaimed performance of Taylor's career. She and
Burton starred as Martha and George, a middle-aged couple going through a
marital crisis. In order to convincingly play 50-year-old Martha, Taylor gained
weight, wore a wig, and used make-up to make herself look older and tired – a
stark contrast to her public image as a glamorous film star. At Taylor's
suggestion, theatre director Mike Nichols was hired to direct the project, despite his
lack of experience with film. The production differed from anything she had
done previously and was considered ground-breaking for its adult themes and
uncensored language. The film received "glorious" reviews and Taylor
received her second Academy Award, and BAFTA, National Board of Review, and New York City
Film Critics Circle awards for her performance.
The couples next couple of projects
received mixed responses. Taylor's third film released in 1967, Reflections in a Golden Eye, was her first
without Burton since Cleopatra. It was a drama about a repressed
gay military officer and his unfaithful wife. Originally, Taylor's old friend
Montgomery Clift was billed to star, however his career was in decline due to
his substance abuse problems. Determined to secure his involvement in the
project, Taylor even offered to pay for his insurance, showing that she could
be a loyal and generous friend. Sadly, however, Clift died of a heart attack
before filming began and he was replaced by Marlon Brando. After all that,
it was critical and commercial failure.
By the late 1960s, Taylor's career
was in decline - she had gained weight, was nearing middle age, and did not fit
in with New Hollywood stars such
as Jane Fonda. After several years of
nearly constant media attention, the public was tiring of her relationship, and
criticized their jet set lifestyle.
The three films in which Taylor acted
in 1972 were somewhat more successful. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated,
"The spectacle of Elizabeth Taylor growing older and more beautiful
continues to amaze the population". Taylor and Burton's last film together
was the Harlech Television film Divorce His, Divorce Hers (1973), aptly
named as they divorced the following year.
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“The problem with people who have no
vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some
pretty annoying virtues.”
Taylor admitted herself to a drug and
alcohol rehabilitation centre after the play's run ended, and Burton died the
following year. Taylor dissolved her theatre company and from the mid-1980s acted
mostly in television productions.
Her last theatrically released film
was in the critically panned, but commercially successful, The Flintstones (1994). Taylor
received American and British honors for her career. In 2000, she was
appointed a Dame Commander in the chivalric Order of the British Empire. Taylor announced
that she was retiring from acting to devote her time to philanthropy. She
gave one last public performance in 2007 when, with James Earl Jones, she performed the
play Love Letters at an AIDS benefit at the
Paramount Studios.
After divorcing Warner, Taylor dated
actor Anthony Geary, and was engaged
to Mexican lawyer Victor Luna in 1983–1984, and New York businessman
Dennis Stein in 1985. She met her seventh – and last – husband, construction
worker Larry Fortensky, at the Betty Ford
Center in 1988. They were married by her old friend Michael Jackson at his Neverland Ranch on
October 6, 1991. The wedding was again a media sensation, with one
photographer parachuting to the ranch and Taylor selling the wedding pictures to People for $1
million, which she used to start her AIDS foundation. Taylor and Fortensky
divorced in October 1996, which she attributed to her painful hip operations
and his obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, the pair remained close for the
rest of their lives. In the winter of 1999, Fortensky underwent brain
surgery after falling off a balcony and was comatose for six weeks; Taylor
immediately notified the hospital she would personally guarantee his medical
expenses. At the end of 2010, she wrote him a letter that read: "Larry
darling, you will always be a big part of my heart! I'll love you for
ever." Taylor's last phone call with Fortensky was on February 7, 2011,
one day before she checked into hospital for what turned out to be her final
stay. He told her she would outlive him. Although they had been divorced for
almost 15 years, Taylor left Fortensky $825,000 in her will.
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“All of my life I've spent a lot of
time with gay men…who are my colleagues, coworkers, confidantes, my closest
friends, but I never thought of who they slept with! They were just the people
I loved. I could never understand why they couldn't be afforded the same rights
and protections as all of the rest of us. There is no gay agenda, it's a human
agenda.”
