Icon of Violet Eyes

A few months ago, the death of Elizabeth Taylor was one of the biggest stories in the world, even trumping events in North Africa and the Middle East. For many not well versed in Hollywood history, this might have been a surprise, because over the past several years, Taylor was best known for being an AIDS activist and the eccentric friend of the late (and more eccentric) Michael Jackson. For older generations and movie buffs like myself, the magnitude of Taylor’s death was no surprise. However, I should explain that when it comes to the late Dame Elizabeth Taylor, I’m not simply a movie buff. As I have told others, I studied her.


I was always aware of Elizabeth Taylor, although even I can not exactly say when my awareness of her began. I probably should first consider the cruel but hilarious jokes that Joan Rivers made, starting in the late 1970’s, when Taylor was married to John Warner and had ballooned in weight, especially after he became a Senator representing the state of Virginia in Washington, D.C. Rivers furthered her career with those jokes at Taylor’s expense and while they were not “kind”, I still chuckle at them today and reflect upon the observation that most (if not all) humor is based on pain. (Before one gets sanctimonious, reflect that even after she makes public service announcements against bullying, Kathy Griffin still jokes about Clay Aiken; she made fun of him before he came out and she makes fun of him after he came out. I do laugh at Kathy Griffin, but I always remember that she’s a bully.) And since those Joan Rivers’ jokes were so on target at the time, I could not understand why Taylor was so often declared the most beautiful woman in the world.


However, by the mid-1980’s, Taylor had lost the weight and regained her beauty, albeit in a more seasoned and mature incarnation. She appeared on television in commercials for her fragrance, Passion, the first in a series of scents that would vastly increase the film star’s wealth. She was no longer a ready target for Joan Rivers. It was also around this time that Taylor was assuming the role of AIDS activist. Most of her obituaries kept mentioning that it was the failing health and death of Rock Hudson, Taylor’s co-star in Giant and The Mirror Crack’d, which got her involved in fighting AIDS. That’s not quite true: Taylor was fighting AIDS before the news of Hudson broke, and her former daughter-in-law Aileen had also contracted the disease. With family and friends stricken, this made the fight personal for the film legend.


It was also in 1987 when I seriously tried to write my first fantasy novel for a school project and was contemplating making a favorite character have violet eyes: I wasn’t sure that I could do it, as I was worried that it would wreck the suspension of disbelief which I felt was necessary for my story. Then I read Willa Cather’s My Ántonia for sophomore English and noticed that a Norwegian character had violet eyes and so I discussed this with my art teacher, the project’s sponsor. My teacher said, “Yes, there are violet eyes: Elizabeth Taylor has violet eyes.” Here was the beginning of my interest in the star.


The following year I heard about the Debbie-Eddie-Liz biz, which happened thirty years prior to that. Anytime any of those three stars were mentioned, I would leap to hear more: even taping an episode of The Today Show that was doing a series on Taylor, including an interview with her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher. Looking back on that interview, what I remember most is Fisher denying that his two ex-wives were ever friends: a recent episode on The Oprah Winfrey Show indicated that Fisher was wrong, as both Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were Winfrey’s guests and revealed that Taylor and Reynolds were friends. One clearly has the impression that Taylor regretted her association with Fisher. I think of Jackie Kennedy commenting that America would always think the best of her, “even if (Jackie) eloped with Eddie Fisher”.


In 1991, Elizabeth Taylor entered what would be her eighth and final marriage. In a ceremony held on Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, the Oscar-winning movie star married construction worker Larry Fortensky, whom she met at the Betty Ford clinic. A few years later I would encounter an essay of the event written by William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of the conservative magazine National Review. The right wing wit was devastatingly acerbic in his observations of the event. People left of center might begrudgingly acknowledge Buckley’s command of the English language but would bewail his verbal attacks on the wedding. The wedding’s celebrant was Marianne Williamson, who was just months away from appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote her book A Return to Love, where she provided commentary and observations on the New Age text, A Course in Miracles. With words utilized much in New Age and New Thought circles and in A Course in Miracles, Williamson spoke of love and eternity between the star and her new blue collar spouse, sentiments that could not be taken seriously by the devoutly Catholic Buckley: if Taylor was meant to be forever with Fortensky, so ordained from before their births, before time, then what about all those other marriages prior to this ceremony? Lest one dismiss Buckley as judgmental (which he was, but he also appeared on Laugh-In), observe that he married his wife Patricia the same year that Elizabeth Taylor married her first husband Conrad “Nicky” Hilton: Bill Buckley’s first, last, and only marriage would endure until he was widowed by Pat’s death in 2007, whereas Liz Taylor’s eighth and final marriage would last five years and end in divorce eleven years before by death actually did the Buckleys part.


