Was there ever a “private” Elizabeth Taylor? Was there ever a moment in her elegant and ephemeral career spent outside the glare of the camera, on the set, on stage, on the street?
Elizabeth Taylor was the first true tabloid sensation, the “other woman” who ruined Debbie Reynolds’ fairytale marriage to Eddie Fisher. She was a superstar before she was 20, a thrice-married widow by 36, and notorious scandal sheet fodder for most of the 1960s and ’70s. By the time she had married and left actor Richard Burton (twice) and tried her hand at a “regular” guy with last husband Larry Fortensky, she had been a Senator’s spouse, a comedy skit laughing stock, and the last remaining vestige of former Hollywood glamour and glitz flitting around the fringes of an industry that had downgraded her from regal to relic.
However, there remains nothing remotely antique about the seminal silver screen beauty, a bombshell before such descriptions were possible or polite. With her violet eyes and stunning brunette facade, Elizabeth Taylor flew squarely in the face of those who believed fashion favored the blond and the bimbo.
Throughout her career, Elizabeth Taylor was earnest and easy to like, complicated and incorrigible, immensely talented and readily dismissed as part of the studio system’s cruel conveyor belt paradigm. Still, she holds more Oscars in her hands than many modern Method icons, and is never far from the art form’s Best-of discussions.
So her passing due to complications from congestive heart failure is not the end of an era. Instead, it’s a chance to re-embrace a forgotten film star whose myth has stayed as bright as the spotlight shown on her spectacle-laden private life.
Elizabeth Taylor Unruffled
You can’t be married eight times, in such splashy public fashion, and not suffer a few stinging rebuffs. You can’t own an Academy Award for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and not expect some backlash when the industry hands you another for the underwhelming Butterfield 8. In a career spanning six decades and seminal titles like A Place in the Sun, Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Suddenly, Last Summer, there’s going to be some drivel (Raintree County), some dross (The VIPs), and some dreck (Boom!, A Little Night Music).
In a world that nitpicks choices and chances, Elizabeth Taylor was uniquely independent. Her undeniable facade allowed her the luxury of being who she wanted, when she wanted, no matter what the public needed or what the papers published about her.
In many ways, she was destined to live forever. Indeed, she defied death so many times that she seemed like the literal feline incarnation of the famous Tennessee Williams’ chanteuse she once played.
During the filming of Cleopatra, she was rushed from the set and, upon recovery, returned with a prominent (and hard to disguise) tracheotomy scar. When she was 12, she fell off a horse and hurt her back. She eventually had both hips replaced. It took a team of nine doctors several grueling hours to deliver her premature third child, and she battled various pneumonias and respiratory infections throughout her life. She even experienced the ultimate in celebrity medical misery – a six-week stay in the Betty Ford Clinic for drug and alcohol dependency.
And still Elizabeth Taylor’s allure remained. She was the first Hollywood actress to earn a million dollars in a movie. She translated her aging star power into a profitable stint creating perfumes (White Diamonds, Passion, and Black Pearls) and designing jewelry. When her friend and famous co-star Rock Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS, she became a staunch advocate for disease awareness. Upon his untimely death, she helped start amfAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) and worked tirelessly to raise money.
Initially protective of her image, she eventually lightened up, making fun of herself in films like The Mirror Crack’d and TV appearances (The Simpsons, The Nanny). She was indeed a rarity, a component of classic cinema that transcended time and place, remaining relevant in every decade she lived.
Elizabeth Taylor’s Beautiful Gutsiness
None of this lessens her impact onscreen. Elizabeth Taylor was a terrific actress, a whole-body performer who never let a single scene go by without bringing whatever she could to the mix. When she was young and just discovering the power inherent in her looks, she was coy and convincing. As she aged, she moved from China doll to champion.
There’s a gutsiness and determination that comes with the Taylor territory, a world-weary sense of “seen it all” that follows every film she was in. Even when the material doesn’t match her mystery, she’s veiled and vibrant, swelling bosom suggesting a sexuality ripe for the relishing. Even a stint as Michael Jackson’s lead cheerleader couldn’t derail what once commanded the movie screen.
That’s because Elizabeth Taylor is the ultimate cinematic icon. She’s Marilyn Monroe without the secret shame (and short shelf life), she’s Bette Davis without the depressing diva dryness. She’s a more down-to-earth Katherine Hepburn and a far friendlier Vivien Leigh.
She’s been hero and villain, saint and sinner, and any other clichéd dichotomy you can think of. The many hats she wore were always fashionable, frequently controversial, and never without relative rhyme or reason. It’s hard to say if she was more famous for being famous (and tirelessly maintaining said fame) than anything she did within her craft, but the truth trips by at 24 irrefutable frames per second. If you put the ultimate idealized version of an actress, a beauty, a troubled bad girl, and a grace Grand Dame in the karmic blender, something like Elizabeth Taylor would pour out.
At her passing, Elizabeth Taylor will be canonized and crucified, lied about and lamented. Her face will plaster a billion blogs, each hoping the aura she provides will give them one more day of significance. Her love affair with Richard Burton will become the blundering benchmark for all uber-celeb couplings, and her later years will be stained by gossip, innuendo, and coat-tailing cash considerations.
While there was never really a private Elizabeth Taylor, there was part of her story that few understood. In death, the truth does not always come clear. For someone like this fallen idol, that may end up being a benefit.