As I have explained, this is not an elegy or a lament: it is closer to a hymn about a star's life and her impact on mine. While that might sound like idolatry, I counter that for me she is an icon, not an idol.
“Life is for the living” I try to say, but some legends are larger than life, even after they are gone.
Phil The Fan
Five years 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 (i.e., the so-called “Arab Spring”). For many not well versed in Hollywood history, this might have been a surprise, because before her death, Taylor had become best known for being an AIDS activist and the eccentric friend of the late (and more eccentric) Michael Jackson; we have since seen the likes of Irish actor Colin Farrell participate in her legacy and we have discovered more about her fight against AIDS, carried on by her friends and family. For older generations and movie buffs, the magnitude of Taylor’s death was no surprise, but I'm not simply a movie buff; as I have have told others, I studied the late Dame Elizabeth Taylor.
First, consider the cruel but hilarious jokes that Joan Rivers made, starting in the late 1970’s and into the 1980'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. Such jokes were not “kind”, but I still laugh at them, knowing that most (if not all) humor is based on pain. However, at the time, these jokes were so on target, leaving my young self unable to understand why Taylor was so often declared the most beautiful woman in the world.
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. Around then, for sophomore English, I read Willa Cather’s My Ántonia and noticed that a character in the novel, Lena Lingard, the daughter of a Norwegian immigrant, had violet eyes. I discussed this with my art teacher, the project’s sponsor, who 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: an episode taped during the final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show indicated that Eddie was wrong, as both Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were Winfrey’s guests and revealed that Taylor and Reynolds were in fact 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. I would later 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 nuptials. The wedding’s celebrant was Marianne Williamson, who was just months away from appearing on Oprah 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 (not that anyone could hear them over the din of helicopters trying to crash event--such was the circus of the ceremony), 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 Rowan & Martin's 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 Taylor’s eighth and final marriage would last five years and end in divorce eleven years before by death actually did the Buckleys part.
Elizabeth Taylor turned 60 in 1992 and she did a several appearances on television that year, including her only appearance on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. I remember viewing the latter, which was in Carson's final months as host. It was entertaining to watch Taylor banter with Johnny, although her choice of wardrobe (a cross and a black leather outfit) seemed a bit out of place for a woman 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 a 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: Essays. The latter included “Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood’s Pagan Queen”, which Paglia originally wrote for Penthouse magazine, and in her delightfully subversive 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 (by the time of Taylor's death, Paglia admitted coming to appreciate Reynolds’ comedic talents) 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 certainly a sympathetic figure, 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 the star celebrated in Paglia’s Penthouse essay. Taylor saved Clift’s life after his 1956 car accident, pulling a tooth from his throat, cradling his injured 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 watched 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.
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 (fittingly, Camille Paglia and my mother love 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 liquor, 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: when she gets into a cab she 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. In fact, 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.)
Months later, 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. (I also wrote to Ethan Hawke and got a response from his grandmother, but, no disrespect to Hawke or his grandmother, that's just not as exciting as an autographed photograph from Elizabeth Taylor.)
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; her part in 1982's Genocide was as voiceover only). 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 gay activist James Duke Mason; Morgan also played Taylor’s son in The Sandpiper. A year later, I wrote a guest 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 Morgan’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. Being an Anglophile, I found many things to do and see in England, but 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 a newly acquired diamond (usually identified as the former Krupp diamond, now known as the Elizabeth Taylor Diamond, but the pear shape suggests that it was the stone formerly known as the Cartier-Burton 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 hand.
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 (please be advised that I was young, inexperienced, and clearly new to what I now know as "First World Problems"), 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: in short, Elizabeth Taylor inspired me. Indeed, that night I read the opening lines of Book VII of Paradise Lost, in which the blind Milton invokes the muse Urania: I played a track from a CD from the Chapel at Hampton Court Palace, 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, supported by sublime period music, 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 and stopped the CD, which rendered dark save the book light, while my voice, no longer supported by the glorious music but stirred by the text as well as my own heartache, continued to read the poem. It was magic: Milton struggled for Urania's inspiration, but I found an exemplary icon in Elizabeth Taylor, the heartbroken widow whose performance garnered an Academy Award nomination, to encourage me. I got an A for the presentation and for the class, thanks in part to Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie the Cat.