The year 1992 was the year when Elizabeth Taylor turned 60 and she did a lot of appearances on television, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. I saw the latter, which was in its final months of having Carson as its host, and it was entertaining to see her banter with him, although wearing a cross and a black leather outfit seemed a bit out of place for a Jewish convert turning sixty. A month or so later she appeared on the Academy Awards broadcast with her Cat on a Hot Tin Roof co-star Paul Newman to announce the nominees for Best Picture: I remember her breathy voice, described as part Beverly Hills, part British, saying “and last, but not least, a Beauty and the Beast.” While Silence of the Lambs won that year, I supported the Disney film, and enjoyed hearing Elizabeth Taylor mentioning it, even if she was reading someone else’s words.


That year I became a junior at the state university and during the Fall Semester I discovered Camille Paglia. I eagerly bought Paglia’s two books then in print, her magnum opus Sexual Personae and a collection of essays, Sex, Art, and American Culture. The latter included “Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood’s Pagan Queen”, which Paglia originally wrote for Penthouse magazine, and in her delightfully transgressive style, she celebrated Taylor’s part in the so-called “Scandal of the Fifties,” because for Paglia, this movie star represented the elemental power of woman, something that the professor and critic argued current feminism ignored, and as a descendant of Italian immigrants from Naples, Camille despised what the 1950’s blonde ideal which Debbie Reynolds represented (recently, Paglia has admitted coming to appreciate Reynolds’ comedic talents, but when she reflects on the 1950’s, wow, what a grudge!) and felt that Taylor was bringing in a new wave of sensuality into American culture, prefiguring the 1960’s. (Perhaps less sensual but more wholesome was Elizabeth Taylor’s two appearances on The Simpsons that season: first as baby Maggie—just in time for November sweeps—and later in the season finale as herself, missing out on appearing in Krusty’s comeback special—just in time for May sweeps.)


Over Christmas break that year, I was staying at my parents’ place and saw Elizabeth Taylor’s star-making performance in National Velvet, where she dazzled with her passion and determination, her violet eyes made intensely sparkling by the magic of Technicolor. She was only 12 when she made that film, but you could see this was the girl that would grow up to do the White Diamonds commercials, “These have always brought me luck.” A few months later I would see Taylor sit with Larry King for a special interview on TNT, where she discussed, among many things, her fight against AIDS, saying something like “Without homosexuals, there would be no art, there would be no literature, there would be no poetry, there would be no Broadway, there would be no Hollywood.”


Also at this time, I purchased Beautiful Loser, a biography on Montgomery Clift. I was 21 and seeking a role model, a hero, and thought that Clift would be ideal, as he was always well represented in those lists of “famous gay men” and was like myself, born in Omaha. However, in reading that book, I found that while Clift was a sympathetic figure for sure, he was not especially comforting or heroic and not someone to be my role model icon. In contrast, his friend and co-star in A Place in the Sun and later Raintree County and Suddenly, Last Summer, Elizabeth Taylor, she came across as this amazing force of nature, much in line with star that was the subject of Paglia’s essay in Penthouse. Taylor saved Clift’s life after his 1956 car accident, pulling out his teeth from his throat, cradling his head on her lap, and covering his face with her scarf, and as they waited for the ambulance, she yelled threats and profanities at the press to leave him alone: that was a fierce and beautiful example of loyalty and friendship, and to my mind, a Hollywood pietà that foreshadowed her fight against AIDS, a disease which probably would have killed Clift if he had lived into the 1980’s.


