The definition of star power

Elizabeth Taylor was that rare screen legend who used her fame to help others

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When Jennifer Lopez was at her peak in 2002-03, I rememberreading a gushy piece from an entertainment columnist who claimed Lopez and BenAffleck were the modern-day equivalent of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.As Public Enemy once said, don’t believe the hype. Not only were Taylor andBurton more important figures in the 1960s than Lopez and Affleck would be intheir day, but the allure of Taylor and Burton was inescapable and irresistibleto fans worldwide. Lopez and Affleck co-starred in the box office dud “JerseyGirl” and the infamous “Gigli,” which made them laughingstocks; when Taylor andBurton made bad movies, like “Cleopatra” and “The Sandpiper,” everyone went tosee them, and when they made great ones, like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,”they became instant classics.

If Taylor was not the world’s most famous woman in the1960s, she was certainly one of the most high-profile and easily identifiable.But she’d already had two decades to get used to her celebrity status. TheEnglish-born, Hollywood-bred Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor began her career as achild star in the 1940s, in films like “Lassie Come Home” and “NationalVelvet.” By the time she was a teenager, she had graduated to the big leagues,playing noteworthy supporting roles in big hits like “Life With Father” and“Little Women,” and acting alongside Greer Garson (the Meryl Streep of her era)in “Julia Misbehaves.”

In 1951, at the age of 19, she finally made the leap tocertifiable stardom as a leading lady, thanks to plum roles in two of theyear’s most celebrated films. She gave a beguiling performance as SpencerTracy’s soon-to-be-wed daughter in “Father of the Bride,” then showed offimpressive dramatic skills as the rich girl who changes the course ofMontgomery Cliff’s life in “A Place in the Sun,” director George Stevens’ Oscar-honoredadaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy.” Cliff and co-starShelley Winters received Academy Award nominations; Taylor did not, but herskillful work made it clear she was more than just a stunningly lovely ingnue.By the mid-1950s, Taylor’s career could have been neatly summed up by the titleof one of her films: “The Girl Who Had Everything.”

Little did her fans know she was merely warming up. Taylor’stalents would come to full bloom as the East Coast woman who struggles toadjust to life in Texas in the 1956 epic “Giant,” in which she effortlesslyholds her own against James Dean and the turbulent Mercedes McCambridge (who ismemorably merciless as Taylor’s unsympathetic sister-in-law). Once again, herco-stars received Academy Award nominations — even Rock Hudson got a best actornod, his only recognition from Oscar voters — yet Taylor was passed over. Thattrend was about to be reversed.

Taylor earned her first best actress nomination for the 1957extravaganza “Raintree County,” in which she was cast as a scheming Southernbelle who tricks Montgomery Cliff into walking down the aisle. But she was farmore compelling as another calculating Southern beauty, the love-starved Maggiein the 1958 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” whichbrought her a second Oscar nomination. The sizzle between Taylor and PaulNewman, cast as Maggie’s chilly husband, was nearly audible; although thecensorship standards of the day forced the filmmakers to soft-pedal the themesat the heart of Williams’ story, the stars did a marvelous job of suggestingeverything that could not be spelled out.

Taylor tackled Williams again the following year in the evenmore sexually charged “Suddenly, Last Summer,” a Gothic psychological melodramain which domineering Katharine Hepburn has Taylor locked up in an asylum andthreatened with a lobotomy in the hopes of keeping some sordid family secrets outof the public record. Taylor’s climactic monologue, in which she is forced torecall how her decadent cousin met a grisly end, is one of the most wildlyentertaining scenes in her entire career. She’s constantly on the verge ofall-out hysteria, yet she always pulls back just enough to keep going, as ifthe terrifying secret is a poison she must expel from her body.

Perhaps Taylor winning that elusive best actress Oscar in1960 for a respectable but hardly dynamic performance as a depressed call girlin “Butterfield 8” was more of a consolation prize for her previous threelosses. She reportedly detested the film, and there are hints of that hatred inher line readings: She sometimes sounds as if even she doesn’t believe in whatshe’s saying. Who can blame her? There’s only so much even a megawatt star cando when she’s stuck embodying a character named Gloria Wandrous, who is devotedto someone named Weston Liggett (played by Lawrence Harvey, who also seems tobe struggling to cover up his contempt for the script).

