Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Movie Star

Richard Burton and Liz Taylor

One of my first exposures to Elizabeth Taylor was in a high school British Literature class, when I watched her in The Taming of the Shrew, with Richard Burton.  She played a bitch, was over weight and had an abundance of cleavage.   Later I saw some of her other films and discovered that she was a great actress and a very attractive young woman. 

Taylor was the first actress or actor to get paid one million dollars for a role, Cleopatra, in which she was horribly miscast.   She won two Academy Awards, one for Butterfield 8 and her second for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  She became a star as a child in National Velvet.  Although she made many films, her personal life outshone any of her screen work.

In the 1950s, she was the brunette rival to Marilyn Monroe.  She married eight times, including twice to Richard Burton.  Her marriage to Eddie Fisher was scandalous as the tabloids ripped her a new one for stealing him away from his then wife Debbie Reynolds. Today's Benifer's and Brangelina's were all preceded by Burton and Taylor. They never got a cute nickname, but their relationship was scrutinized with the same frenzy as today's power couples.

Unlike Monroe, who died at a young age, Taylor grew up and grew old in front of the cameras.  Her beauty disappeared behind obesity, dyed hair and drug use.  John Belushi infamously impersonated her on Saturday Night Live, as an aging, overweight star who scarfed down fried chicken during an interview. She went to rehab, fat camp, hung out with Michael Jackson, was an activist for AIDS awareness and pitched perfume.  Although considered the last movie star to come out of the old studio system, Taylor became very common, with flaws we do not always associate with stars of her caliber.

Taylor in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer in 1959.

Elizabeth Taylor died Wednesday morning in Los Angeles of complications from congestive heart failure.   She was 79.  She bridged the gap between old-time classic movie stars and the modern impersonators we see today.  She made her name in legitimate films and in tabloid stories.  Whether you liked her or not, she was the last great movie star of her time.

Unlike Eric, I have always adored the violet eyed legend.  Elizabeth Taylor was a star for the ages and her beauty will live forever.  Watch her in A Place In the Sun to learn why close-ups were invented.  Her performance in Virginia Woolf is a master class in bitterness and disillusionment. 

Taylor was not only the last of the great studio era stars she was also the last surviving icon of the 1950's.  Marilyn Monroe and James Dean died beautiful and young, while Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor aged before our eyes.  Taylor, through all of her many career triumphs, personal tragedies and near death health scares remained 100 percent a Great Lady and a truly great humanitarian.  Thank god for her body of work as we won't see the likes of her again.