Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor

[ClassyCo]

I know there's a discussion going about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, but I'd say Miss Taylor is worthy of her own discussion, right?

Elizabeth Taylor is one of the most iconic and famous film actresses in movie history. She was a contract for close to 20 years, spanning from 1942 to 1960. Her star-making vehicle was NATIONAL VELVET (1944), in which she played a young girl who masquerades as a boy to enter a horse race. It was FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1950) and A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951) that introduced her to adult roles, while movies like GIANT (1956) and CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958) proved her a talented dramatic actress. She was the first female to receive $1 million for a single acting role when she agreed to play CLEOPATRA (1963), a movie with a troubled production that is probably more famous than the film itself. She eventually legitimized herself by winning two Oscars for BUTTERFIELD 8 (1960) and WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966), receiving the acclaim from her peers that had previously alluded her.

She was a star for over 60 years. She appeared in film, television, and theatre. Few legends can boast as much.

I've always had a soft spot for Elizabeth Taylor. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF is one of my favorite classic movies, thanks in no small part to Taylor's iconic performance as Maggie the Cat. Famous for being famous, I remember seeing Taylor on TV when I was a kid. I remember when she died in 2011 and I got all the magazines I could with her on them -- I even got double prints of some of them, I'm sure.

I think it's alright for Elizabeth Taylor to have her own thread. She was due for one.

​

 

[ClassyCo]

A scantily-clad Elizabeth Taylor filming SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, the 1959 film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play.

 

[ClassyCo]

CLEOPATRA nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox in the early-'60s. The studio scrambled together a few different films (some whether they were ready or not) to make cheaply to hopefully return a quick profit. One such movie was SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE, a 1962 comeback vehicle-of-sorts for Marilyn Monroe, which also featured Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. Due to costly delays, Monroe was later fired and the film was shelved.

Fox later rehired Monroe because Martin had contractual approval of his co-star. Monroe's new contract with Fox would pay her $1 million to complete SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE and star in a movie called I LOVE LOUISA, a comedy about a woman named Louisa who suffers the loss of several husbands.

When Monroe passed in August 1962, the SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE project was briefly shelved before being rebranded MOVE OVER, DARLING, this time starring Doris Day and James Garner. I LOVE LOUISA eventually involved into a story called WHAT A WAY TO GO!, which Fox originally offered to Elizabeth Taylor. She declined, however, and was instead replaced with Shirley MacLaine.

It's just funny to me how Marilyn was brought in to make money to fund Elizabeth's CLEOPATRA, and then Elizabeth was offered to replace Marilyn in WHAT A WAY TO GO! after the later had passed.

Hollywood.... it's a business.​

 

[ClassyCo]

Apparently producers Aaron Spelling and Douglas S. Cramer pitched to ABC in 1981 for someone of Elizabeth Taylor's stature to play Alexis Carrington, the villainess the producers were planning to introduce on the struggling prime time drama DYNASTY. Taylor was one of three women the producers pitched to the network, the others being fellow Academy Award winner Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch. None of these ladies were interested, and British actress Joan Collins was cast instead.

Taylor herself was a big fan of daytime soap operas, especially GENERAL HOSPITAL. In the late-'70s and early-'80s, Taylor embarked on an affair with Anthony Geary, who played Luke Spencer on GENERAL HOSPITAL. Such a fan was Taylor of the show that she phoned the producers asking for a featured role. Thrilled that a two-time Oscar winner wanted to be on their show, the producers cast her as Helena Cassadine, the widowed socialite of Mikkos Cassadine, who had died at the height of the popular "Ice Princess" story-arc. Taylor accepted the role on the assurance that she'd appear at Luke and Laura's wedding. She first appeared as Helena on November 10, 1981 to an audience of more than 30 million Americans, making it the most-watched episode in daytime soap opera history. Taylor appeared on GENERAL HOSPITAL a total of three times, finally appearing on November 19, 1981.



Over the years, it was often publicized to be joining the cast of DYNASTY or its spin-off series DYNASTY II: THE COLBYS. All the hoopla proved unfounded, however, as Taylor declined all offers to join either series.

I've often wondered how it would've worked had Taylor been on one of the night-time soaps. I cannot envision her being on anything other than DYNASTY because of its over-the-top glamour and superficiality. She would've been perfect for that time of 1980s materialism.



@Snarky Oracle , who is it you'd have Elizabeth play?​

 

[DallasFanForever]

I would’ve loved to have seen Liz make her way to the prime time soap scene. I never knew she was considered for the role of Alexis. I can definitely see her pulling that off.

