Elizabeth Taylor: 1932 - 2011
Very few actresses were as well-respected or achieved a fame equal to most actors during Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1940s and ‘50s. There was Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Katherine Hepburn, and a handful of others. But none of them were like Elizabeth Taylor. She was one of show business’ first childhood talents to grow up, mature, grow old, and die before our eyes. Few others have managed to get so far as adulthood without passing prematurely, such as Judy Garland. Now, Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple, Ernest Borgnine, and Kirk Douglas are the last living legends of that era, as time has moved on to begin catching up with their successors, those of the New Hollywood age (the 1960s and ‘70s).
I think the first movie I ever saw Elizabeth Taylor star in was 1956’s Giant. Of course, I was really taken with James Dean in that film, but I was just as impressed by Taylor. All the other performances by actresses from that era lacked a certain excitement or distinctive quality, an edge. Taylor’s in Giant was the first that felt real and completely identifiable to me because her character, Leslie, didn’t simply serve a love story or what have you. Taylor flexed these sort of feminist muscles years before the feminist movement was in full swing. All the men in Giant’s story expected Leslie to just serve and live passively among them. Well, she showed she could be just as tough and stubborn as they could be. I was really taken by that and it impressed me to see an actress give such a performance back then.
Taylor was careful not to play a caricature during most of her career. Every performance I saw of hers had a depth to them, maybe less so with Cleopatra. Every one of her characters, particularly in the ‘50s and ‘60s, were strong and refused to lay down for anybody. You can’t really say the same for many of her contemporaries.
Giant always remained a favorite, but I went on to see her as the manipulative femme fatale in A Place in the Sun, the grand-standing empress in the extravagant Cleopatra, the frustrated titular wife in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the venomous alcoholic wife in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and the young bride in the original Father of the Bride – six in all, which doesn’t exactly make me an authority on her 50-film career. But it is enough to understand why Elizabeth Taylor was a legend. Without her, the careers of Faye Dunaway, Sigourney Weaver, Laura Linney, Kate Winslet and many others may never have been possible.
It astonishes me whenever I remind myself that Taylor was only 34 when she played the middle-aged, boozed-out Martha in 1966’s Virginia Woolf?. Her transformation into that role is so complete and convincing that it is nothing short of incredible. Taylor, perhaps drawing on experiences of her own by that time, just threw herself into the role of Martha, spittle-spewing vitriol and all. It is truly something to behold. It’s also considered to be her last great role.
Elizabeth Taylor’s best-received works, aside from those previously mentioned, include Father’s Little Dividend, Life Without Father, National Velvet, Jane Eyre, Lassie Come Home, and Suddenly, Last Summer.
She won two Academy Awards (Butterfield 8, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), one Golden Globe (Suddenly, Last Summer), and a slew of other awards – for both lifetime achievement and acting.
Once the eighties hit, Taylor practically retired from the silver screen, appearing in an infrequent TV movie or commercial for products under her brand name.
While I was never alive during her heyday and only knew of her during her entrepreneurial and social-cause days, when I think of her now I prefer to remember her drunken daze in Virginia Woolf?, her audacity in Giant, and her famous cry “Maggie the cat is alive. I’m alive!” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
In performances such as these, Elizabeth Taylor will remain alive forever.