Elizabeth Taylor

British-American actor and philanthropist

• Born: February 27, 1932
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: March 23, 2011
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Taylor epitomized the classic, beautiful actress of the golden age of film. Her on-screen accomplishments, including the acclaimed National Velvet, were matched by the sensationalism of her off-screen larger-than-life marriages. Taylor also devoted years to HIV-AIDS fund-raising and awareness, becoming one of the first celebrities to participate actively, and publicly, on the issue in the face of homophobia and public fear of the disease.

Early Life

Elizabeth Taylor was born in London with dual citizenship British and American to Americans Francis Taylor and Sara Warmbrodt. Taylor’s parents were from Kansas but had met and married in were chosen in 1926. The Taylors were living in London to manage an art gallery for Howard Young, Francis Taylor’s uncle and an art dealer. The Taylors enjoyed a comfortable life in London, with domestic help and a home overlooking Hamstead Heath. Their first child, Howard, was born in 1929. Elizabeth, named after her two grandmothers, was born three years later. From an early age, she insisted she be called Elizabeth and not Liz.

Sara Taylor was the classical stage mother. She had given up her own acting aspirations at the time of her marriage, and it was her daughter who became the focus of Sara’s ambitions. Elizabeth Taylor began formal dancing and singing lessons at the age of two, and by age three had already acquired many social graces. Thanks to the financial generosity of her great-uncle and friends, the Great Depression had little impact upon the Taylor family.

In April, 1939, with the outbreak of World War II on the horizon, the Taylors returned to the United States and settled in Southern California, where Sara’s goal was a film career for her daughter. Taylor signed her first film contract, with Universal, in April, 1941. She was to be paid $100 per week for five months.

Life’s Work

Taylor’s first film was the forgettable There’s One Born Every Minute (1942). She was released by Universal after the head of casting concluded that she had no film future. However, she was soon given a small role opposite Roddy McDowall in Lassie Come Home and brief parts in Jane Eyre and White Cliffs of Dover. Although her screen time had been limited, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) signed her to a seven-year contract at $300 per week.

National Velvet was Taylor’s first starring role, opposite the already famous Mickey Rooney. The role of Velvet Brown, a twelve-year old girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to ride, and win, the Grand National Steeplechase, was tailor-made for Taylor, who had learned to ride horses while in England. It made her a star, although a fall off her horse during filming led to permanent spinal problems. The autocratic studio system still ruled. Child actors were at a particular disadvantage, placed as they were in an artificial environment with few friends their own age and limited educational opportunities.

Taylor’s emotional life undoubtedly suffered from a combination of her mother’s manipulation and studio demands. Even her dating was scripted for publicity. She was briefly engaged to William Pawley when she was seventeen years old and was pursued by aviator and filmmaker Howard Hughes. Her first marriage was to Conrad Hilton , Jr., heir to the Hilton hotel chain, and came during the release of her film The Father of the Bride (1950). Taylor was only eighteen years old, and Hilton was abusive and an alcoholic. The marriage lasted only seven months.

Taylor began dating British actor Michael Wilding while in London making Ivanhoe. They married in 1952. She was twenty and he was twenty years older. It, too, was not successful, although two sons, Michael and Christopher, resulted from the marriage before the couple separated in 1956. Wilding was followed by Michael Todd , whose expansive personality contrasted sharply to the retiring Englishman. The couple were married in 1957, and their daughter, Liza, was born later that year, but Todd died in an airplane crash in 1958. Taylor soon became involved with Eddie Fisher, and she was widely accused of breaking up Fisher’s marriage to Debbie Reynolds.

If Taylor’s personal life was conflicted, her film career was blossoming. A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956) each garnered nine Oscar nominations. Taylor’s first Oscar nomination for best actress came with Raintree County (1957). A second nomination followed with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and a third with Suddenly Last Summer (1959). Owing one more film to MGM before being released to make the highly touted Cleopatra, Taylor was forced to make Butterfield 8 , where she played a call girl. In her opinion, she was not paid enough only $125,000 and she claimed it was a dreadful film, but it gained Taylor her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1961.