At the above memory, I must stop to reflect the value of Elizabeth Taylor as an icon: I stress that I say “icon” and not “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 to 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). To me, that was Elizabeth 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 actress: aside from the pensive 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, and a variant which in part was inspired by a favorite professor. When The Advocate published my email, I decided that "Philip McNeal" (later "Phil McNiel") was as good as any other literary name I could use (after all, I used that name and got published in The Advocate).
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 she smiled sweetly and appreciatively at the kind words that 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 was slow 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 a talent agent for the television movie These Old Broads, written by her former stepdaughter Carrie Fisher (who described her father's ex-wife in a 1995 episode of Lifetime's Intimate Portrait as "Black Beauty--no, the other horse--Liz Taylor!") and co-starring Carrie’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 an ex-lover they shared, “Freddie Hunter” (Get it? Freddie rhymes with Eddie, and a Hunter is something like a Fisher, but also nearly rhymes with it too. Get it?); while not likely to have been especially cathartic for either star, it meant something to the audience (and one would hope, something to Carrie also).
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 Conservative superhero Winston Churchill had 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: it makes a difference 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 that's how she was able remain part of the 1% and still fight AIDS). Aside from AIDS events and the occasional interview on The Larry King Show, audiences were limited to appearances such as Taylor's getting honored at the Kennedy Center and a guest role as God's girlfriend Sarah on God, the Devil and Bob.
Just because she wasn’t in the news so much did not mean that she was a hermit during those final years. A few months after Taylor’s passing, Vanity Fair ran an article relating some of the star’s last adventures, which included swimming with sharks in Hawaii. Other adventures of course included men: some early evenings, before it would get busy, she would visit gay bars. Such nights she could be found sharing a watermelon martini (while one might say “So much for Betty Ford!” read on) with a twink or gym bunny and answer probing questions like "Who had the biggest dick?" (to which, the article said, Elizabeth laughed heartily and exclaimed “I can’t believe you asked me that--but I’m so glad you did.” Sadly for the unseemly curious, the article did not reveal whether or not any name was given). Such episodes seem sad in contrast to the glories of the Mike Todd and Richard Burton years, but remembering the affection Taylor had for gay men (and many gay men had for her), I would like to think these outings gave her some levity.
Not only did the legend spend time with patrons of gay bars, she also struck a friendship with Colin Farrell, whom she met when one of her many hospitalizations coincided with the birth of his youngest son. In fact, their friendship had become so close that the Gaelic star spoke at Elizabeth’s funeral (to which, by instructions in her will, her coffin was 15 minutes late). In the five years since her death, Farrell has been involved in auctions and fundraisers associated with The Elizabeth Taylor Foundation: Colin has become a worthy chapter in her legacy.
Another chapter in Taylor's legacy is her friend and business partner, Kathy Ireland. It was Ireland who made headlines on World AIDS Day 2015, when she revealed that that the star ran a safe house, something of a buyers' club, to get HIV drugs to patients, reportedly even selling some of her own jewels. While some doubt the veracity of Ireland's story, I am fairly sure that nobody doubts Taylor's genuine dedication and tenacity in the fight against the disease, and in any case, one cannot help but wonder that this story is an example of how history spawns rumor and half-truths which become the stuff of folklore, myth, and legend.
The fight against AIDS has also been carried on by Taylor's ultimate legacy, her family. With four children, several grandchildren, a step-daughter, and a great-grandson, Elizabeth Taylor left behind a veritable squadron of soldiers, testifying their respective memories of the woman who was their family but was a legend to the world, and always keeping up the good fight. I find it telling that unlike the scions of Bing Crosby, Bette Davis, and infamously Joan Crawford, the family of Elizabeth Taylor, who out of what could be read as English reserve, tend to avoid the press and do not speak ill of their famous matriarch: for all the marriages and world travel, all the scandal and "drama", her family, while insisting on a veil of discretion, still share cherished memories of that famous woman who was a flirtatious and generous earth mother in their own private lives, but mostly when pursuing her goal in fighting AIDS (it seems they know that in order to get publicity for the cause, they must share family stories: the business savviness, which began in film and led to fragrance, continues). In today's age of rejecting history, I am pleased to know this torch passes to the next generation.