Taylor disappeared from the screen for three years after“Butterfield,” although she certainly wasn’t on vacation or resting on herlaurels. She was stuck as the eye of the storm that was “Cleopatra,” anenormously expensive, laughably lavish historical romance that nearly broughtdown Twentieth Century Fox as it brought Taylor into the orbit of RichardBurton, whom she would eventually marry — and divorce — twice. The variousjinxes and misfortunes that plagued the production team behind “Cleopatra” arenow legendary, as is the fact that the four-hour-long “Cleopatra” managed to beboth the top-grossing film of 1963 and, because of the mammoth cost overruns,one of the biggest financial fiascoes of all time. The movie was advertised as“the motion picture the world has been waiting for!” — and that wasn’t justpuffy publicity. Newspapers and magazines all over the world had beenchronicling the torturous journey of “Cleopatra,” particularly Taylor’snear-fatal illness midway through shooting and the off-screen love scenes sheand Burton had been playing, even though both of them were married (Taylor tosinger Eddie Fisher, Burton to actress Sybil Williams).

For the next four years, Taylor and Burton would beinseparable as a couple both on the screen and in the media. They co-starred in“The V.I.P.s” (which opened only a few months after “Cleopatra”), “TheSandpiper” and “Virginia Woolf” (which brought Taylor a second best actressOscar for her ferocious portrayal of a hard-drinking wife with a memorably tarttongue). They did Shakespeare in director Franco Zeffirelli’s rollicking 1967film of “The Taming of the Shrew.” Taylor played Helen of Troy in “DoctorFaustus,” with Burton in the title role. Altogether, they collaborated on 11films, some excellent — and others fairly excruciating.

In her first film without Burton in years, Taylor againturned to Tennessee Williams, playing a sexually frustrated officer’s wife in“Reflections in a Golden Eye,” a bizarre tale of repressed homosexuality,voyeurism, self-mutilation and suicide in which we’re treated to the sight ofTaylor using a riding crop on the face of Marlon Brando.

The 1970s were far less fruitful for Taylor as she made someill-advised choices — playing multiple characters in the fanciful flop “TheBlue Bird” in 1976 and starring in the critically savaged screen version ofStephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” — that cost her the box officebankability she had sustained for 20 years. If Taylor was in the spotlight inthe 1970s, it was more often because of her not-so-private life than because ofher work. Much was made of her 1974 divorce from Burton, her remarriage to himshortly thereafter and then a second divorce in 1976, followed by a weddingmonths later to Virginia senator John Warner. Menawhile, Taylor’s old-schoolstyle of movie stardom was now being eclipsed by more contemporary types suchas Jane Fonda, Jill Clayburgh, Faye Dunaway and Diane Keaton.

The 1980s saw Taylor concentrating on doing television,including a well-reviewed turn as famed gossip columnist Louella Parsons in the1985 comedy-drama “Malice in Wonderland,” as well as a splashy stint on ABC’sdaytime drama “General Hospital” that made headlines. And let’s not forget whoprovided Maggie Simpson’s voice when it was time for the serenely silent infantto say her first word.

It was also in the 1980s that Taylor began using hercelebrity to call attention to what she saw as a crisis no one wanted to talkabout. In 1985, Taylor’s friend and former co-star Rock Hudson died of AIDS,known at the time as “the gay cancer,” if it was discussed at all. Taylorshattered the taboo by throwing her support behind AIDS Project Los Angeles andthe American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Using her status in theentertainment community, she was able to turn the media’s attention to benefitsand fun-raising activities for AIDS/HIV charities. She spoke to Congress insupport of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act andaddressed the General Assembly of the United Nations to call attention to WorldAIDS Day. She launched the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991 to providefunding to organizations devoted to helping people who are living with HIV andAIDS. It is estimated that Taylor raised approximately $100 million for hercauses during her more than 25 years of work as an activist.

To write her off as merely a movie star or a tabloid darlingis to overlook so much of what Elizabeth Taylor accomplished in her life. Notcontent with being The Girl Who Had Everything, she devoted enormous amounts oftime, energy and money toward helping people who stood to lose everything. Manyof today’s stars could take a lesson or two from this woman who found a way touse her star power to illuminate millions.

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