Taylor was one of the first
celebrities to participate in HIV/AIDS activism and helped to raise more than
$270 million for the cause. She began her philanthropic work after becoming
frustrated that very little was being done to combat the disease despite the
media attention. She later explained for Vanity Fair that she
"decided that with my name, I could open certain doors, that I was a
commodity in myself – and I'm not talking as an actress. I could take the fame
I'd resented and tried to get away from for so many years – but you can never
get away from it – and use it to do some good. I wanted to retire, but the
tabloids wouldn't let me. So, I thought: If you're going to screw me over, I'll
use you."
Taylor began her philanthropic
efforts in 1984 by helping to organize and by hosting the first AIDS fundraiser
to benefit the AIDS Project Los Angeles. In August 1985,
she and Dr. Michael Gottlieb founded the National AIDS
Research Foundation after her friend and former co-star Rock Hudson announced
that he was dying of the disease. The following month, the foundation merged
with Dr. Mathilde Krim's AIDS foundation
to form the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Taylor founded
the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) in 1991 to raise awareness and to
provide support services for people with HIV/AIDS, paying for its overhead
costs herself. Since her death, her estate has continued to fund ETAF's work,
and donates 25% of royalties from the use of her image and likeness to the
foundation. In addition
to her work for people affected by HIV/AIDS in the United States, Taylor was
instrumental in expanding amfAR's operations to other countries; ETAF also
operates internationally.
Taylor testified before the Senate and House for the Ryan White Care Act in 1986, 1990, and 1992. She
persuaded President Ronald Reagan to
acknowledge the disease for the first time in a speech in 1987, and publicly
criticized presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton for lack of
interest in combatting the disease. Taylor also founded the Elizabeth Taylor
Medical Center to offer free HIV/AIDS testing and care at the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D. C., and the
Elizabeth Taylor Endowment Fund for the UCLA Clinical AIDS Research and Education Center in Los Angeles.
Taylor received several awards for
her philanthropic work and is now heralded as a gay icon for her HIV/AIDS activism.
After her death, GLAAD issued a
statement saying that she "was an icon not only in Hollywood, but in
the LGBT community, where she worked
to ensure that everyone was treated with the respect and dignity we all
deserve", and Sir Nick Partridge of the Terrence Higgins Trust called her "the first
major star to publicly fight fear and prejudice towards
AIDS". According to Paul Flynn of The Guardian, she was
"a new type of gay icon, one whose position is based not on tragedy, but
on her work for the LGBTQ community".
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“You can't cry on a diamond's
shoulder, and diamonds won't keep you warm at night, but they're sure fun when
the sun shines.”
Taylor is considered a fashion icon
both for her film costumes and personal style. Her make-up look in Cleopatra (1963)
started a trend for "cat-eye" make-up done with black eyeliner. During
her marriage to Burton, the pair led a jet-set lifestyle, spending millions on
"furs, diamonds, paintings, designer clothes, travel, food, liquor, a
yacht, and a jet".
Taylor was the first celebrity to
create her own collection of fragrances in collaboration with Elizabeth Arden, Inc.. She began by launching two best-selling
perfumes – Passion in 1987, and White Diamonds in 1991, personally supervising
the creation and production of each of the 11 fragrances marketed in her name. These
fragrances brought her more revenue than her entire acting career and upon her
death, The Guardian estimated that the majority of her estimated
$600 million-$1 billion estate consisted of revenue from fragrances. In 2005, Taylor also founded a jewellery
company, House of Taylor.
Taylor collected jewellery through
her life, and owned the 33.19-carat (6.638 g) Krupp Diamond, the 69.42-carat
(13.884 g) Taylor-Burton Diamond, and the 50-carat (10 g) La Peregrina Pearl, all three of which were gifts from
husband Richard Burton. She also published a book about her collection, My
Love Affair with Jewelry, in 2002. She received a Lifetime of Glamour
Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of
America (CFDA) in 1997. After her death, her jewellery and clothes were
auctioned to benefit her AIDS foundation – the jewellery sold for a
record-breaking sum of $156.8 million, and the clothes and accessories for a
further $5.5 million.
