Elizabeth Taylor - RIP

Sentimental post-ironic pre-intelligent Gen-XXY pick: Pia Zadora.

Amanda Barrie in Carry on Cleo.

Richard Burton however was fantastic. A boozer who hated acting making so many great films and being the first Westerner to visit Mecca (and I don't mean the Bingo hall).

Shame she's better known among young 'uns like me for being a semi- regular in The National Enquirer and The Star than for her movies. Which means that I can't really comment about her acting (only things I've seen with her were National Velvet and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the latter being one of the most pretentious bits of cinematic wank ever to escape Hollywood). Though she gets points for raising so much money for AIDS research and for her genuine concern for people suffering from AIDS.

Insane = her Tennessee Williams-written flop "Boom" with Richard Burton. She seems drunk and on drugs the entire film. Actually, its so crazy it's worth watching.

RIP

Awww RIP pretty lady.

She MJ and Liberace gonna have one hell of a reunion party in da sky.

The BBC website was clearly all ready to go on this: as well as the news story, they have magicked up Obituary, In Pictures, Filmography and Private Life in the Spotlight in a matter of minutes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12833100

i hate when fake ilx rip threads turn real.

For a few years the most beautiful woman in the world. I wish she'd done more comedy (Reflections in a Golden Eye, X Y & Zee).

yes that laff riot romp reflections in a golden eye

anyway rest in peace big diamond bitch goddess icon drag queen violet eye rage machine. luv ya.

yes that laff riot romp reflections in a golden eye

She's hilarious in it! (Intentionally too)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nInE5TITzE8

i love reflections. i need it on dvd. almost a trance film in spots. you could write a book about that one. yes you could.

alfred have you seen this? so funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gR-vU44gd4

"Courageous" is thrown around a lot, but she really was in the eighties, fighting for AIDS research when no one else was – AND on behalf of gays.

So long, beautiful.

RIP

Most beautiful in A Place in the Sun and Father of the Bride, most whoa-talented-after-all in WAFoVWoolf.

RIP, Miss Tits (Burton's nickname for her).

morbs otm

damn

"only" 79!

Best in Virginia Woolf, but pretty damned memorable in Suddenly Last Summer, no more so than when she's in heels on a platform suspended over the snake pit.

Man, she was luminous in A Place in the Sun...

RIP, Liz.

haven't really seen any of her reputedly terrible post-prime vehicles except John Waters' fave, Boom!

A strike against talkies: that face, and then.... that voice.

was her last film appearance The Flintstones?

wikipedia says she did a TV movie, These Old Broads, in 2001

see, that's not film.

Neither is The Flintstones.

I thought she was terrific and believably old and slow in Giant.

Her child performances (National Velvet especially) are guileless.

RIP. She had the most beautiful eyes in the world.

One prominent and perhaps surprising dissenter about her looks was Richard Burton, who was twice her husband. The notion of his wife as “the most beautiful woman in the world is absolute nonsense,” he said.

“She has wonderful eyes,” he added, “but she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest, and she’s rather short in the leg.”

RIP

My favourite real life Liz moment: at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert where she told a heckler to STFU

her and newman were about the hottest screen couple ever got imo

magma hot

RIP beautiful crazy lady
i always loved your teeth

her and newman were about the hottest screen couple ever got imo

― the '' key on my keybord is not working (darraghmac), Wednesday, 23 March 2011 14:56 (17 minutes ago)

otm

Mmmmmmmmmmmontgomery Clift?

so great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp1uMe4vdBg

(whose face she held together after a car wreck, btw)

xp

montgomery cleft

too soon...

My family claims we saw her picnicking with John Warner at a horse race in Virginia, but I have no memory of it whatsoever.

R.I.P.

Love this interview about A Place in the Sun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZv8HVkT3TY

from twitter

Slate Mel Gussow, author of the NYT's Taylor obit, died in 2005. http://bit.ly/ePzTdv

written by a ghost!

well, she won her Oscar for Butterfield 8 for almost dying. She also survived her career by about 35 years.

Until three weeks I had NO idea she was once Mrs. John Warner.

see, that's not film.

― Fuck bein' hard, Dr Morbz is complicated (Dr Morbius)

Neither is The Flintstones.

― Anti-mist K-Lo (Phil D.)

No argument, but you know it was the F'stones '90s movie starring John Goodman she was in, right?

Farewell Liz. Damn she was a beautiful vibrant thing in her day. Grew up watching all of her films...National Velvet was a recurring favorite for a long long time.
Always loved her turn as Kate in Taming of the Shrew.

http://www.thefancarpet.com/uploaded_assets/images/gallery/829/The_Flintstones_9688_Medium.jpg

End of an era, this is. RIP

Holy shit! RIP.

can't think of a single decent film she was in

guess I should see Virginia Woolf tho

Virginia Woolf is awesome. RIP

No argument, but you know it was the F'stones '90s movie starring John Goodman she was in, right?