Nineteen ninety three was also the year that Elizabeth Taylor won her third Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which she shared with Audrey Hepburn, who died a few months before the telecast. It was Angela Lansbury, a fellow World War II English evacuee and Taylor’s co-star from National Velvet and The Mirror Crack’d, who introduced the film star, saying that yes, Elizabeth’s eyes were indeed violet. Taylor, dressed in bright yellow gown which accentuated her much celebrated bust, gave an acceptance speech in which she not only discussed her own fight against AIDS, she also honored the late Hepburn, who had fought on behalf of malnourished children, especially those in war torn parts of the world: Hepburn was now in heaven working against children suffering, Taylor said, but Elizabeth herself promised to remain here on earth fighting against AIDS. She kept that promise for another 18 years.


That summer, I started seeing more Elizabeth Taylor movies: I loved Suddenly, Last Summer and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? These two films were black and white and did not showcase how beautiful she looked in color (although the photography in Suddenly, Last Summer seemed to sizzle with silver and gave the star’s fair complexion and black hair a burning glow): one merely has to look at publicity stills from the 1950’s and 1960’s, even the 1980’s after she lost that weight, to see how beautiful she was. The glossy red lips, the porcelain skin, the raven hair, and those eyes: think the song “Close to You”—not just golden starlight in eyes of blue, but just enough green, amber, and hazel to make the eyes evoke hues found in petals of lilacs and African violets, with the dazzle of a Cartier necklace of sapphire and amethyst (the latter fittingly Taylor’s birthstone) laid on deep purple velvet. Seeing the stills and watching films like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I now could see why she was considered the most beautiful woman in the world.


Also in the summer of 1993, one of Ted Turner’s cable networks started a show called Bad Movies We Love, and the first film it featured was BUtterfield 8, the one for which Taylor won her first Academy Award, but one that she also hated (oddly, Camille Paglia and my mother loved it) and readily admitted that she won the Oscar due to her nearly fatal bout with pneumonia and that Shirley MacLaine should have won that year. I sat through it, and while I found it to be nearly as bad as its reputation, the opening scene of BUtterfield 8 did have some entertainment value that was not all camp. Taylor, playing a call girl, wakes up alone in a client’s apartment, starts strutting around in a shimmering white silk slip, tries to smoke a cigar, brushes her teeth with gin, refuses the money left to cover her torn dress (ruined, no doubt, during the previous night’s transaction) and writes “No Sale” in lipstick on the mirror, leaving the New York penthouse wearing a fur coat belonging to her client’s wife: not a single line is spoken until she gets into a cab and offers to double the driver’s tip for a cigarette.


During that summer, in the gossip portion of an episode of Joan Rivers’ daytime talk show, an exchange that occurred at a recent showbiz event was related. Hungarian-born Zsa Zsa Gabor, a socialite and actress who married more times than Elizabeth Taylor did, was spewing insults about the latter, who had yet to arrive: at separate times, Gabor and Taylor had each married into the Hilton family. Then the room went silent when Elizabeth did appear and walked past Gabor: Taylor spoke not a word, but apparently knew full well that Gabor had been insulting her just minutes earlier. Fuming with Magyar wrath, Gabor threw a crystal ashtray at Taylor, which missed the actress and shattered on the floor. Elizabeth stopped walking, turned to see the shards of glass on the floor, and then left the room, always remaining totally quiet. For me, that represents an example of Taylor’s strength and confidence as evidenced by composure.


During these months, I also went to the library and checked out several books on Elizabeth Taylor, later even her own memoir at the university library, and during the Fall Semester, I added Cleopatra and a few others to the list of Taylor films to see (these were the days before Netflix, when one was limited to whatever Blockbuster and the local rental stores could offer). I was even able to tape her A&E Biography: it was before Biography had its own channel, and this 1993 edition was just one hour long, while a later version would be two hours long. Clearly, despite the fact that my official major in the College of Arts and Sciences was English, I was really studying Elizabeth Taylor and my slogan at the time was her flippant reply in 1958 to Hedda Harper, “What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?” (Honestly I nearly always do sleep alone, but I really resent those who expect me to do that).