So, aside from a sad (and I will admit, 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 it is unlikely that I will 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—I knew a bisexual Republican who was actually a great kisser). I did not pursue acting as a career, vocation, or hobby, nor am I particularly adept at sales or perfumery. 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 (divinely smoldering features, some of which the fair Elizabeth shared with the dark Colin: I don’t share those features!): clearly my connection with her was not regional or ethnic camaraderie.
Could the connection be religious or spiritual? I was raised Lutheran and even before crossing the Tiber I had long enjoyed a rapport with many Catholics (devoutly observant, selectively observant, and even lapsed), 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. Her Jewish sympathies date as far back as her childhood in England, when the Conservative politician Victor Cazalet, a family friend, assumed the unofficial role of Elizabeth's godfather: Cazalet was not only a devout Christian Scientist, he was also a Zionist. Furthermore, in her memoir from the 1960’s, Taylor spoke about always wanting to be “a Jewess.”
Some have argued that being Jewish for the star was perhaps a matter more social than spiritual. In fact, I saw several messages posted online by professed Jews who insisted that the Taylor was not really Jewish because 1) the conversion rite was Reform; and 2) she was not what they would consider a practicing Jew. However, not only did Elizabeth clearly think of herself as being Jewish, the Arab League went so far as to ban her films because she was Jewish and supported “the Zionist entity” (i.e., Israel); in fact, the Nasser regime refused to let Cleopatra be filmed in Egypt. 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, even 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 discussed 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 find 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
A few weeks after her death, I was able to purchase two Special Edition Elizabeth Taylor White Diamond Barbies (one for display and one for storage) and then a White Diamonds fragrance gift set. 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 of monarchs and world leaders; concert and newspaper advertisements for recording artists; and publicity shots of movie stars, is a kitschy shrine lit by LED lights, a shrine to that same woman whom Camille Paglia hailed as Hollywood’s pagan queen but whom I honor as a woman who by profession was a film actress then entrepreneur, an activist by conviction, and Jewess by choice: she remains an icon of violet eyes.
At night, I look at this image lit beneath soft bluish LED bulbs, sometimes pondering my own problems of health and heart. While Elizabeth Taylor would not be the first Jewish woman to be made a saint, I do not pray to her, but I reflect on her beauty, her passion, and her conviction. I try to remember her struggles and her furious fights on behalf of her friends and her composure that displayed beauty and telegraphed strength. I see the doll and remember that like that Barbie’s prototype, I have a love for beauty and should have faith. My challenge is to remember that whatever changes need to happen in my life, they must begin with me, and that I must act accordingly.
As the twenty-third of March falls in the middle of the work week this year, I will start the day by listening to Elizabeth Taylor in London, a recording based on the 1963 CBS television special: set with music by the legendary John Barry, the special follows the film star touring the city of her birth as she reads words provided by the likes of William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Winston Churchill. I have also recently been considering the possibility of an Elizabeth Taylor Party: a festive event, worthy of as many fans and interested people available, getting together amid decorations of lilac, lavender, mauve, and other shades of violet and purple, to watch the movie star's colorful roles, enjoying some champagne and Taylor's favorite caviar sandwiches, perhaps even donating money to a local AIDS charity or a global one, possibly even something for Israel, such as the American Friends of Magen David Adom. This year, I think it will a more quiet time for myself, but while I have a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a potentially more accessible recipe to the caviar sandwiches (which really would be called "potato skins" in some circles), I will be watching a DVD of the auction of her jewelry as I thumb through a book by her friend, Iranian-born photographer Firooz Zahedi.
Five years ago, Elizabeth Taylor’s death marked the end of an era, because she was the last great star from the golden age of Hollywood. For many, she 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, when in her seventies she was able to charm an Irish heartthrob four decades her junior. Long after she was in a blockbuster film or a show with high Nielsen ratings, people know the name Elizabeth Taylor, and aside from being a legend beloved around the world, friends and family who actually knew the woman cherish intimate memories of their private times with her as they carry on her fight. Presently, I simply have some biographies, perfume, some books and DVD’s, and imagery: I also have an imagination and I like to think that with these visual tools, I can channel her values and virtues. As I said before, I studied Elizabeth Taylor and now she is an icon to remind me of her life lessons, and by paying attention to them, may they guide me through my life and its challenges to whatever joys may be had today and promises that await tomorrow.
