‘Elizabeth Taylor. “The Strength and Glamor of an Icon” by Kate Andersen Brower portrays the modernity and helplessness of myth
He was born with a double eyelash line, hair on his back, arms and ears and took 10 days to open his eyes. But when he did, a violet gaze blinded art dealer Francis Taylor and former actress Sarah Sothern, parents of one of the most photographed women of the 20th century. Elizabeth Taylor. The year is 1932.
He had a life like a movie. To display the Bourbon pilgrim pearl and give a name to a yacht Kalizma (short for Kate, Liza and María, daughters of Taylor-Burton), converting to Judaism out of love and shopping addiction The Diamond Krupp it belonged to the Nazi industrial company Krupp… until it was mistreated.
Her father drank and couldn’t stand the fact that his 12-year-old daughter was making more money than him after she became a star Fire of youth (1944). He once hit him in the jaw so hard that the jaw joint was permanently damaged. With her first husband Nicky Hilton, I experienced a nightmare. They seemed so happy that MGM took the opportunity to advertise The bride’s father (1950), but at the age of 18 he discovered emotional catastrophe.
During their honeymoon, Hilton kicked her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage. Taylor didn’t even know she was pregnant. “I could even see the baby on the toilet,” he wrote in his diaries. These unprecedented and tragic episodes are reflected in the Authorized biography Elizabeth Taylor. The strength and glamor of an icon (Dome Books) by Kate Andersen Brower, recently published in our country. It is the first time an author has access to 250 interviews with friends and family, 7,358 letters, more than 10,000 photos and hundreds of diary entries and personal notes.
At three and a half years old, Taylor made her concert debut; were among the public Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. With the Second World War, the Taylors emigrated from London to Los Angeles, where Sara channeled the frustration of not having been a well-known actress through her daughter, who made her debut at the age of 10 One is born every minute.
Who would have told her that two decades later she would be the first actress to earn a million dollars? Cleopatra (1963), which he fell in love with during filming Richard Burton when she was still married to the singer Eddie Fisher andl, with Sybil Williams. He described the end of his marriage to Fisher as a “slow suicide” as he tried to control and manipulate her in terrible ways. One night he grabbed a gun, started messing around and said: “I won’t kill you. I will never shoot you. You are too pretty.”
Talking about Taylor’s cinematography inevitably means talking about her privacy. Almost every film is marked by something: drunkenness, surgical procedures to save her life, feminist messages, depression, arguments with her children… Taylor was always clear: “I am Mother Courage.” I reach old age and drag my sable coat“.
There were terrible moments at home. Your son Christopher Wilding He says that one day his mother called him into her room and that when he entered, he found her with a syringe of Demerol (an opiate painkiller). She asked him to inject it into his leg, but he refused: “I felt like I was out of breath.” And I told her I was sorry, but I couldn’t help her with that.”
Another difficult moment occurred in 1983 when he entered the Betty Ford Detox Center for the first time. During therapy, Elizabeth confessed that she had felt used by the studio, Richard Burton and her family to enrich herself at the expense of her fame. Her parents spent almost all of the money she earned as a child prodigy and teenager, and even his mother SarahShe paid a doctor to confirm whether she was a virgin under the guise of opening her hymen his first time It wouldn’t be painful.
The diva revealed in therapy that her son Christopher had asked her for financial help on multiple occasions. “At this moment I felt ashamed and embarrassed; “My mind was racing after this revelation, which was like a bombshell for me,” her son says in the book. He is her second child, the result of her marriage to her second husband, actor Michael Wilding, with whom Taylor was unfaithful Frank Sinatra and who she got pregnant with. She wanted to marry The Voice and he responded by traveling to Mexico so she could have an abortion.
Christopher and his sister Liza Todd are the sources for Taylor’s new biography. The only daughter he had Mike Todd -the producer of In 80 days around the world (1956) – claims that the service wouldn’t let him go to his mother’s room in the morning so he wouldn’t see her high. Liza always missed the trust between mother and daughter. “Sometimes you suddenly realized it was you the only person they protected your mother from. “That drove me crazy.”
Intelligent, easy to laugh at, sensitive, self-critical, self-destructive…Taylor was one too Influencers before the term was coined. During filming Cleopatra In 1961, he helped raise Bvlgari’s profile and made an unknown designer named Bvlgari famous Valentino I wanted an evening dress for the premiere Spartacus in Rome. When they saw it in photos, high society ladies wanted to wear the brand.
Additionally, he was the first star to use celebrity to change perceptions of AIDS and homosexuals and founded the first foundation to raise funds for research. Most of his friends were gay. In fact, I encouraged it Roddy McDowall and Montgomery Clift They were a couple. The actress died in 2011 at the age of 79.
