Booze, drugs and Richard Burton. But Liz’s biggest demon was... the Pope
Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit And Glamour Of An Icon Kate Andersen Brower HarperCollins £25 ★★★★★
Dame Elizabeth Taylor was globally famous from the age of 12 to her death at 79. Married eight tumultuous times to seven men, she was the first actor, male or female, to negotiate a million-dollar contract (for Cleopatra), and the first to get treatment for addiction at the Betty Ford Center. She was the owner of a historic collection of jewellery, the creator of a $1 billion-plus perfume line, a supporter of equal pay for women and a crusader for victims of AIDS.
She won two Oscars (Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?) and made more than 60 films, but ‘her lust for life has eclipsed her professional accomplishments’, writes Kate Andersen Brower, author of this first biography of Taylor authorised by her family.
Researched over three years, it is packed with private letters and more than 250 personal interviews with family, celebrity friends and household staff, and delivers in compassionately gossipy detail the glamour and not-so-glamorous aspects of the actress’s life.
The at-times gushing tone can be overlooked for the vivid descriptions of the dying studio system, the Hollywood of the 1960s, the social and religious climate of the mid-20th Century (at one point Taylor was denounced by the Vatican for her numerous marriages) and the character of its heroine, grand and yet grounded, a woman who knew her worth because from birth she was treated as a commodity.
Her parents, like MGM, exploited Taylor and took most of her money, although she remained on good terms with them. Her father beat her. Being a child star was a mix of a spectacular amount of attention and boredom. She found solace in animals, including a chipmunk that perched on her shoulder.
Revelations here can’t fail to raise eyebrows: the physical violence of almost all of her marriages, the extravagant lifestyle, the jewellery (what Taylor called ‘the loot’, which she at one point kept in a brown paper bag and was sold for £119.4million at Christie’s in 2011), and the terrifying burden of global fame.
The paparazzi and general public clawed at her constantly; her children were spied on. Banned from Richard Burton’s funeral, even her 4am private trip to visit his grave was invaded by the press. She’d experienced worse than that. The body of her late third husband, producer Mike Todd, who died in a plane crash 13 months after their wedding, was dug up and taken by thieves after his burial.
The personal letters between Burton and Taylor are gold dust – poetic, lustful, regretful, angry. She and he were co-dependent addicts, love-hating the weakness they saw in each other. The first time they met, on the set of Cleopatra, Burton was so hung over he couldn’t raise a cup of coffee to his mouth. Taylor found this adorable.
Her miserable ill-health and addiction to booze and painkillers worsened. Although the book is dedicated to her seventh husband, the late Senator John Warner, he does not come off well, neglecting Taylor after their marriage, encouraging her to do no more than drink and watch TV. It was in this period that Taylor’s son, Christopher Wilding, found her injecting the opioid Demerol into her leg.
That sadness is lifted by her never-failing wit and efforts to make life fun, even in the face of tragedy, and the remarkable work she did for AIDS patients.
She undoubtedly helped to change social attitudes and raised more than $100 million, a legacy that should not be eclipsed by her life.