the glamorous queen of American movie stardom, whose achievements as an
actress were often overshadowed by her rapturous looks and real-life
dramas, died early Wednesday of congestive heart failure at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in
During a career that spanned six decades, the
legendary beauty with lavender eyes won two Oscars and made more than
50 films, performing alongside such fabled leading men as
Long after she faded from the screen, she remained a
mesmerizing figure, blessed and cursed by the extraordinary celebrity
that molded her life through its many phases: She was a child star who
bloomed gracefully into an ingenue; a femme fatale on the screen and in
life; a canny peddler of high-priced perfume; a pioneering activist in
the fight against AIDS.
Some actresses, such as
won more awards and critical plaudits, but none matched Taylor’s hold
on the collective imagination. In the public’s mind, she was the dark
goddess for whom playing Cleopatra, as she did with such notoriety,
required no great leap from reality.
whom the triumphs and disasters of her personal life have automatically
become extensions of her screen performances. She’s different from the
rest of us.”
Her passions were legend. She loved to eat, which
led to well-publicized battles with weight over the years. She loved
men, dating many of the world’s richest and most famous, including
She loved jewels, amassing huge and expensive baubles the way children collect toys.
“It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a big ring on
a gift from Burton that she wore daily. It broadcast to the world that
she was a lady with an enormous lust for life.
But Taylor attracted misfortune too. According to
one chronicler, she suffered more than 70 illnesses, injuries and
accidents requiring hospitalization, including an appendectomy, an
emergency tracheotomy, a punctured esophagus, a hysterectomy,
dysentery, an ulcerated eye, smashed spinal discs, phlebitis, skin
cancer and hip replacements. In 1997, she had a benign brain tumor
removed. By her own count, she nearly died four times.
In 2004 she disclosed that she had congestive heart
failure and crippling spinal problems that left her in constant pain.
For much of her life she struggled with alcohol and prescription
painkillers.
She was often described as the quintessential Tennessee Williams heroine, a characterization Taylor did not dispute.
It meant, she once told the Los Angeles Times, “steamy, full of drama. I’m sure they didn’t mean it kindly.
On the evening of
Despite an armada of hot-air balloons launched as a shield against
prying eyes, a parachutist wearing a camera on his helmet managed to
land mere yards from the 59-year-old bride and her 39-year-old groom.
Thus were Taylor and construction worker
Who could know? The only sure thing was that
“I’m more of a man’s woman,” she once admitted.
“With men, there’s a kind of twinkle that comes out. I sashay up to a
man. I walk up to a woman.”
She was 17 when Husband No. 1 laid eyes on her. That was
the handsome scion of the Hilton hotel clan. Their 1950 marriage,
burdened by Taylor’s celebrity and Hilton’s gambling, drinking and
abusive behavior, lasted eight months.
No. 2 was
No. 3 was
producer (“Around the World in 80 Days”) who would be one of the two
great loves of her life. After he delivered an hour-long monologue
about why they should marry and a 30-carat diamond to seal the deal,
they exchanged vows in 1957. They had been married slightly more than a
year when, on
In the days following Todd’s death,
read through thousands of sympathy letters and telegrams. When mutual
consolation turned into romance, Fisher broke up with Reynolds and
married Taylor in 1959.
After the wedding, Taylor’s career reached new
peaks, but Fisher’s flagged, creating an opening for the second great
love of Taylor’s life.
The future No. 5 met Taylor at a Sunday afternoon
swim party. “She was, I decided, the most astonishingly self-contained,
pulchritudinous, remote, removed, inaccessible woman I had ever seen,”
Burton wrote in a diary passage quoted in
He and Taylor began a tumultuous affair in
on the set of “Cleopatra,” the epic about the Egyptian queen who dies
for love. Because both were huge stars married to other people, their
adultery caused a worldwide scandal. A member of Congress introduced a
motion to ban them from the U.S., and
Such bad press,
encouraged the besotted stars. After a two-year separation, Taylor
divorced Fisher in early 1964 and married Burton.
Theirs was a marriage on a grand scale. She gave him
a Van Gogh, he lavished her with priceless gems, including the behemoth
Krupp diamond and a 25-carat, heart-shaped pendant of diamonds, rubies
and emeralds originally made for the bride of the man who built the Taj
Mahal. Burton also outbid shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis for a
America’s most famous couple not only spent
extravagantly, but also fought and drank to excess. When their union
finally unraveled, Burton told the London Daily Mail: “You can’t keep
clapping a couple of sticks (of dynamite) together without expecting
them to blow up.” They were divorced by a Swiss court on
The next year they retied the knot before an African tribal chief in
Taylor said that if Burton had not had a fatal brain hemorrhage in
in 1984 she probably would have wound up with him a third time. “I was
still madly in love with him until the day he died,” she said. Long
after his death, she kept a copy of his last letter — penned three days
before his death — in her bedside drawer. She allowed many of the
letters to be published in the book “Furious Love” by
Husband No. 6 appeared when the screen goddess needed an escort for a dinner honoring
a ruggedly handsome former secretary of the Navy and gentleman farmer
from Virginia. They were married in 1976, and in 1978 he was elected to
the U.S. Senate.
