I admit that I tend to overuse the adjective extraordinary, but no one will dissent when I use once more to describe the life of Dame Elizabeth Taylor, one of the remarkable women of the 20th century who died a few days ago, 23rd March 2011 les than a month after her 79th birthday. Yet she was named only 7th on the Legend list by The American Film Institute. The others before her in top spots are Kathrine Hepburn and Bette Davis where I concur, but not Audrey Hepburn in third over Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe. The rest of the list is Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Grace Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Mae West, Vivien Leigh, Lillian Gish, Shirley Temple, Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Sophia Loren, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford and Ava Gardner. Oh what a list and whose films the majority of which it has been my enjoyment to have experienced.
Elizabeth made four films as a child actress before the one which brought her to International attention, National Velvet in which she dressed up as a young boy to ride as a jockey in a major horse race in the USA. I have also seen most of the films which she had roles in those early days: There is one born every Minute, Lassie Come Home and Courage of Lassie, Jane, Eyre, the White Cliffs of Dover and Little Women where she played Amy.
It was in the 1950 that she blossomed into one of the most beautiful actresses in the world with her role in Father of Bride with Spencer Tracy, followed by Quo Vadis unaccredited role) and Ivanhoe. Some of the films of this era I cannot now remember seeing from the titles alone but I do remember Elephant Walk and Beau Brummell and the recently viewed, The Last Time I saw Paris all first appearing before my sixteenth birthday and leaving school.
In 1956 she made Giant which was screened this week and I will write more lately and this was quickly followed by Raintree County which was the first of the first of three successive Academy Nominations. The second was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof followed by Suddenly last Summer in 1959, her third nomination.
It was in her next but one film, Butterfield 8 1960 that she gained her first Award as Best Actress. followed by Cleopatra, The V.I.P.s and The Sand Piper and then as Martha in the film production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf she gained her second Best Actress award. I started to view the film recently but what not in the mood for this take of a couple tearing pieces from each other within a bonded loved relationship. She appeared in the truncated film version of The Taming of he Shrew followed by Helen of Troy in Dr Faustus, a role which she played with Richard Burton on the stage of the Oxford Playhouse while I was living and working in Oxfordshire.
I always watch the film the Comedians when it reappears, released in 1967 and sometimes Reflections in a Gold Eye where she played alongside Marlon Brando. I also have seen Anne of a thousand days, X, Y and Zee and a good version of Under Milk Wood. I have the DVD of Divorce His Divorce Hers which I picked up for a few pounds at the Supermarket and from the 1970; also Ash Wednesday, That’s Entertainment and Victory in Entebbe. I do not remember the Blue Bird.
In 1980 there was the Agatha Christie The Mirror Crack’d, her last major film in 1980 with Young Toscanini in 1988 the last but one for theatres, and the Flintstones in 1994, the last. Between 1980 and 2001 most of her appearances were TV films and Mini series with the most well known North and South. Her voice was heard in two episodes of the Simpsons!
Unusually she retained her birth name from her early childhood in Hampstead Garden Suburb, and where both parents were American citizens. He father was an art dealer and her mother an actress. The family‘s closest friend was Colonel Victor Cazalet, a Member of Parliament and friend of Churchill who was Elizabeth’s God Father, a Christian scientist and lay preacher. Cazalet influenced her greatly and his passionate support for a Jewish homeland may have been instrumental in her conversion to Judaism at the age of 27. Although of dual nationality she saw herself as British and renounced all allegiance to the USA although with war about to be declared her parents returned to their homeland in 1939. Her father opened an art gallery in Los Angeles and attracted interest from film celebrities.
This led to her mother being told that Elizabeth ought to be in films and although mother resisted her young photographic beauty reached the ears of MGM and Louis B Mayor and Universal studios who wanted to put her under contract without a screen test. Universal succeeded with a seven year contract. However they were not impressed with her first and only film for the studio and she moved to MGM.
As mentioned it was with another all time favourite former child Star Mickey Rooney that they hit the international headlines with National Velvet and her life was transformed.
