The Vicksburg Post
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
A5
Taylor Continued from Page A1. statement. Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable. She had voluptuous beauty, and won three Academy Awards. She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when AIDS was still a stigma. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal tragedy. “I think I’m becoming fatalistic,” she said in 1989. “Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic.” Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of decadence, from the children’s classic “National Velvet” and the sentimental family comedy “Father of the Bride” to Oscar-winning transgressions in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Butterfield 8.” The historical epic “Cleopatra” is among Hollywood’s greatest on-screen fiascos and a landmark of off-screen monkey business, the meeting ground of Taylor and Richard Burton, the “Brangelina” of their day. Her defining role, one that lasted long past her moviemaking days, was “Elizabeth Taylor,” ever marrying and divorcing, in and out of hospitals, gaining and losing weight, standing by Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson and other troubled friends, acquiring a jewelry collection that seemed to rival Tiffany’s. She was a child star who grew up and aged before an adoring public. She had more marriages than any publicist could explain away. She was the industry’s great survivor and among the first to reach that category of celebrity — famous for being famous. The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a superstar at 19 and a widow at 26. She was a screen sweetheart and martyr later reviled for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, then for dumping Fisher to bed Burton, a relationship of passion and turbulence, lasting through two marriages and countless attempted reconciliations. She was also forgiven. Reynolds would acknowledge voting for Taylor when she was nominated for “Butterfield 8” and decades later co-starred with her old rival in “These Old Broads,” cowritten by Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Taylor’s ailments wore down the grudges. She underwent at least 20 major operations and she nearly died from a bout with pneumonia in 1990. In 1983, she acknowledged a 35-year addiction to prescription drugs. “I don’t entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I’m me. God knows, I’m me,” Taylor said at age 50. Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London on Feb. 27, 1932, the daughter of Francis Taylor, an art dealer, and the former Sara Sothern, an American stage actress. At the onset of World War II, the Taylors came to the United States. Francis Taylor opened a gallery in Beverly Hills. In 1942, his daughter made her debut in “There’s One Born Every Minute.” Her big break came soon thereafter. Sam Marx, Taylor’s father learned that MGM needed an English girl to play opposite Roddy McDowall in “Lassie Come Home.” She won both the part and a contract. At 16, she would dash from shool to the set for passionate love scenes in “Conspirator.” “I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman,” she once said. “I was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of unhappiness and doubt.”
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