Even more monumental to me personally, in October 1993 I purchased a print of the famous black and white publicity shot that the star did for the film Suddenly, Last Summer. Utilized by the studio for film posters (often with the caption, “Suddenly, last summer, Cathy knew she was being used for something evil”: in the film, Taylor’s character Cathy was used for something evil) and celebrated in Paglia’s Penthouse essay, the photograph shows Taylor wearing a white bathing suit, sitting on the beach in a kneeling pose provocative for the late 1950’s, arms planted in the sand, breasts heaving forward, seemingly being offered but cloaked, her face looking at the camera with eyes that are commanding and enthralling: it is a captivating gaze that is part of a smoldering sensuality, which even as a gay man (or perhaps, especially as a gay man), I find fascinating. I purchased the photograph from a souvenir shop at Union Station in Washington, D.C., at a time before making such purchases on eBay could a daily occurrence; the photograph hangs in my bedroom, an icon of desire, as in desiring and being desired, and the desire to be desired.


Also during 1993, after buying an issue of Us magazine (which was then a monthly rather than a weekly periodical) where Elizabeth Taylor was interviewed about her jewelry collection (nine years later, the actress would write a book about her relationship with jewelry, pages filled with color plates of dazzling baubles, including many given as gifts to her by Mike Todd, Richard Burton, and Michael Jackson), I found a tome that listed the mailing addresses for celebrities and got the address for Elizabeth Taylor (I also got the address for Ethan Hawke: more on that one later). I wrote to the star, praising her film and charity work and then asked for an autographed picture. The response to this letter came in the form of a sales catalogue for a line of jewelry that the star launched with Avon. Also included was a contemporary black and white photograph of the movie star holding her beloved Maltese dog Sugar: it was a mass produced signature, not signed by hand but a copy of an original. This photograph is presently in my living room. (I also wrote to Ethan Hawke and got a response from his grandmother, which was not as cool as an autographed photograph of Elizabeth Taylor; also, I doubt that Hawke has bathed more than a dozen times since I received that postcard: his poor granny. Tsk tsk.)


Nineteen ninety-four was when the United States saw Elizabeth Taylor return to the movies after fourteen years: 1980’s The Mirror Crack’d was the last film American audiences had seen her, playing a part originally intended for Natalie Wood (Taylor actually did star in Franco Zeffirelli’s Young Toscanini, an Italian film from 1988, but it was not released in North America). This return would be the live action adaptation of The Flintstones, with Taylor as Wilma’s mother Pearl Slaghoople; it remains the only time that I have seen Elizabeth Taylor on the big screen and it was the last film for the cinema that she would make. In reading the promotional material for the motion picture, I discovered that the actress’s agent was Morgan Mason, son to the late actor James Mason, husband to recording artist Belinda Carlisle, and father of actor and gay activist James Duke Mason; Mason also played Taylor’s son in The Sandpiper. A year later, I wrote an article for the university’s newspaper, where I discussed Belinda Carlisle’s single “Summer Rain” and compared the song to Elizabeth Taylor’s performance in Suddenly, Last Summer. (Admittedly, it was something of a stretch: Suddenly, Last Summer had Taylor play a woman gone mad by the violent and mysterious death of her cousin; “Summer Rain” had Carlisle sing passionately with grief over her last memory of dancing with her boyfriend before he went to war). I also noted how Mason’s wife, like Taylor, was wrongly dismissed by critics and remembered more for physical beauty, charity work, and related how the press focused on the stars’ perceived “shrewish personalities” rather than their respective talents.