It is also fair to admit that her private life proved as interesting to many as the film career It is not known to me what factors in her upbringing and early Hollywood under contract experience led her to become dependent on a male sexual relationship throughout the greater part of her life and which put her on the front pages throughout the world, often not in a favourable light. In 1950 she married Conrad Hilton junior, a relationship in which he was reported to have behaved violently towards her and had a drink problem and they divorced after only nine months in 1951. He subsequently had relationships with Joan Collins and Natalie Wood. He died in his early forties.
In 1952 Elizabeth married the British led actor Michael Wilding some two decades her senior and who had divorced in 1951 after a marriage of 14 years. They were divorced in 1957 and he subsequently married Susan Neil and then Margaret Leighton.
With a week of her divorce absolute Elizabeth aged 24 years married Michael Todd the film Director but this ended tragically with his death a year later aged 49. Michael had married his teenage sweetheart when aged 17 years but his wife died from illness in 1946. In 1947 he married the actress Joan Blondell but she divorces him alleging physical cruelty in 1950.
A year Elizabeth married Eddie Fisher in circumstances where she justifiably gained great public condemnation. Eddie was one of the best known singing crooners of the 1950’s and had married a much loved actress Debbie Reynolds and he and his wife were best friend of Mike Todd and therefore Elizabeth. Elizabeth is reported to have said when criticised for taking Eddie into her bed when there their to show compassion for the death of Mike that she should not be expected to remain celibate. After their divorce in 1964 so she could immediately marry Richard Burton, Eddie went onto marry the female singer Connie Stevens. Debbie‘s daughter Carrie starred in the film Star Wars. She married twice subsequently both ending in divorces with financial problems a major issue. She and Elizabeth became friends again after they found themselves travelling on the Queen Elizabeth ship together.
Of all the marriages it was that to the Welsh Actor Richard Burton many regard still as the greatest classical actor of his generation which fuelled the international gossip columns because their relationship was known to tempestuous. He divorced his first long standing wife with two children to marry Elizabeth. It is known that Elizabeth was determined to make the marriage work and although they divorced in 1974, less than two years later they remarried but divorced again sixteen months later. Burton was a complex man who speculated about his possible homosexuality, drank excessively and smoked between 60 and 100 cigarettes a day. He was also a notorious womanizer. He married the former wife of Formula 1 racing driver James Hunt and then a Make up artist who became a novelist. He died early at the age of 58.
Elizabeth then married a politician the Republican Senator John Warner in 1976. His first married was to a Banking Heiress and they divorced in 1973 leaving his three children. His wife reverted to her maiden name. They divorced in 1982 Elizabeth unable to adjust to life she wanted, she became an alcoholic and entered the famous Betty Ford Clinic. John married again in 2003 to the widow of a White House staffer. He is only one of two husbands still alive.
Her last marriage, undertaken at the Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch, was to Larry Fortensky, in 1991 who she met at the Clinic and was thirty years her junior. He was drafted into the army but discharged three months later. He was married twice before meeting Taylor. The marriage lasted five years and end was a legal financial settlement.
This was not the final chapter in Elizabeth’s relationships as between 2007 and 2009 she was said to be enjoying a relationship with Jason Winters who she described as the most wonderful man she had ever known. She had four children, two with Wilding, one Todd and one Burton, ten grandchildren, the first born when she was 39 and four great grand children
Alongside her personal life and film career, Elizabeth became the first major celebrity to support the welfare of those diagnosed with HIV infection and Aids, raising over $100 million over 30 years and which covered every aspect from research, treatment and combating discrimination.
Her ability to court controversy was never far away as she supported Michael Jackson during the trial where he was accused of sexually abusing a minor and she never let up from her passion for the flamboyant and some would say vulgar display of jewellery owning some of the largest and most expensive finger rocks in the world but jewellery was also a business for her as was perfume from which she made hundreds of millions in profits.
It is also not surprising that give such a life her body became wracked with illness- from a fortunately benign brain tumour and skin cancer to needing both hips replaced and life threatening pneumonia and an emergency tracheotomy, in addition to the problems of alcoholic and drug addiction. With that I rest my case for using the adjective extraordinary.
