Elizabeth Taylor, a voluptuous violet-eyed actress who lived a life of luster and anguish and spent more than six decades as one of the world's most visible women for her two Academy Awards, eight marriages, ravaging illnesses and work in AIDS philanthropy, died Wednesday at age 79.
She had been hospitalized six weeks ago for congestive heart failure, according to a statement issued by her publicist, and died surrounded by family members at Cedar-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
Ms. Taylor’s life offered a mesmerizing series of sagas to rival any movie plot, and they were chronicled by the media since her boost to fame as the enchanting 12-year-old star of “National Velvet” (1944).
By her mid-20s, she had been a screen goddess, teenage bride, mother, divorcee and widow. She endured near-death traumas, and many declared her a symbol of survival — with which she agreed. “I've been through it all, baby,” she once said. “I'm Mother Courage.”
News about her love affairs, jewelry collection, weight fluctuations and socializing in rich and royal circles were followed by millions of people. More than for any film role, she became famous for being famous, setting a media template for later generations of entertainers, models and all variety of semi-somebodies. She was the “archetypal star goddess,” biographer Diana Maddox once wrote.
It helped that Ms. Taylor was eminently quotable. Distraught after her showman husband, Mike Todd, died in a plane crash in 1958, she sought the company of married entertainer Eddie Fisher, whom she later wed. “Well, Mike is dead and I'm alive,” she said. “What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?”
Onscreen, she was presented as one of the age’s greatest saints or sinners. Her roles often intertwined with circumstances in her own life to create an enduring image as victim or vamp.
She made more than 60 films and twice won the Oscar for best actress: as a call girl who meets with tragedy in “BUtterfield 8” (1960), based on the John O’Hara novella; and as the braying, slovenly wife of a professor in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966), adapted from Edward Albee’s play about marital warfare.
“Virginia Woolf” was a rare critical triumph for Ms. Taylor, whom reviewers often found insubstantial or overwrought.
Widespread respect for her acting and humanitarian work came much later in her career with a slew of lifetime achievement awards. Her media exposure, on which she built her star status, might have kept her from being taken seriously in her heyday.
“No actress ever had a more difficult job in getting critics to accept her onscreen as someone other than Elizabeth Taylor,” film historian Jeanine Basinger said. “Her persona ate her alive.”
As a young woman, she was called “Luscious Liz” for her sensual figure, bright eyes with long dark lashes, ruby lips and mane of raven hair. She appeared on the cover of Life magazine 14 times, more than any other film star, and on People magazine’s cover more than 25 times.
In the 1960s, pop artist Andy Warhol used photography and silk-screening techniques to depict Ms. Taylor's face as a totem of beauty and fame in what became a much-reproduced piece.
Hailed as the most beautiful woman of her generation, Ms. Taylor saw herself as one of the most vulnerable.
“I've been able to wear plunging necklines since I was 14 years old, and ever since then, people have expected me to act as old as I look,” she said after her first divorce. “My troubles all started because I have a woman’s body and a child’s emotions.”
She denounced and courted celebrity. She flashed anger when she was not allowed privacy on her terms but also went public with her more than 70 hospitalizations for illnesses, including sciatica and a brain tumor.
It became world news as she lay near death from pneumonia at Oscar-voting time in 1960. After winning for “BUtterfield 8,” she hobbled on stage with a surgical scar visible and received a standing ovation. She always maintained she won on a sympathy vote.
She also intrigued many with her marriages to hotel heir Conrad Nicholson “Nicky” Hilton Jr.; actor Michael Wilding; Todd; Fisher; actor Richard Burton (twice); then-Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.); and construction worker Larry Fortensky. She met Fortensky in the late 1980s at the Betty Ford Clinic while both underwent treatment for substance abuse.
Many regarded Ms. Taylor’s glamour as a chief reason for the relatively unknown Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, getting a Senate seat in 1978. The supporting role as political spouse did not suit Ms. Taylor, and she returned to a life where she was undoubtedly the main attraction.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London to American parents on Feb. 27, 1932. Her father, Francis, ran an art gallery. Her mother, the former Sara Warmbrodt, had once been an actress who trained Elizabeth from her earliest years to be presentable in public, in looks and manner.
After war erupted in Europe, the family relocated in 1939 to southern California. Ms. Taylor’s mother began promoting her daughter to studios as a young look-alike of Vivien Leigh, star of “Gone With the Wind.”
Her father persuaded a fellow air-raid warden, film producer Samuel Marx, to cast Elizabeth in the family drama “Lassie Come Home” (1943), and she won a contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.
Mogul Louis B. Mayer, an Anglophile and lover of wholesome screen images, took a fancy to Ms. Taylor. Her slight British accent made her perfect for several films that were set in England and meant to foster ties between the two wartime allies.
I hear it toay on the radio,one of the last great Divas has left us,I loved Liz,thank you Glenn very good bio!
ReplyDelete