A few weeks after I saw The Flintstones, I went to Oxford for a session of summer school. As an Anglophile, there were many things to do and see in England, and unfortunately I was unable to make it to the Hampstead part of London where the film star was born. However, I was able to purchase two books about her (Sheridan Morely’s Elizabeth Taylor: A Celebration, which followed Taylor as a film actress more than a celebrity and focused her English sensibility, and Alexander Walker’s biography Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor) at one of Oxford’s many used bookstores; again, at a time before eBay, such purchases were not as easy then as now. (Of course, remembering how strong the pound was compared to the dollar, and how expensive it was to ship books with other souvenirs and gifts, these books were not bargains, but remain beloved.) One night I was even able to watch the American Film Institute honor Elizabeth Taylor, a curious but wonderful thing to watch on British television: I remember laughing with a female Pakistani student at clip of the film star’s appearance with Richard Burton on Here’s Lucy, where the hapless Lucille Ball tries on the Krupp diamond and it gets the ring stuck on her finger, just in time for a press conference, so the pale Lucy hides behind the tanned Taylor and presents the diamond on a hand that obviously not the movie star’s.


Upon returning from the United Kingdom, I started the 1994 Fall Semester. It was a grueling time in many ways, with evening classes several nights of the week. It was also the time when I received a “Dear John” letter: without getting into the specifics, suffice it to say that my heart hurt and I read it right before I had to make a presentation for a class on Milton. In the midst of what was for me emotional devastation, I remembered Elizabeth Taylor’s performance in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, noting that she had been widowed during the film’s production, when third husband Mike Todd was killed in a plane crash (Full disclosure: I also remembered Katharine Hepburn’s performance in The Lion in Winter, which she did right after Spencer Tracy’s death, but I remembered Taylor’s Maggie the Cat more than Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitaine). Surely, not only could I rise above this pain, perhaps I could thrive because of it. Indeed, that night I read the opening lines of Book VII of Paradise Lost, in which the blind Milton invokes the muse Urania: I lit a candle, turned the lights off, and read the passages by a book light. In the friendly ambiance from the candle, the room was still as I read lines from the English classic. When I came to a key passage where Milton relates his darkness and desolation as a blind poet bereft of inspiration, I blew out the candle, which rendered the room dark save the book light, while my voice, stirred by the text as well as my own heartache, continued to read the poem. It was magic. I got an A for the presentation and for the class. Thank you, Elizabeth Taylor and Maggie the Cat (ok, sure, and John Milton too).


At the above memory, I must stop to reflect the value of Elizabeth Taylor as an icon. Note that I said “icon” rather than “idol”. An idol simply stands on its pedestal and expects those below to worship it. In contrast, an icon is there for the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the imagination engage with its symbols, to take one in faith to lessons and truths beyond the physical world. An idol does nothing and we are expected to worship it; an icon is there to teach us and guide us. At a gay men’s discussion group in the 1990’s, I remember a graduate student in language dismiss the idea of gay men admiring female superstars, finding it silly to celebrate women who were mostly drug addicts (one thinks of Absolutely Fabulous, when Eddie slams her ex-husband and his gay lover for fawning over Patsy’s sister Jackie: “Any bitch an’ a drug habit and you’re anybody’s, aren’t you?”). As far as that goes, he might have made a point, but I found that by remembering Taylor’s agony (much worse than my own) and the Oscar nominated performance that she gave during her suffering, I could sustain myself and guide my actions through heartache, however juvenile and petty it was in contrast to the star’s widowhood. For me, that was Taylor as an icon, and that icon helped me at a painful time; that a cynical language grad student could not find any value from a female star as an icon is hardly a surprise.


Around the time of my graduation from university, NBC did a miniseries about Elizabeth Taylor, starring Sherilyn Fenn as the legendary star: aside from William McNamara as Montgomery Clift, it was a mostly forgettable production. As for the real Elizabeth Taylor, despite some painful hip surgeries and a final separation and divorce (Larry Fortensky was sent packing out of Casa Taylor), she had remained active enough to appear as herself in four CBS situation comedies on a Monday night in 1996, promoting her new fragrance Black Pearls. Months later she was interviewed for The Advocate magazine, where she talked about her fight against AIDS, discussed her thoughts about gay marriage and adoption, and even a little about her spirituality. I was so excited about the interview that I wrote an email to the magazine, expressing my admiration for the star, and it was then that I first used the name "Philip McNeal": "McNeal" is a Celtic variant to a very Scandinavian surname. When The Advocate published my email, I decided that "Philip McNeal" (later "Phil McNiel"), I decided that Phil McNiel was as good as any other literary name I could use.