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“It's all
about hope, kindness and a connection with one another.”
Throughout
her life, Taylor's personal life, especially her eight marriages (two to the
same man), drew a large amount of media scrutiny and public disapproval.
According to biographer Alexander Walker, "Whether she liked it or not ...
marriage is the matrix of the myth that began surrounding Elizabeth Taylor from
[when she was sixteen]"
While filming Cleopatra in
Italy in 1962, Taylor began her most famous relationship - an affair with her married
co-star, Welsh actor Richard Burton. Rumours of the
affair ran rife and were confirmed by a paparazzi shot of them on a yacht. According
to sociologist Ellis Cashmore, the publication
of the photograph was a "turning point", marking a new era in which
it became difficult for celebrities to keep their personal and public lives
separate. The scandal caused Taylor and Burton to be condemned for "erotic
vagrancy" by the Vatican (lol), with calls
also in the US Congress to bar them from re-entering the country (how times
have changed!) Taylor was granted a divorce from Fisher on March 5, 1964 and
married Burton 10 days later in a private ceremony in Montreal. Burton
subsequently adopted Liza Todd and Maria Burton (b.1961), a German orphan whose
adoption process Taylor had begun while married to Fisher.
Dubbed "Liz and Dick" by
the media, Taylor and Burton starred together in 11 films. From reports of
massive spending [...] affairs, and even an open marriage, the couple came to
represent a new era of 'gotcha' celebrity coverage, where the more personal the
story, the better." They divorced for the first time in June 1974,
but reconciled, and remarried in Botswana a year later.
However, this reconciliation was brief, as they divorced for good in July
1976. Taylor and Burton's relationship was often referred to as the
"marriage of the century" by the media, and she later stated:
"After Richard, the men in my life were just there to hold the coat, to
open the door. All the men after Richard were really just company."
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“I call upon you to draw from the
depths of your being - to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our
love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than
our need to blame.”
Taylor was raised as a Christian
Scientist, but converted to Judaism in 1959. Although two of her husbands – Mike Todd and
Eddie Fisher – were Jewish, Taylor stated that she did not convert because of
them, but had wanted to do so "for a long time" as she felt she had
‘been a Jew all my life’. She found "comfort and dignity and hope for me
in this ancient religion that [has] survived for four thousand years...”. Biographers
suggest that Taylor was influenced in her decision by her godfather, Victor Cazalet, and her mother,
who were active supporters of Zionism during her
childhood.
Following her conversion, Taylor
became an active supporter of Jewish and Zionist causes. In 1959, she
purchased $100,000 worth of Israeli bonds, which led to her films being banned by Muslim
countries throughout the Middle East and Africa. She was also barred from
entering Egypt to film Cleopatra in 1962, but the ban was
lifted two years later after the Egyptian officials realised that the film
brought positive publicity for the country. In addition to purchasing bonds,
Taylor helped to raise money for organizations such as the Jewish National Fund, and sat on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
She also advocated for the right
of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel, cancelled a visit
to the USSR because of its condemnation of Israel due to the Six-Day War, and signed a
letter protesting the United Nations General Assembly
Resolution 3379 of 1975. In 1976, she selflessly offered
herself as a replacement hostage after more than 100 Israeli civilians were
taken hostage in the Entebbe skyjacking. She had a
small role in the television film made about the incident, Victory at Entebbe (1976), and narrated Genocide (1981), an Academy Award-winning documentary
about the Holocaust. This again shows
her commitment to causes beyond film and romance.
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“You just do it. You force yourself
to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and God damn
it, you refuse to let it get to you. You fight. You cry. You curse. Then you go
about the business of living. That's how I've done it. There's no other way.”