Although Taylor had been a devoted campaigner, she
found she was ill-suited for the role of political wife. While Warner
spent long hours in
she passed the time watching television and eating until her weight
ballooned to 180 pounds on a 5-foot-4 frame. “I don’t think I’ve ever
been so alone in my life as when I was Mrs. Senator,” she wrote in “
Seeking relief in acting, she starred in a
canceled her run as the senator’s wife and moved to a mansion in
By the end of 1983, she was burned out, bloated and
abusing alcohol and pills. Confronted by her family and close friend
Roddy McDowall, she checked into the Betty Ford Center in
was “peeled down to the absolute core” in group therapy sessions. Her
public announcement that she was being treated for substance abuse
encouraged other celebrities, including
A clean and sober Taylor held on to her newfound
health for a few years, until pain from a crushed vertebra sent her
back to pills and booze. According to an investigation some years later
by the attorney general of
her addictions were enabled by three of her personal doctors, who wrote
more than 1,000 prescriptions over seven years for painkillers,
tranquilizers, antidepressants and stimulants.
During her second visit to the Betty Ford Center in
1988, she met Fortensky, a twice-married construction worker who was
seeking treatment for a drinking problem. After leaving the clinic,
Taylor invited him to
After the wedding in 1991, Fortensky tried to resume
his working man’s routine, rising before dawn to head to his
construction job. At the end of the day, he would park his dirty boots
outside the mansion door, shower and sit down to dinner with his wife
by
Life magazine in 1992: “I used to go to bed at 1 or 2 in the morning.
Now we’re in bed by 10 o’clock, and I have to admit I like it.”
But the charm wore off after Fortensky stopped
working. Citing irreconcilable differences, she filed for divorce in
1996 and swore off marriage.
“I don’t want to be a sex symbol,” she once said. “I
would rather be a symbol of a woman who makes mistakes, perhaps, but a
woman who loves.”
gave her and brother Howard seaside holidays, servants and plenty of
toys. Adults doted on little Elizabeth, who had luminous eyes,
alabaster skin framed by raven-black tresses and a tiny birthmark on
her right cheek that her mother highlighted with a cosmetic pencil.
When she was 7, her family moved to
With her fetching little-woman looks and a mother who aggressively
pushed her into auditions, Elizabeth was noticed by talent scouts and
soon had a contract at
10 she made her film debut in a little-noticed comedy, “There’s One
Born Every Minute.” Soon she was earning more than her father, whose
resentment of this fact deepened his reliance on alcohol and fueled
occasional beatings of his daughter.
“I stopped being a child the minute I started working in pictures,” she told writer
She changed studios in 1943 when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
was looking for a dog-loving English girl to play a small role in
“Lassie Come Home.” Elizabeth landed the part and became an
Critics did not really take notice of her until
to conservative statement, as being rapturously beautiful. I hardly
know or care whether she can act or not.”
After the success of “National Velvet,” it was
difficult for Taylor to call her life her own. Her contract, she said
later, “made me an
studio chose her roles, controlled her public appearances, picked her
dates and stage-managed her first wedding. After a string of ingenue
roles, she won her first romantic lead opposite
enough success to be noticed by the Harvard Lampoon, which teased her
for “so gallantly persisting in her career despite a total inability to
act.”
In 1951 she answered those skeptics with her work in
“A Place in the Sun,” directed by Stevens. Playing a restless, sexually
eager society girl drawn to a young man from a lower-class background,
Taylor won her first critical praise as an adult actress.
in the movie, said in 1985 that “A Place in the Sun” was “still the
best thing she ever did. Elizabeth had a depth and a simpleness which
were really remarkable.”
Stevens later hired her for another demanding role
in “Giant” (1956), an epic about two generations of Texans. She played
the wife of cattleman
who died in a car crash before the movie was released, played a wild
young ranch hand. Critics hailed her artistry, her “astonishing
revelation of unsuspected gifts,” the Times of
Her next three films would bring her Oscar nominations.
The first was for “Raintree County,” a 1957 release directed by
The next nomination was for her portrayal of Maggie
in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958). Taylor played
the beautiful, sexually seething wife of
plantation owner. Although the actress was widowed in the midst of
filming when Todd’s plane crashed, she managed to turn in a performance
widely considered one of the best of her adult career.
“She was an intuitive actress,” Newman said years
later of the woman who never took an acting lesson. “I was always
staggered by her ferocity, and how quickly she could tap into her
emotions. It was a privilege to watch her.”
Her third nomination recognized her work in
“Suddenly Last Summer,” another Williams story, which explored
insanity, homosexuality and cannibalism. A commercial success like “Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof,” it boosted Taylor into the box-office top 10 for
the first time. She remained in the top 10 almost every year for the
next decade.
In 1961 she won her first Oscar for her portrayal of
a call girl in a tortured affair with a married man in “Butterfield 8.”