By luck and good programming the first of what I suspect will be a season of Dame Elizabeth’s films, Giant was on the television as her death was announced. Cleopatra is also available at the moment. Giant was an original Edna Faber novel about the development of Texas from a cattle ranching into the present day oil rich state of which Dallas the 1980’s series which is being resurrected with some of the survivors of the original cast. I watched the film with growing impatience disliking all the characters except Elizabeth.
Rick Hudson always looked good but who performances always appeared dry for me but his performance in Giant as a Neanderthal heterosexual male is effective give his homosexuality. He plays Jordan Bick Benedict who owns half of Texas cattle ranching with his sister who has James Dean working for her.
On a visit to Maryland to buy a stud horse Hudson sets on Elizabeth Taylor who is an educated socialite with enlightened parents who misguidedly falls for his charms without realising all he wants is a breeding machine to produce a son to inherit and carry on enlarging the empire.
His typical Texan mentality is that politics is not for women and that no one who is poor or a different race should enter his kingdom brutally stolen from the indigenous land holders. He is in every sense a nasty bit of work and nothing much changes throughout the film until he is forced by circumstances. Elizabeth quickly realises she had made a poor choice and escapes to her family only to return. She also crosses swords with the sister who is just as prejudiced against the Mexicans a her brother and her assistant James Dean.
The sister and Elizabeth hate each other but she dies from a horse riding accident and in her will leaves a comparatively small plot of land to Dean where he starts to drill for oil much to the horror of Hudson who tries all he can to get him off. Elizabeth is sympathetic to Dean and visits him alone after she has become a mother of twins, to be played by Dennis Hopper and Fran Bennett when they become adults. There is a third child played by Carol Baker who becomes the most silly and obnoxious of all the characters.
When he strikes oil Dean visits Hudson and boasts of how rich and important he going to be and cannot disguise his passion for Taylor and the two men fight and go their separate ways. Although wealthy from the oil on his land Dean and his advisers realise their horizon is limited so he establishes an oil prospecting and drilling company and when the Second World War breaks out he persuades Hudson to do his national duty and soon a forest of well cover the estate although is still possible to ranch cattle. The old house is replaced by a mansion with an outdoor swimming pool. To some extent the story is repeated in Dallas with the Ewing’s and Cliff Barnes.
As mentioned the son and heir is played by Dennis Hopper who made his name in Easy Rider and became and become a recognised major actor. As a child, under his mother‘s influence he shows no interest in ranching and under mother’s influence goes off to Harvard to study medicine and qualifies a medical doctor with a social conscious marrying a Mexican from the family estate. The twin sister wants to attend local ranching school and marry the head rancher who Hudson likes and which does against herm mother’s wish that she attends a finishing school in Switzerland. When the ranch hand returns from World War II service he and his wife reject the offer of inheriting the ranch for their own small places and making their way. I forget who suggests to Hudson that he might return the land to the indigenous Americans!
When Dean visits to persuade Hudson to exploit the oil, Carol Baker flirts with Dean, a man who is now more than twice her age. Dean then organises a self congratulatory gala in his own honour to mark his increasingly powerful role as Texas leading citizen and philanthropist
Mr Dean shot to International fame with two films released in 1955, Rebel without a Cause and East of Eden. He died in a car accident before Giant was completed in 1956. Dean was a product of the Actor’s studio and Method acting with Lee Strasbourg and while he seems to be continuing his Rebel, but with cause role in the early part of this film, the role requires him to become a ruthless, personally ambitious capitalist and racists to boot. In the film he invites Hudson and his family to the event and they misguidedly agree. They find that he has remained as vicious a racists as ever and his staff make a point of rejecting the daughter in law at every opportunity. While he had made Carol Baker Princess of the Carnival and she wants him he has not intention of marrying her and his sense of grievance continues with every wish to humiliate the family. He is able to knock Hudson out with the help of his personal security. Hudson then has a second confrontation over racism, this time with the manager of a diner who is only carrying out company policy in not serving any non white colours. He has reluctantly agree to serve his son in law‘s wife and her papoose because of who they are, but rejects a Mexican family who son died during the war and was buried with honour on the Benedict burial site on the estate. Elizabeth has meanwhile grown old gracefully. The film ends at this point
The films last three hours and 17 minutes was nominated for ten Oscars without success, made a lot of money and in 2005 was put in the Library of Congress being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
Elizabeth made four films as a child actress before the one which brought her to International attention, National Velvet in which she dressed up as a young boy to ride as a jockey in a major horse race in the USA. I have also seen most of the films which she had roles in those early days: There is one born every Minute, Lassie Come Home and Courage of Lassie, Jane, Eyre, the White Cliffs of Dover and Little Women where she played Amy.