She would’ve fit Dynasty like a glove. I guess I always wished for a Dallas cameo from her at some point. I know she might’ve looked a little out of place perhaps so maybe as a short term character for a handful of episodes could’ve worked.

 

[ginnyfan]

Great to see Elizabeth get her own thread. There's so much to be said about her career, life, ups and downs. She certainly lived a life and has been through it all. In the end I think that's what makes her so likeable and enduring as a star. We've seen her at her best and worst, as the most beautiful movie screen icon and as a fat housewife with all sorts of issues. She was just real.

 

[ginnyfan]

When it comes to her career, in a way you can follow evolution of classic Hollywood through it, starting from 1943 up until early 1970s.

Liz was one of MGM's longest serving contract players, from 1942 until 1960, and she was certainly their biggest female star in the 1950s, along with Grace Kelly, and after 1956 and Kelly leaving, Liz was Metro's most valuable asset. She is that rare example of an actress who managed to evolve from a child/teen star to a full time adult superstar, the only other that comes to mind is Natalie Wood. What's interesting is that she made some of her best known, and best quality movies, on loans outs, as is often the case with other stars. A Place in the Sun (1951) was Paramount's, Giant (1956) at Warners and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) at Columbia. But it was at MGM where she was created, nurtured and groomed into a real superstar, so even though she was often unhappy with roles she got there, she would not be what she was, at any other studio, imo.

What's really fascinating to me, is her transition from teen star into an adult leading lady, which happened in 1949. In this same year, she was in Little Women, playing one of the sisters , and The Conspirator, where 16 year old Elizabeth played 38 year old Robert Taylor's wife. She went from teen in a silly blond wig to a seductive, gorgeous young woman in that recognizable 1950s Taylor hair-do. The transition continued next year, when she got married in Father of the Bride and then in 1951, in A Place in the Sun, where she would definitely arrive as a serious leading lady.

 

[ClassyCo]

Ever since I got into Old Hollywood, I've always been quite aware of Elizabeth Taylor. My maternal grandmother was a major fan of hers during Taylor's prime, and she always urged me to watch movies like GIANT and CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, two of her favorite movies as a teenager.

But I didn't have any interest.

Elizabeth Taylor, for quite a long time, was a woman I found overrated as an actress, as a beautiful woman, and as a star. She just seemed overblown, over-praised, over-hyped. I just did "get" the publicity that always seemed to surround her and it honestly hindered me from accepting her on her own merit.

When I finally got around to watching CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, it completely changed my opinion on Elizabeth Taylor. Not only was the movie mesmerizing to me, but Taylor's performance as Maggie the Cat was beautiful and genuine. That one film turned around my long-held opinions on a woman I had practically decided I wasn't going to like. I did a complete 360-degree turnaround and fell in love with her.

As one might guess, it was a tumbling effect from there. I dove into areas of Taylor's personal and professional life, and I've grown to have more appreciation for the body of work this woman accomplished in her lifetime, both and on and off the silver screen.

Beautiful inside and out.

​

 

[ClassyCo]

I never knew she was considered for the role of Alexis. I can definitely see her pulling that off.

Yeah, Douglas S. Cramer, partner of Aaron Spelling and a DYNASTY producer, was interviewed about the casting of Alexis for the E! TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY documentary for the show.

ABC wanted a big-name star to play Alexis; someone they could promote as entering their show, which would therefore help DYNASTY, which was struggling in the ratings. Cramer and Spelling pitched Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, both Oscar winners, as potential candidates for the part. If a deal couldn't be struck with those ladies, they felt Raquel Welch would've been a serviceable alternative.* As it turned out, none of those ladies wanted the role, and British actress Joan Collins was cast instead. The documentary on E! says Collins was cast because Candy Spelling, Aaron's wife, liked her on an episode of the Spelling-produced FANTASY ISLAND, where she played Cleopatra (the star-making role Elizabeth Taylor snatched from her in 1959).

*Joan Collins mentions Jessica Walter as one of the top contenders ABC wanted for Alexis.​

 

[Crimson]

I admit, I am perhaps the most ambivalent about Liz out of all of the classic film stars.

There's no denying her beauty, that's for sure. From the mid-50s to early-60s, I think she was the most beautiful woman ever put on film. Even Marilyn at her most luminous couldn't hold a candle to Liz in her prime. I think Liz was also a truly great star. I would have no argument about her being one of the Top 10, or even Top 5, greatest female stars of the classic era. Unlike most of them, she seemed like a really great person too: a witty broad with a great zest for life, and a kind hearted humanitarian.