By the end of the year it was announced that Elizabeth Taylor had a brain tumor that would need surgery, but before that would happen, a special celebrating her 65th birthday was recorded. Stars ranging from Hugh Grant, Elizabeth Hurley, David Schwimmer (Friends was still a big show at the time), Cher, Patti LaBelle, Carol Burnett, Shirley MacLaine, Christine Baranski (who had won an Emmy just over a year before for her supporting role on Cybil), Michael Caine, Kevin Bacon (Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was then a popular game for Generation X), Rod Stewart, John Travolta, Madonna, and Michael Jackson honored the legend. When ABC broadcast the special, one could see the icon was clearly ailing but was nonetheless sweet and appreciative of the kind words people said. Months after the benign tumor was removed, Taylor would appear in the press again, now with white hair, and when she was interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1999, her speech slowed but her humor still earthy. In 2000, her royal namesake Queen Elizabeth II named the movie star Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (it was the same investiture in which Julie Andrews was also made a Dame)


The following year, Taylor would play an talent agent for the television movie These Old Broads, written by her former stepdaughter Carrie Fisher and co-starring Fisher’s mother Debbie Reynolds along with Taylor’s other Hollywood lady friends Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins: while funny in parts, given the cast and the writer, the show was not as campy as one would hope (prior to its broadcast, I told a friend about the show, to which she quipped that it sounded “gayer than Gay Gayerson”). However, it did enable Reynolds and Taylor, speaking lines written by Carrie, to play out the acrimony of the Debbie-Eddie-Liz biz for the public, where they discussed a ex-lover they shared, “Freddie Hunter” (get it? Freddie rhymes with Eddie, and a Hunter is something like a Fisher, but also rhymes with it. Get it?); while not likely to have been especially cathartic for either star, it meant something to the audience.


The movie was not well received by Eddie Fisher, who watched the show for some program like Entertainment Tonight and was very dismissive of it, finding the Freddie Hunter scene to be spiteful (but again, remember that over a decade ago, he denied that his two ex-wives were ever friends: I think this was something he believed so it was easier to live with himself, but I could be wrong). One may even find it more difficult to have much sympathy for the old crooner, as a year and a half before These Old Broads, he had wrote the autobiography Been There Done That, (his second autobiography—think about it, it was his second autobiography!) in which he gave sordid details about his sex life: not only did he talk about the women in his life, he related that during le Scandale at the Cleopatra filming in Rome, Richard Burton offered him oral sex (at least one reviewer noted that Fisher makes no mention as to whether or not he accepted the Welsh actor’s offer). Burton himself, who died in 1984, admitted that he had homosexual dalliances, which is hardly surprising for someone from the British theatrical world (folks, even British super Conservative hero Winston Churchill admitted to having gay sex!). In response to news of the book, Taylor is reported to have said, “Have you ever noticed that he is the only ex-husband I don't talk about?”


After the telecast of These Old Broads, we saw less of Elizabeth Taylor. Yes, she had a few more fragrances to release: in fact, over half of the millions of dollars of the actress’s estate came from her fragrance business rather than from acting residuals (and given her lavish lifestyle, especially in the 1960’s, it’s amazing that she still had $50 million dollars by the mid-1990’s: I guess it really does pay to make films in Italy and France while you retain Swiss residence when you have dual American and British citizenships—some might consider that tax evasion, but folks, it’s not about what you earn, it’s what you keep!). Aside from the occasional appearances on The Larry King Show and AIDS events, audiences were limited to appearances such as Taylor's getting honored at the Kennedy Center.