It was in the 1950 that she blossomed into one of the most beautiful actresses in the world with her role in Father of Bride with Spencer Tracy, followed by Quo Vadis unaccredited role) and Ivanhoe. Some of the films of this era I cannot now remember seeing from the titles alone but I do remember Elephant Walk and Beau Brummell and the recently viewed, The Last Time I saw Paris all first appearing before my sixteenth birthday and leaving school.
In 1956 she made Giant which was screened this week and I will write more lately and this was quickly followed by Raintree County which was the first of the first of three successive Academy Nominations. The second was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof followed by Suddenly last Summer in 1959, her third nomination.
It was in her next but one film, Butterfield 8 1960 that she gained her first Award as Best Actress. followed by Cleopatra, The V.I.P.s and The Sand Piper and then as Martha in the film production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf she gained her second Best Actress award. I started to view the film recently but what not in the mood for this take of a couple tearing pieces from each other within a bonded loved relationship. She appeared in the truncated film version of The Taming of he Shrew followed by Helen of Troy in Dr Faustus, a role which she played with Richard Burton on the stage of the Oxford Playhouse while I was living and working in Oxfordshire.
I always watch the film the Comedians when it reappears, released in 1967 and sometimes Reflections in a Gold Eye where she played alongside Marlon Brando. I also have seen Anne of a thousand days, X, Y and Zee and a good version of Under Milk Wood. I have the DVD of Divorce His Divorce Hers which I picked up for a few pounds at the Supermarket and from the 1970; also Ash Wednesday, That’s Entertainment and Victory in Entebbe. I do not remember the Blue Bird.
In 1980 there was the Agatha Christie The Mirror Crack’d, her last major film in 1980 with Young Toscanini in 1988 the last but one for theatres, and the Flintstones in 1994, the last. Between 1980 and 2001 most of her appearances were TV films and Mini series with the most well known North and South. Her voice was heard in two episodes of the Simpsons!
Unusually she retained her birth name from her early childhood in Hampstead Garden Suburb, and where both parents were American citizens. He father was an art dealer and her mother an actress. The family‘s closest friend was Colonel Victor Cazalet, a Member of Parliament and friend of Churchill who was Elizabeth’s God Father, a Christian scientist and lay preacher. Cazalet influenced her greatly and his passionate support for a Jewish homeland may have been instrumental in her conversion to Judaism at the age of 27. Although of dual nationality she saw herself as British and renounced all allegiance to the USA although with war about to be declared her parents returned to their homeland in 1939. Her father opened an art gallery in Los Angeles and attracted interest from film celebrities.
This led to her mother being told that Elizabeth ought to be in films and although mother resisted her young photographic beauty reached the ears of MGM and Louis B Mayor and Universal studios who wanted to put her under contract without a screen test. Universal succeeded with a seven year contract. However they were not impressed with her first and only film for the studio and she moved to MGM.
As mentioned it was with another all time favourite former child Star Mickey Rooney that they hit the international headlines with National Velvet and her life was transformed.
It is also fair to admit that her private life proved as interesting to many as the film career It is not known to me what factors in her upbringing and early Hollywood under contract experience led her to become dependent on a male sexual relationship throughout the greater part of her life and which put her on the front pages throughout the world, often not in a favourable light. In 1950 she married Conrad Hilton junior, a relationship in which he was reported to have behaved violently towards her and had a drink problem and they divorced after only nine months in 1951. He subsequently had relationships with Joan Collins and Natalie Wood. He died in his early forties.