Although she hated the part and the script, she agreed to the role
because it ended her contractual obligations to
Her next project was “Cleopatra” for Twentieth Century Fox. Taylor was loath to take the title role and set her asking price at
With a record-breaking final price tag of
The production also launched the most turbulent period of Taylor’s life. She contracted pneumonia during filming in
After she recovered and returned to the “Cleopatra”
set, headlines around the world began to scream details of her affair
with Burton. When the movie was finally released in 1963, the reviews
were brutal, but audiences flocked to see its shameless-in-love stars.
Taylor co-starred with Burton in several more
movies, including “The V.I.P.s” (1963); “The Sandpiper” (1965); “Doctor
Faustus,” “The Comedians” and “The Taming of the Shrew” (all 1967);
“Boom!” (1968); “Under Milk Wood” and “Hammersmith Is Out” (both 1972);
and an aptly titled television movie, “Divorce His, Divorce Hers”
(1973). Critics found most of their collaborations unremarkable.
The exception came in 1966, when the ritzy couple were cast against type in
Taylor gained 25 pounds and donned a gray wig and
extra padding to play Martha, the frumpy, foul-mouthed, highly educated
wife of Burton’s henpecked college professor. She was reportedly
terrified by the challenge of playing a role so far removed from her
glamorous persona.
Nichols put the Burtons and the other two cast members —
filming. Gradually, Taylor said, she grew so comfortable in her “Martha
suit” that it freed her acting.
Critics lavished praise on her performance, calling
it the best of her career. The film won five Oscars, including Taylor’s
second for best actress. She also won awards from the National Board of
Review, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., the New York Film Critics
Circle and what is now the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Her next film, “Reflections in a
(1967) with Brando, showed more of Taylor as a serious actress, but it
was followed by a torrent of bad movies that made it easy for critics
to dismiss her again. Her voice, thin and inflexible, was considered
one of her chief limitations.
Nonetheless, she played a surprisingly broad range
of roles, including a rollicking performance as a bitchy wife in the
1972 movie “X Y & Zee.” Critic
Taylor portrayed an aging movie star in “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980), an all-star adaptation of
in 1981 in “The Little Foxes.” In 1983, she reunited professionally
with Burton in the Noel Coward farce “Private Lives,” a play about a
divorced couple whose romance is rekindled by a chance meeting. “Life
doesn’t imitate art in this ‘Private Lives,'”
With her acting career in decline, she turned to business. In 1987 she introduced
Among her last acting jobs was the modest role of
Fred Flintstone’s mother-in-law in the 1994 release “The Flintstones,”
Universal’s live-action version of the cartoon series. Critic Leonard
Maltin called her performance “deliciously funny.” She also lent her
voice to a character on Fox Television’s popular animated show “The
Simpsons.”
In 2001, she co-starred with
Taylor said she would have relished more character
roles but the market was limited for aging glamour queens. Neither
could she slowly fade away: Her every move was still fodder for the
tabloid press. “So I thought, if you’re going to screw me over, I’ll
use you,” she told Vanity Fair in 1992. “I could take the fame I’d
resented so long and use it to do some good.”
Taylor had many gay friends and, as the AIDS
epidemic mushroomed, some of them were dying. In 1985, she became the
most prominent celebrity to back what was then a most unfashionable
cause. She agreed to chair the first major AIDS benefit, a fundraising
dinner for the nonprofit AIDS Project Los Angeles.
She began calling her A-list friends to solicit their support. Some of
biggest stars (Sinatra reportedly among them) turned her down. Taylor
redoubled her efforts, aided along the way by the stunning announcement
that Hudson, the handsome matinee idol and “Giant” co-star, had the
dreaded disease.
Thanks to Taylor’s high profile and public sympathy for Hudson, the star-studded AIDS fundraiser netted
“
‘Entertainment Tonight,’ and you can’t underestimate the value of that
kind of exposure,” Shilts said. “It made the disease something that
respectable people could talk about.”
Taylor went on to co-found, with Dr.
the first national organization devoted to backing AIDS research, the
American Foundation for AIDS Research, or AmFAR. In 1991 she formed the
Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which directly supports AIDS
education and patient care. She denounced President
accusing him of inaction on AIDS; called for AIDS testing; and
emphasized personal responsibility in prevention of the disease.
“People shouldn’t stop having sex — I’d be the last person in the world
to advocate that — but safe sex,” she said, “is important.”
Her AIDS work brought her the Legion of Honor,
highest civilian award, in 1987 and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993.In 2000,
Through her various efforts she would eventually raise more than
In late 2007 she made a rare return to the stage to raise another million in a benefit performance of
Guild members temporarily laid down their picket signs to allow Taylor
and guests to support the event without guilt or rancor. After her
moving reading brought the audience to its feet, the frail actress
stood up from her wheelchair to acknowledge the ovation. She was still
regal — and dripping diamonds.
In addition to her sons
———
(c) 2011, Los Angeles Times.
Visit the Los Angeles Times on the Internet at http://www.latimes.com/.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.