I know, joeks, etc. (e.g., "That's not writing, it's typing.")

"can't think of a single decent film she was in"

national velvet
little women
father of the bride
a place in the sun
giant
raintree county
cat on a hot tin roof
butterfield 8
who's afraid of virginia woolf?
the taming of the shrew
reflections in a golden eye
secret ceremony
night watch
the driver's seat
winter kills

yeah well of those I've seen on that list (which is, I dunno, half of them?) can't say I liked any of 'em

Trying to give my grade 6s an idea of the scope of her celebrity this morning...best I could come up with was that it exceeded Lady Gaga's. That seems woefully short of the mark.

found Cat on a Hot Tin Roof really painful to sit through, altho Burl Ives was entertaining

when you say grade 6 you make me think about trailer park boys and i love trailer park boys!

x-post

so, thanks.

Can't believe anyone could dislike Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Such a good movie.

Sort of the (an?) Angelina Jolie of her time. Her stardom transcended the quality of her films.

ugh, no

Movies actually mattered when Taylor became a star. They stopped being central to the culture at least 55 years ago.

Actually, I think it's pretty apt. Just as (Oscar winner!) Jolie has been great in some films, she's also been in a bunch of dreck, and the reason most know here is not for her acting but for her tabloid stuff. Same with Taylor. Sure, once movies "mattered" more, but Taylor was a tabloid fixture for reasons beyond her roles.

uh uh Suddenly Last Summer should be on the good films list there.

Never change, Shakey.

A friend noted on Facebook that he asked the editor of the National Enquirer 14 or so years ago what their biggest stories tended to be, and he cited "deaths" and "Elizabeth Taylor." So by my friend's measure, this is the biggest tabloid story of all time!

at least we don't have to hear what michael jackson thinks about the whole thing. cuz that would have been a whole thing right there.

And by never change I mean please take it to the Rachel Ray thread. xp

It is strange how she outlived Michael.

It is strange how Keith Richards outlived them both.

I think all her co-stars are dead except Mickey Rooney.

Anyway, she did herself credit with her AIDS activism, and seemed to have a sense of humor about herself.

And by never change I mean please take it to the Rachel Ray thread. xp

RIP quality joeks

she had to live with richard burton! she paid for any sins she might have committed.

http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2011/03/23/fait-diver-a-friend-of-vitos-passed-away/

http://fashionbride.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/19911021-750-01.jpg

http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/m/mzQd8XREHUluZ99TV15yfnw/140.jpg

Don't forget: voice of Maggie Simpson.

I used to pretend she was my real mom growing up. She was a real gem.

whole lotta links:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/3027

"can't think of a single decent film she was in"

If you mean what you wrote in that sentence -- that she was often better than the movies in which she starred or costarred -- then I agree. I know the ILX Film Crew loves Suddenly Last Summer, and it's been 20 years, but it's unfunny camp to me. Hepburn is literally unwatchable.

anyway rest in peace big diamond bitch goddess icon drag queen violet eye rage machine. luv ya.

― scott seward, Wednesday, March 23, 2011 9:31 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rip

well, yes and no - I don't think she's a terrible actress or anything (she could be VERY campy/overwrought, but this is not always bad in my book) but the sort of films she chose to be in just really bore me for the most part. melodramas, etc. not interested.

xp

you're not gay enough

shakey no 'mo

guess I should see Virginia Woolf tho

Yes. Yes you should.
RIP

http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/4048021969/symbiotaxiplasm-r-i-p-l-i-z-elizabeth-taylor

I hope she dies very soon
― Mike Hanley

laughed hard at this

RIP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/23/elizabeth-taylor-obituary
brilliant obit for those (like me) who didn't really know the crazy-remarkable story of her life.

Sort of the (an?) Angelina Jolie of her time.

http://media.bigoo.ws/content/gif/music/music_139.gif

^ Ha, Snoop, always a pleasure! Anyway, I said that not as a particular fan of either party, but the parallels are undeniable. Jolie is even playing Cleopatra, FFS.

RIP Liz

But the real joke is the comparison between Jolie and Taylor. Jolie's fame rests entirely on her personal life, which can be summed up as "married Rachel from Friends' husband, fond of adopting". As Jolie has amply proved, one doesn't need to be a good actor, or even appear in any good films, to be an A-list celebrity these days: one just needs to be thin and have a fondness for being photographed. Taylor had the life, the looks, the movies, the smarts and the talent, and she – unlike Jolie – looked as if she not only enjoyed the occasional plate of pasta but my God, to watch her eat it would have been an experience in itself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/24/elizabeth-taylor-life-talent

yes.