In 1952 Elizabeth married the British led actor Michael Wilding some two decades her senior and who had divorced in 1951 after a marriage of 14 years. They were divorced in 1957 and he subsequently married Susan Neil and then Margaret Leighton.
With a week of her divorce absolute Elizabeth aged 24 years married Michael Todd the film Director but this ended tragically with his death a year later aged 49. Michael had married his teenage sweetheart when aged 17 years but his wife died from illness in 1946. In 1947 he married the actress Joan Blondell but she divorces him alleging physical cruelty in 1950.
A year Elizabeth married Eddie Fisher in circumstances where she justifiably gained great public condemnation. Eddie was one of the best known singing crooners of the 1950’s and had married a much loved actress Debbie Reynolds and he and his wife were best friend of Mike Todd and therefore Elizabeth. Elizabeth is reported to have said when criticised for taking Eddie into her bed when there their to show compassion for the death of Mike that she should not be expected to remain celibate. After their divorce in 1964 so she could immediately marry Richard Burton, Eddie went onto marry the female singer Connie Stevens. Debbie‘s daughter Carrie starred in the film Star Wars. She married twice subsequently both ending in divorces with financial problems a major issue. She and Elizabeth became friends again after they found themselves travelling on the Queen Elizabeth ship together.
Of all the marriages it was that to the Welsh Actor Richard Burton many regard still as the greatest classical actor of his generation which fuelled the international gossip columns because their relationship was known to tempestuous. He divorced his first long standing wife with two children to marry Elizabeth. It is known that Elizabeth was determined to make the marriage work and although they divorced in 1974, less than two years later they remarried but divorced again sixteen months later. Burton was a complex man who speculated about his possible homosexuality, drank excessively and smoked between 60 and 100 cigarettes a day. He was also a notorious womanizer. He married the former wife of Formula 1 racing driver James Hunt and then a Make up artist who became a novelist. He died early at the age of 58.
Elizabeth then married a politician the Republican Senator John Warner in 1976. His first married was to a Banking Heiress and they divorced in 1973 leaving his three children. His wife reverted to her maiden name. They divorced in 1982 Elizabeth unable to adjust to life she wanted, she became an alcoholic and entered the famous Betty Ford Clinic. John married again in 2003 to the widow of a White House staffer. He is only one of two husbands still alive.
Her last marriage, undertaken at the Michael Jackson Neverland Ranch, was to Larry Fortensky, in 1991 who she met at the Clinic and was thirty years her junior. He was drafted into the army but discharged three months later. He was married twice before meeting Taylor. The marriage lasted five years and end was a legal financial settlement.
This was not the final chapter in Elizabeth’s relationships as between 2007 and 2009 she was said to be enjoying a relationship with Jason Winters who she described as the most wonderful man she had ever known. She had four children, two with Wilding, one Todd and one Burton, ten grandchildren, the first born when she was 39 and four great grand children
Alongside her personal life and film career, Elizabeth became the first major celebrity to support the welfare of those diagnosed with HIV infection and Aids, raising over $100 million over 30 years and which covered every aspect from research, treatment and combating discrimination.
Her ability to court controversy was never far away as she supported Michael Jackson during the trial where he was accused of sexually abusing a minor and she never let up from her passion for the flamboyant and some would say vulgar display of jewellery owning some of the largest and most expensive finger rocks in the world but jewellery was also a business for her as was perfume from which she made hundreds of millions in profits.
It is also not surprising that give such a life her body became wracked with illness- from a fortunately benign brain tumour and skin cancer to needing both hips replaced and life threatening pneumonia and an emergency tracheotomy, in addition to the problems of alcoholic and drug addiction. With that I rest my case for using the adjective extraordinary.
By luck and good programming the first of what I suspect will be a season of Dame Elizabeth’s films, Giant was on the television as her death was announced. Cleopatra is also available at the moment. Giant was an original Edna Faber novel about the development of Texas from a cattle ranching into the present day oil rich state of which Dallas the 1980’s series which is being resurrected with some of the survivors of the original cast. I watched the film with growing impatience disliking all the characters except Elizabeth.