Cleopatra was the most expensive film ever made up to that time. Taylor’s own remuneration from all sources was about $7 million. Other than its expense, it was significant for bringing together Taylor and Richard Burton . Both were married, both were charismatic but needy personalities, and both drank too much. Their affair became a worldwide media event, and Taylor was publicly condemned by the Vatican. Because of her continuing health problems, Cleopatra took well over a year to film, and when it opened in 1963, it was to generally poor reviews. In March, 1964, Taylor and Burton married.

Although Taylor and Burton performed together after Cleopatra, including in the films The V.I.P.s (1963) and The Sandpiper (1965), their most notable film was Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). A college teacher, George (Burton), and his wife, the daughter of the college’s president, Martha (Taylor), spend an evening drinking, swearing, and fighting with each other. Both were nominated for Academy Awards, and Taylor won for best actress. In fear of losing a fifth time, Burton refused to travel from London to Hollywood, and Taylor stayed in London as well. Anne Bancroft accepted the Oscar on Taylor’s behalf.

In a scenario in which life imitates art, the Burtons continued to drink and battle, publicly and privately. In 1973 they separated, reconciled with more drinking and bickering, and divorced in 1974, only to remarry again the following year and divorce once again in 1976. Later that year Taylor married future Virginia senator John Warner, who was the opposite of the volatile Burton but just as controlling of Taylor. They separated in 1981.

Through her years with Burton, Taylor’s own film career languished. She made a dozen or so films, most of which were unremarkable. Along with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and other film notables, she narrated MGM’s retrospective That’s Entertainment (1974). In 1981 she appeared on the stage in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, for which she received $50,000 per week, considerably less than for her film appearances. Reviews were mixed, but after several months on Broadway, Taylor reprised the role in London, where Burton also was performing. Against his better judgment, he agreed to appear with Taylor in a stage production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives. Reviews were poor, but the celebrity value of what came to be called the “Liz and Dick Show” made the production popular and financially rewarding. However, her continuing addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol led to her family’s intervention. In late 1983, Taylor entered the Betty Ford Center for detoxification and therapy.

As her film career faded, Taylor devoted herself more and more to charity. With Burton, who was a hemophiliac, they established the Richard Burton Hemophilia Fund. In 1985, Taylor was among the earliest public figures to become identified with the crusade against HIV-AIDS. She chaired one of the first major AIDS benefit dinners at a time when most Hollywood figures were refusing to participate in an event that was, at the time, associated with gays exclusively. In 1985 she helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research and, in 1991, created the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

Because of continuing physical and emotional stress, Taylor returned to the Betty Ford Center in 1988 and met Larry Fortensky, a laborer twenty years her junior. The two married in 1991 and divorced in 1996. Taylor’s net worth, garnered from her films, inheritances, divorces, and business investments, including her Passion and White Diamonds perfume brands, was revealed during the divorce proceedings as well over $600 million.

By the mid-1990’s, Taylor’s health, always problematic, was declining. Several days after a television extravaganza celebrating her sixty-fifth birthday, she had surgery for a brain tumor, and she continued to suffer from other serious medical problems. In 2000, Taylor was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her acting and philanthropy.

Significance

One of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace the screen, Taylor became one of the icons of Hollywood not only for her film accomplishments, including two Oscars and several nominations for best actress, but also for her personal life, which often was more public than private. In contrast, her charitable endeavors, particularly her involvement in HIV-AIDS awareness and fund-raising, has given her a gravitas that belies her career of self-indulgence.

Bibliography

Maddox, Brenda. Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor? New York: M. Evans, 1977. The first major biography of Taylor, by an author who also has written on D. H. Lawrence, W. B. Yeats, and Nora Joyce.

Spoto, Donald. A Passion for Life. New York: Time Warner, 1996. The author, a renowned biographer of many subjects ranging from Marilyn Monroe to St. Francis of Assisi, writes insightfully of Taylor’s film career and personal foibles.

Taraborrelli, J. Randy. Elizabeth. New York: Warner Books, 2006. A comprehensive work by a biographer of many celebrity figures, the author entertainingly discusses both Taylor the actor and Taylor the person. Includes many black-and-white photographs.

Vermilye, Jerry, and Mark Ricci. The Films of Elizabeth Taylor. 1977. Rev. ed. New York: Citadel Press, 1993. This compilation remains the major work on Taylor’s films. A classic look at her acting career.