So, aside from a sad (and dare I admit it, pathetic) episode in my personal life, how has Dame Elizabeth Taylor been an icon for me? As any sensible reader can infer, I am not some red-hot lover and even if gay marriage was legal where I am, it is highly unlikely that I would have been married once, much less get married eight times, even less likely get married to a hotel magnate’s spoiled son, two British bisexuals, two Jews, a Republican, and a construction worker (well, I could see myself marrying a few from that list—bisexual Republicans actually make great kissers—but not all of them). I did not pursue acting as a career, vocation, or hobby, nor am I particularly adept at sales or perfumery (oh, and Aveda, do bring back your fragrance Eros…thank you). I was born in Omaha, not London: as an Anglophile, I give her gets points for an English birth, but millions have been born in England and I don’t revere them. My physical features favor central and Northern Europe (meaning fair complexion and light eyes) rather than Black Irish (which not only means fair complexion, but also amazing bone structure and black hair): clearly my connection with her was not regional or ethnic camaraderie.


Could the connection be spiritual? I was raised Lutheran and have an easy rapport with many Catholics and even lapsed Catholics, while Taylor was raised Christian Scientist but converted to Judaism in her late 20’s. Now I’ve long admired the Jewish people and the state of Israel, but I am too attached to Christmas and Easter to quit the goyim: I’m not Jewish, I’m just cut that way. Many say that Elizabeth converted for third husband Mike Todd or for fourth husband Eddie Fisher, who were both Jewish, but she herself denied this: in her memoir from the 1960’s she spoke about always wanting to be “a Jewess.” Now consider that word: Jewess. To the modern sensibility, conditioned by relentless P.C. propaganda, that word is dated, sexist and quite likely offensive, but Taylor’s selection of it underscores her pre-feminist perspective that men and women are different. To me the word also evokes the image of a pre-modern woman decked with jewelry in some North African or Near or Middle Eastern setting, a vision with lavish style and exotic glamour: that could be Elizabeth Taylor, just as the notion of always wanting to please the man in her life was Elizabeth Taylor.


Being Jewish for the star was perhaps a matter more social than spiritual. In fact, after her death I saw several messages posted online by professed Jews who insisted that the star was not Jewish because

1) the conversion rite was Reform; and
2) she was not what they would consider a practicing Jew.

Elizabeth clearly thought herself Jewish (so did the Arab League, which banned her films), and that's good enough for me, but as one of the goyim, perhaps it would be wise if I leave these arguments to the rabbis and to G-d (I use this spelling out of deference to Judaism). Some argue that she became Jewish to “fit in” with the Hollywood establishment and society better, but starting with Cleopatra, a production for the 20th Century Fox Studio (the one studio led by a WASP, the Nebraska-born Daryl Zanuck), most of her films after 1960 (when her MGM contract ended with the completion of BUtterfield 8) were done in Europe, not Hollywood. She also raised a lot of money for Israel and even offered herself for a possible hostage exchange during the Entebbe crisis in Uganda in 1976: the exchange never occurred, but she did play the mother of one of the hostages in the made-for-television movie Victory at Entebbe. In fact, one of the few kind things said of the star in its short obituary for her, National Review praised Taylor for her support for the Israeli cause as well as the fight against AIDS. Still, I note that after she started fighting against AIDS in the mid-1980’s, Elizabeth did not seem to be as engaged in the Zionist cause, though she continued to identify herself as Jewish (or rather perhaps, as a Jewess).


When Elizabeth Taylor would discuss spiritual matters, I detected echoes of her Christian Science background: positive thinking; passionate conviction for health, beauty, and even love; a belief that G-d was everywhere and need not be worshiped only in a temple. These are not ideas exclusive to Christian Science, but could be suitable for a Christian Scientist embracing a tolerant and inclusive Reform Judaism, the movement that the actress embraced in her 1959 conversion. As one notes in her self-esteem and diet book Elizabeth Takes Off, the movie star believed that for change to occur, one must first take action. I found this to possibly incongruous with the 12 Steps, which stress the helplessness of the addict until he admits that he is powerless and turns to a Higher Power. To take charge, isn’t that the Buddhist teaching espoused by Tina Turner, particularly as portrayed by Angela Bassett in What’s Love Got to Do With It? Or the words by Harrison Ford when he said, “The Force is within you: Force yourself!” Perhaps, but I thought of another female star that converted to Judaism who also had a problem with addiction: Nell Carter. During an interview with Tom Snyder, Carter spoke about how many people in recovery would credit G-d for everything, but she argued something along the lines of “G-d is not going to do anything unless you do something.” I am not a theologian, but I find that to be a perspective more in line with Judaism than with 12 Steps or the more Calvinist forms of Christianity in which man is the helpless agent always dependent on the decrees and whims of an All-Powerful Deity. It could be an approach to recovery that worked for these two stars: one must take action before G-d or whatever Higher Power is invoked will act.


