Celebrity Gossip
Taylor—the ultimate star
“You see, she didn’t care about being a star. She cared about living a certain way. It was what she was used to. And she lived that grand life with Burton and thought they’d have it forever. That’s what was most important to her: to have a great companion in her great life ... it was all about being with him. That’s all that really mattered.”
So chimes in photographer Gianni Bozzacchi, on Elizabeth Taylor, in William J. Mann’s new book, “How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood.”
This is an entertaining work, revealing much of the machinery behind star-building and star-maintaining back in the day. (The trajectory of gossip queen Hedda Hopper’s relationship with Elizabeth— from adoration to loathing —is deliciously conveyed.)
But the book is also (mostly) a testament to Taylor’s iron willfulness and how she bent the rules to suit herself, while keeping her career boiling for quite a long time. So long, in fact, that once her box office collapsed, in the late ’60s, she carried on just as before, and carried media and world attention with her. She was a movie star who didn’t need to make movies. Her hold has lessened in recent years, but not for lack of true interest. Steadily declining health has cast a shadow on the star; she is less visible and when she does appear, poignantly fragile.
I don’t think Mann breaks any new ground—his take on Elizabeth’s unique position has been written up before. And a lot of it by this columnist, who knew Elizabeth and Richard well during the halcyon days of their travels and movie-world domination.
But there is a nice, juicy quality to this book, the author is an admirer and he is pretty accurate. There are no shocks. We all know by now that Elizabeth didn’t marry every man she slept with. In that case she’d have had more than eight marches down the aisle.
The worldwide effect of La Liz’s serial husband-snatching might seem impossible to believe now— after all, it was only a little adultery! But think of the biggest star in the world today. Then magnify that star 1,000 times. You still wouldn’t be close to what Elizabeth Taylor was. The world—and the industry —was enslaved by this woman.
Twentieth Century Fox actually sold off part of its back lot to finance “Cleopatra!” The star of stars.
Mann does an excellent job capturing the frenzy of her greatest years. (When the Vatican denounced her for her affair with Burton, her first response was an angry, “Can I sue the pope?”)
Taylor herself would probably not appreciate the slightly jaundiced eye Mann casts on the brief but legendary marriage of Elizabeth and Mike Todd, which ended in Todd’s death in an airplane crash. It was more than love and lust at first sight. Elizabeth wanted the grand life Todd could provide. Todd wanted the reflected fame Elizabeth brought to the venture. Of course, they were in lust and love, but less romantic issues were on the table.
Later, she would do it all over again with Burton. Only bigger and better.
The book doesn’t dwell obsessively on Elizabeth’s drinking or pharmaceutical peccadilloes, acknowledging these habits as long term, and part of her particular package—a package that she and her handlers spun and spun again, as her image changed from pristine child star to lovely ingenue, tragic widow and then to a woman so scarlet she was “almost purple” as Taylor herself put it.
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