It seems bad to say now, but I never liked Elizabeth Taylor. You know how sometimes in life you just meet someone and you don't know why, but you take an instant dislike to them? Elizabeth Taylor is the cinematic equivalent of that for me.
By the time I was born, Elizabeth Taylor was already a legend, having been in movies since she was a small child, the product of her mother's lost ambitions to be an actress. She somehow made the transition from child star to ingenue to leading lady to freaking movie boss, succeeding where so many other actresses got lost along the way. Indeed, I knew her more for her charitable works, eight marriages and perfume by the time I got around to knowing who she was.
The eight marriages gave me a reason to dislike her. By now, we all know of the Fisher-Taylor-Reynolds affair subsequently followed by the Taylor-Burton-Fisher affair. The first movie I seriously watched Elizabeth Taylor in was Cleopatra and it's easy to dislike her in that movie. I mean, every guy that likes her ends up dead by shanking. It's so easy to see her as a siren luring men to their downfall, certainly some of the evidence supports that. But take the marriage to her third husband, Mike Todd and his sudden death in an airplane accident during the making of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
I'm sorry, it's just hard to hate a woman that's playing with a duck. Oh my God, did you see that outfit? How cool does she look? Why can't I look like that while I play with a duck while Edward R. Murrow interviews me? Oh, right. The tragedy of Mike Todd's death spurred Elizabeth on to one of her greatest performances, one I've covered already, in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
I started to turn. Hell, this is tragic. You're married to Paul Newman and he's a depressed alcoholic with a weird fixation on his dead friend, so you can't even enjoy being married to Paul Newman. TRAGIC. I've started to think differently about the Eddie Fisher thing, too, like I'm pretty sure that Eddie Fisher could be the scumbag in that instance. Just a theory.
Yet, as quickly as Elizabeth Taylor could make you feel sympathy, she could scare the hell out of you. I am talking about Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, probably the finest performance of a career full of fine performances and definitely the best collaboration between her and Richard Burton. If you don't know the story by now, it's this a young couple visits a university professor and his wife (Burton and Taylor) for an evening and finds out that you never know what's going on in people's marriages and sometimes you don't freaking want to.
This movie scares the hell out of me. I caution you to watch it, but do not start after midnight, intriguing as Taylor and Burton are in this movie, I had to turn it off just so I could be sure that I slept. It is a fantastic film, that perplexes you and keeps you guessing and I am seriously not ruining the ending here. Last Christmas, Turner Classic played this movie and I couldn't believe it. Worst Christmas Programming Ever. This movie is the opposite of a Merry Christmas. It might be better for Festivus, sometime during the Airing of Grievances. Accounts of their time on the set of this film differ. Director Mike Nichols insisted that they fought, but it was all in fun. Colleagues insisted that they weren't kidding, again, you never know what's going on in other people's marriages. Don't ask. Yet everyone asked, Liz and Dick were the thing, in their day making Brangelina look lame and uncool. When did Brad Pitt ever buy Angelina a 241 carat diamond?
Or what about the La Peregrina Pearl? Other owners include Mary Tudor, you know FROM HISTORY.
I mean, come on, Brad, step it up.
Their relationship, collaboration and two marriages would come to define both of them. I think about the tragedy of their relationship, that they loved each other desperately, hopelessly, but ultimately were not very good for each other.
So, what more can I say about Elizabeth Taylor? I hated her, then I kind of started to feel bad for her and she scared the hell out of me. Now I'm feeling bad for hating her as so often happens in life. Farewell, Elizabeth, I hardly knew ye and I get the feeling I never quite will. I guess that's just how it's got to be.
And from Turner Classic, a tribute from Paul Newman. See? I'm not entirely off topic.
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