Rick Hudson always looked good but who performances always appeared dry for me but his performance in Giant as a Neanderthal heterosexual male is effective give his homosexuality. He plays Jordan Bick Benedict who owns half of Texas cattle ranching with his sister who has James Dean working for her.
On a visit to Maryland to buy a stud horse Hudson sets on Elizabeth Taylor who is an educated socialite with enlightened parents who misguidedly falls for his charms without realising all he wants is a breeding machine to produce a son to inherit and carry on enlarging the empire.
His typical Texan mentality is that politics is not for women and that no one who is poor or a different race should enter his kingdom brutally stolen from the indigenous land holders. He is in every sense a nasty bit of work and nothing much changes throughout the film until he is forced by circumstances. Elizabeth quickly realises she had made a poor choice and escapes to her family only to return. She also crosses swords with the sister who is just as prejudiced against the Mexicans a her brother and her assistant James Dean.
The sister and Elizabeth hate each other but she dies from a horse riding accident and in her will leaves a comparatively small plot of land to Dean where he starts to drill for oil much to the horror of Hudson who tries all he can to get him off. Elizabeth is sympathetic to Dean and visits him alone after she has become a mother of twins, to be played by Dennis Hopper and Fran Bennett when they become adults. There is a third child played by Carol Baker who becomes the most silly and obnoxious of all the characters.
When he strikes oil Dean visits Hudson and boasts of how rich and important he going to be and cannot disguise his passion for Taylor and the two men fight and go their separate ways. Although wealthy from the oil on his land Dean and his advisers realise their horizon is limited so he establishes an oil prospecting and drilling company and when the Second World War breaks out he persuades Hudson to do his national duty and soon a forest of well cover the estate although is still possible to ranch cattle. The old house is replaced by a mansion with an outdoor swimming pool. To some extent the story is repeated in Dallas with the Ewing’s and Cliff Barnes.
As mentioned the son and heir is played by Dennis Hopper who made his name in Easy Rider and became and become a recognised major actor. As a child, under his mother‘s influence he shows no interest in ranching and under mother’s influence goes off to Harvard to study medicine and qualifies a medical doctor with a social conscious marrying a Mexican from the family estate. The twin sister wants to attend local ranching school and marry the head rancher who Hudson likes and which does against herm mother’s wish that she attends a finishing school in Switzerland. When the ranch hand returns from World War II service he and his wife reject the offer of inheriting the ranch for their own small places and making their way. I forget who suggests to Hudson that he might return the land to the indigenous Americans!
When Dean visits to persuade Hudson to exploit the oil, Carol Baker flirts with Dean, a man who is now more than twice her age. Dean then organises a self congratulatory gala in his own honour to mark his increasingly powerful role as Texas leading citizen and philanthropist
Mr Dean shot to International fame with two films released in 1955, Rebel without a Cause and East of Eden. He died in a car accident before Giant was completed in 1956. Dean was a product of the Actor’s studio and Method acting with Lee Strasbourg and while he seems to be continuing his Rebel, but with cause role in the early part of this film, the role requires him to become a ruthless, personally ambitious capitalist and racists to boot. In the film he invites Hudson and his family to the event and they misguidedly agree. They find that he has remained as vicious a racists as ever and his staff make a point of rejecting the daughter in law at every opportunity. While he had made Carol Baker Princess of the Carnival and she wants him he has not intention of marrying her and his sense of grievance continues with every wish to humiliate the family. He is able to knock Hudson out with the help of his personal security. Hudson then has a second confrontation over racism, this time with the manager of a diner who is only carrying out company policy in not serving any non white colours. He has reluctantly agree to serve his son in law‘s wife and her papoose because of who they are, but rejects a Mexican family who son died during the war and was buried with honour on the Benedict burial site on the estate. Elizabeth has meanwhile grown old gracefully. The film ends at this point
The films last three hours and 17 minutes was nominated for ten Oscars without success, made a lot of money and in 2005 was put in the Library of Congress being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
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