I think again of the Oscar acceptance speech in 1993, when Elizabeth Taylor spoke of Audrey Hepburn in heaven, fighting for children on earth, while she herself would remain on the planet to fight AIDS: I’ll readily admit this was sentimental and not really especially Talmudic, but I remember watching her on that stage, looking radiant and tall (despite being only 5’2”), speaking those words before a world-wide audience. Here was this film actress, commanding the cameras’ gaze and with her voice and eyes, she was evangelical, in a way a Protestant rarely is, with this heroic statement of faith and embattled courage in this life on earth: one may remember the dead, and it is good to honor those who are departed who did good deeds in this vale of tears, but life is for the living and the fight must go on. I might be an ignorant Gentile, but I think that night Elizabeth Taylor presented to us the example of a strong woman of passion and conscience, a credit to any religion or creed, but I give that credit to the religion and identity which the star chose, and she chose to be Jewish.


A few weeks after her death, I was able to purchase two Special Edition Elizabeth Taylor White Diamond Barbies: the first doll for display and the second doll for storage. I then purchased a White Diamonds fragrance gift set (I also got Chanel No. 5 eau de parfum, but I get into these obsessions from time to time). Embracing my limited creativity, I went to a crafts store to gather a doll stand, an acrylic doll case, purple and blue marbles, silk violet and lilac flowers, and a big fake diamond. Now standing in my bedroom with Disney prints; Orthodox icons; Catholic statues; resin and alabaster replications of works by Thorvaldsen and Michelangelo; walls hung with frames displaying Lukas Ridgeston postcards, photographs, concert and newspaper advertisements, and publicity shots of Laura Branigan, Belinda Carlisle, Queen Elizabeth II, Lady Thatcher, Joan Collins, and even Elizabeth Taylor herself promoting Suddenly, Last Summer, is a kitschy shrine to that same woman whom Camille Paglia hailed as Hollywood’s pagan queen but I honor as a woman who by profession was a film actress then entrepreneur, an activist by conviction, and Jewess by choice: she is my icon of violet eyes. I might spray her shrine with White Diamonds; I might surround her with menorahs and desktop flags of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel. I will look at her when I consider my own health problems (although she was not asthmatic like I am). While she would not be the first Jewish woman to be made a saint, I will not pray to her, but I will reflect on her beauty, her passion and her conviction. I will remember her struggles and her furious fights on behalf of her friends and her composure that displayed beauty and telegraphed strength. I will see the doll and remember that like that Barbie’s prototype, I have a love for beauty and should have faith; I will remember that whatever changes need to happen in my life, they must begin with me.


Elizabeth Taylor’s death in March 2011 marked the end of an era, or so said many that follow pop culture, and film in particular. She was the last great star from the golden age of Hollywood: for millions (if not billions), Taylor evokes the legend and glamour of Movie Star, from the age of the studio system, through the Swinging Sixties, and even into the twenty first century. Long after she was in a blockbuster film or a show with high Nielsen ratings, people knew the name Elizabeth Taylor. Presently, I simply have a doll (ok, two dolls), some biographies, perfume, some photographs, and some books and DVD’s; but I also have an imagination and I imagine that with these visual tools, I might channel her values and virtues. I might offer prayers to G-d in heaven, maybe even His saints, but as I said before, I studied Elizabeth Taylor. May this icon remind me of the lessons of her life so they will guide me through my life and its challenges to whatever joys may be had today and promises that await tomorrow.