Judging her as an actor is where my ambivalence kicks in. Objectively, I think she's no worse than most of her peers among the 40s and 50s glamour girls, and better than a few of them. But ... her voice. Kathleen Turner -- who knows a thing or two about voices -- has said Liz had a bad voice that she used badly. I have to agree. At best, her voice was kind of flat; at worst, ear piercingly shrill. I get a headache just thinking about re-watching SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER or WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

 

[ClassyCo]

I admit, I am perhaps the most ambivalent about Liz out of all of the classic film stars.

There's no denying her beauty, that's for sure. From the mid-50s to early-60s, I think she was the most beautiful woman ever put on film. Even Marilyn at her most luminous couldn't hold a candle to Liz in her prime. I think Liz was also a truly great star. I would have no argument about her being one of the Top 10, or even Top 5, greatest female stars of the classic era. Unlike most of them, she seemed like a really great person too: a witty broad with a great zest for life, and a kind hearted humanitarian.

Judging her as an actor is where my ambivalence kicks in. Objectively, I think she's no worse than most of her peers among the 40s and 50s glamour girls, and better than a few of them. But ... her voice. Kathleen Turner -- who knows a thing or two about voices -- has said Liz had a bad voice that she used badly. I have to agree. At best, her voice was kind of flat; at worst, ear piercingly shrill. I get a headache just thinking about re-watching SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER or WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

As hard as it is for me to, I must agree. She was beautiful, but voice can verge on annoying. Her "thin and shrill voice" was the one thing the critics pointed to when she decided to do THE LITTLE FOXES on Broadway in the early-'80s.​

 

[Crimson]

One of my favorite Liz performances is one of the more obscure: the TV-movie MALICE IN WONDERLAND, about the feuding gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Liz tackled the part with gusto more than technique. She doesn't look like Louella, act like Louella or even particularly sound like Louella; but she was seemed to have fun romping through the role.



I'd like to have seen Liz's face when someone first suggested she should portray this lady:

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Not every role or every performance works, to be sure. And her fishwife elocution, something she was well aware of, didn't help. And while she's goodish in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, her delivery of the film's title sounds as scripted as it is (she needs to hesitate on an adjective or something, and she doesn't). She once said: "I don't like the way I look, I don't like the way I speak, I don't like the way I move, I don't like the way I act..."

But nobody does determined soliloquy heartbreak like Elizabeth Taylor.

Even Katharine Hepburn told her biographer that she felt Taylor was "more interested in being a movie star than an actress," and added, "but make no mistake -- Elizabeth Taylor is a brilliant actress." Joan Crawford admitted in a 1966 interview that she shouldn't have previously made some of the public assessments she had about how Taylor conducted her personal life, confessing that it was "none of my business" and conceding that she herself "wasn't Goldilocks," adding that Taylor had recently given some of the finest performances she'd ever seen... But then Kate may have felt generously towards an actress from whom she felt no threat, just as Hepburn praised Julia Roberts while dismissing the talents of Meryl Streep and Glenn Close. And Crawford, of course, would simply have been mesmerized by the fame and notoriety and crazed success and sheer melodrama of The Liz Taylor Train as it barreled out of control, swallowing up and spitting out everything in its path.

She was, in THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS, the most beautiful 20-year old I ever saw. She's great in GIANT, decent in SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, better than she thought as the hooker who accepts no money in BUTTERFIELD 8, better than I'd like to admit in CLEOPATRA, positively terrific doing Shakespeare with hubby in TAMING OF THE SHREW, and flawless as the obsessive neurotic in her most underrated film, NIGHT WATCH... And, as a child actress, luminous in several films... Although I'd always prefer to see the Bette Davis/James Mason version of VIRGINIA WOOLF that Edward Albee envisioned, one that would have been "deeper and less showy" than the Taylor/Burton film.

As a celebrity -- arguably the greatest star Hollywood ever produced, she knew how to do the right things, and when to do the wrong things.

At the very least, she was a clever, intelligent woman. And she instinctively knew exactly the right blend of good taste and bad taste that makes an icon -- vulnerable and brassy, regal yet accessible, polished but vulgar, generous and egoistic, an "erotic vagrant" yet unpromiscuous, preternaturally gorgeous and sometimes even downright haggish.

Some people loved her, and the people who hated her loved to hate her. (My mother used to rail on about Taylor, her "ticky-tacky prettiness" and, in comparing Taylor to her pal Natalie Wood, Mom angrily said that Wood "had no idea what class is -- I think Elizabeth Taylor knows what class is, but she just doesn't give a damn!")

At the very least, you couldn't really ignore Elizabeth Taylor, on-screen or off.

Beautiful inside and out.