Taylor struggled with health problems
for most of her life. She was born with scoliosis and broke her
back while filming National Velvet in 1944 – although the
fracture went undetected for several years, causing her chronic back problems. In
1956, she underwent an operation in which some of her spinal discs were removed
and replaced with donated bone. Taylor was also prone to other illnesses and
injuries, which often necessitated surgery.
In addition, she was addicted to
alcohol and prescription pain killers and tranquilizers for many years. She was
treated at the Betty Ford Center for seven
weeks from December 1983 to January 1984, becoming the first celebrity to
openly admit herself to the clinic. She relapsed later in the decade, and
entered rehabilitation again in 1988.
Taylor also struggled with her weight
– she became overweight in the 1970s, especially after her marriage to Senator
John Warner, and published a diet book about her experiences, Elizabeth
Takes Off (1988). Taylor was a heavy smoker until she experienced a
severe bout of pneumonia in 1990.
Taylor's health increasingly declined
during the last two decades of her life, and she rarely attended public events
after about 1996. Taylor had serious bouts of pneumonia in 1990 and 2000, underwent hip replacement surgery in the mid-1990s, underwent
surgery for a benign brain tumor in 1997, and
was successfully treated for skin cancer in 2002. She used a wheelchair due to
her back problems, and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2004. Six weeks after being
hospitalized, she died of the illness at age 79 on March 23, 2011 in Los
Angeles. Her funeral took place the following day at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The service was a private Jewish ceremony. At Taylor's request, the ceremony
began 15 minutes behind schedule, as, according to her representative,
"She even wanted to be late for her own funeral". Iconic til the end.
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“You are who you are. All you can do
in this world is help others to be who they are and better themselves.”
Taylor was one of the last stars of classical Hollywood cinema and one of the first modern celebrities. She was pedestaled as different from "ordinary" people, and her public image was carefully crafted and controlled by her studios from a young age. When the era of classical Hollywood ended in the 1960s, and paparazzi photography became a normal feature of media culture, Taylor came to define a new type of celebrity, whose real private life was the focus of public interest. According to Adam Bernstein of The Washington Post, "[m]ore than for any film role, she became famous for being famous, setting a media template for later generations of entertainers, models, and all variety of semi-somebodies."
Despite her many acting awards, Taylor's
performances were often overlooked by contemporary critics. According to
film historian Jeanine Basinger, "No actress
ever had a more difficult job in getting critics to accept her onscreen as
someone other than Elizabeth Taylor... Her persona ate her alive." Her film roles often mirrored her personal
life – especially her romance with Burton - and many critics continue to regard her as
always playing herself, rather than acting.
Taylor has also been discussed by
journalists and scholars interested in the role of women in Western
society. Camille Paglia writes that
Taylor was a "pre-feminist woman" who "wields the sexual power
that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like
Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of
Troy." In contrast, others have called Taylor an "accidental
feminist", stating that while she did not identify as a feminist, many of
her films had feminist themes and "introduced a broad audience to feminist
ideas”. For example, Giant "dismantled stereotypes about
women and minorities".
Speaking of her charity work, former
President Bill Clinton said at her death, "Elizabeth's legacy will live on
in many people around the world whose lives will be longer and better because
of her work and the ongoing efforts of those she inspired."
Personally I think Elizabeth Taylor
is an icon and an excellent example of the way women are used, controlled,
sexualised, scandalised, and slammed by the media – themes which remain all too
relevant today. In particular, it reminds me of the way that Taylor Swift is
treated by the media – slut shamed for her many men while male actors and
singers sleep with whomever and whoever many people they like with no
repercussions. Swift has also been slated for using her personal life in her
career, the way that Elizabeth Taylor was said too – but both became hugely successful
for it and as I see used the constant media scrutunity to their advantage
rather than letting it destroy them as so many others have. All of Elizabeth’s
affairs were two-way, with the men also committing adultery and yet it was
Elizabeth who was decried and shamed for “breaking up their families”. Despite
her excesses of spending, she proved herself a generous and loyal spouse and
friend, a dedicated philanthropist, and I would argue, a feminist icon whether
she intended to be or not.
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