During her attempts to rally the business during her AIDS campaign, her old buddy Roddy McDowall said that "she can be very, very hard on people" regarding her reactions to all the celebrity fear regarding the stigma surrounding the disease. Perhaps proving his point, she apparently never quite forgave him for the comment.

 

[ClassyCo]

One of my favorite Liz performances is one of the more obscure: the TV-movie MALICE IN WONDERLAND, about the feuding gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Liz tackled the part with gusto more than technique. She doesn't look like Louella, act like Louella or even particularly sound like Louella; but she was seemed to have fun romping through the role.

View attachment 29810

I'd like to have seen Liz's face when someone first suggested she should portray this lady:

View attachment 29811

I was literally reading about this movie before I went to lunch earlier. I'd like to see it.

 

[ClassyCo]

Not every role or every performance works, to be sure. And her fishwife elocution, something she was well aware of, didn't help. And while she's goodish in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, her delivery of the film's title sounds as scripted as it is (she needs to hesitate on a verb or something, and she doesn't). She once said: "I don't like the way I look, I don't like the way I speak, I don't like the way I move, I don't like the way I act..."

But nobody does determined soliloquy heartbreak like Elizabeth Taylor.

Even Katharine Hepburn told her biographer that she felt Taylor was "more interested in being a movie star than an actress," and added, "but make no mistake -- Elizabeth Taylor is a brilliant actress." Joan Crawford admitted in a 1966 interview that she shouldn't have previously made some of the public assessments she had about how Taylor conducted her personal life, confessing that it was "none of my business" and conceding the she herself "wasn't Goldilocks," adding that Taylor had recently given some of the finest performances she'd ever seen... But then Kate may have felt generously towards an actress from whom she felt no threat, just as Hepburn praised Julia Roberts while dismissing the talents of Meryl Streep and Glenn Close. And Crawford, of course, would simply have been mesmerized by the fame and notoriety and crazed success and sheer melodrama of The Liz Taylor Train as it barreled out of control, swallowing up and spitting out everything in its path.

She was, in THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS, the most beautiful 20-year old I ever saw. She's great in GIANT, decent in SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, better than she thought as the hooker who accepts no money in BUTTERFIELD 8, better than I'd like to admit in CLEOPATRA, positively terrific doing Shakespeare with hubby in TAMING OF THE SHREW, and flawless as the obsessive neurotic in her most underrated film, NIGHT WATCH... And, as a child actress, luminous in several films... Although I'd always prefer to see the Bette Davis/James Mason version of VIRGINIA WOOLF that Edward Albee envisioned, one that would have been "deeper and less showy" than the Taylor/Burton film.

As a celebrity -- arguably the greatest star Hollywood ever produced, she knew how to do the right things, and when to do the wrong things.

At the very least, she was a clever, intelligent woman. And she instinctively knew exactly the right blend of good taste and bad taste that makes an icon -- vulnerable and brassy, regal yet accessible, polished but vulgar, generous and egoistic, an "erotic vagrant" yet unpromiscuous, preternaturally gorgeous and sometimes even haggish.

Some people loved her, and the people who hated her loved to hate her. (My mother used to rail on about Taylor, her "ticky-tacky prettiness" and, in comparing Taylor to her pal Natalie Wood, Mom angrily said that Wood "had no idea what class is -- I think Elizabeth Taylor knows what class is, but she just doesn't give a damn!")

At the very least, you couldn't really ignore Elizabeth Taylor, on-screen or off.



During her attempts to rally the business during her AIDS campaign, her old buddy Roddy McDowall said that "she can be very, very hard on people" regarding her reactions to all the celebrity fear regarding the stigma surrounding the disease. Perhaps proving his point, she apparently never quite forgave him for the comment.

Your posts are always a delight to read. I enjoy your practically poetic descriptions and opinions.​

 

[ClassyCo]

Some outtakes from GENERAL HOSPITAL featuring two-time Oscar winner Elizabeth Taylor as Helena Cassadine.

 

[ClassyCo]

Good clip of campy cheekiness from THE MIRROR CRACK'D (1980).

 

[Crimson]

Good clip of campy cheekiness from THE MIRROR CRACK'D (1980)

Although I would generally say that Liz was a better actress than Kim, I think Kim completely stole that film.

The look of the movie is so weird. Released in 1980, ostensibly set in the early 50s but for some reason it looks like the late 60s.

 

[ClassyCo]

Although I would generally say that Liz was a better actress than Kim, I think Kim completely stole that film.

Yeah, Liz is definitely the better actress of the two.

 

[ClassyCo]

I bought this gem at Dollar General for $25 some months ago. To me, it was too good a deal to pass up (even though I already owned some of the movies individually and in different sets).

​