Still I wish I could find the John Belushi and Catherine O'Hara impressions of Liz online to illustrate what a joke she was widely considered by the late '70s.

Camile Paglia:

To me, Elizabeth Taylor's importance as an actress was that she represented a kind of womanliness that is now completely impossible to find on the U.S. or U.K. screen. It was rooted in hormonal reality -- the vitality of nature. She was single-handedly a living rebuke to postmodernism and post-structuralism, which maintain that gender is merely a social construct. Let me give you an example. Lisa Cholodenko's "The Kids Are All Right" is a truly wonderful film, but Julianne Moore and Annette Bening -- who is fabulous in it and should have won the Oscar for her portrayal of a prototypical contemporary American career woman -- were painfully scrawny to look at on the screen. This is the standard starvation look that is now projected by Hollywood women stars -- a skeletal, Pilates-honed, anorexic silhouette, which has nothing to do with females as most of the world understands them. There's something almost android about the depictions of women currently being projected by Hollywood.

I said as much in my own little obit: she was a broad. Not a classy plate in her chassis.

But the 'broad' thing mostly got going full-bore w/ Virginia Woolf, which as David Edelstein points out stuck to her in all kinds of ways; her roles usually required her to fake class, except for some of the Tennessee Williams adaps.

http://theweddingtiara.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/elizabeth-taylor1.jpg

Blimey

http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scentedsalamander/images/elizabeth-taylor-1957.jpg

http://www.twolia.com/blogs/heres-looking-like-you-kid/files/2009/07/elizabeth-taylor-sunning-herself-on-the-set-of-giant-1955-photo-by-sid-avery.jpg

love all the pictures from the giant set:

http://media.kickstatic.com/kickapps/images/66470/photos/PHOTO_9417186_66470_20752879_main.jpg

http://vintagestardust.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/fwc_dean4.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01467/jamesdean_1467951i.jpg

Guardian overlooks the fact the Jolie *can* act - she won an Oscar, FWIW - and to say her fame rests entirely on who she married is stupid. Her worst movies are no more shitty than many of Liz's, her love life no more the focus of tabloid attention than Liz's, her humanitarian work no less notable or laudable. Personally, I'm not a fan of either actor, but their parallels are manifest. To suggest, as the paper did, that Jolie is famous just for who she married is both a) terribly sexist and b) totally ignorant that she is a much bigger star than her husband.

Taylor had the life, the looks, the movies, the smarts and the talent, and she – unlike Jolie – looked as if she not only enjoyed the occasional plate of pasta but my God, to watch her eat it would have been an experience in itself.

Like, this last point is basically just "Liz Taylor was sexy and fat."

Impressed with CBS last night. They led with her death at 6:30 (as they should have), and gave her a full eight or nine minutes. And there was more coverage later in the broadcast more specifically about her AIDs work.

OTM xposts

Angelina Jolie was famous before she met Brad Pitt (though I suspect fairly widely-known for tabloid tattle about her marriage to Billy Bob Thornton rather than her movies, Oscar or not). We were discussing Genuine Hollywood Stars last night following the news of Liz Taylor's death, and we reckoned Clooney and Jolie were the only contemporary stars who even come close (basing on talent, level of worldwide fame, and general indefinable Hollywoodness)

tom cruise ? julia roberts ?

Cruise is batshit insane and doesn't represent reasonable causes, just scientology. Roberts, maybe? idk

No way

Also both not remotely sexy

Rip Taylor is still alive

think the whole "they don't make them like they used to" thing has been talked about forever as far as hollywood goes. its a different place now. the people they prop up now are always gonna suffer by comparison. just cuzza the lighting.

Yeah, is separate thread (that we've probably done before), just musing that the Jolie comparison isn't a bad one.

Also, in many ways today's stars lead, ironically, more private lives. Just think of all the A-listers who don't even bother going to the Oscars, which 50 years ago would have been heretical.

doesn't represent reasonable causes

well, it wasn't one of the criteria

basing on talent, level of worldwide fame, and general indefinable Hollywoodness

also : di caprio ? will smith ?

Stars don't sell movies anymore – franchises like games and comic books do.

(Cruise discounted on batshittery, btw. Could make a case for diCaprio and Depp, would like to make a case for Blanchett on the glamour/star/interestingness front)

xp: that is not really true, not unless there is for example a "Limitless" videogame I don't know about

Shh! They'll hear you!

It's almost wholly true – the NYT published a story about Hollywood woes a couple of months ago in which studio execs made the same point. Of course a Sandra Bullock, Will Smith or DiCrapio film will draw their respective fans, but these films aren't automatic hits like they were even ten years ago.

ha actually that would be kind of an interesting game mechanic; your character is completely hopeless and useless unless you use these pills, of which you have a finite supply

how do you stretch the resource that makes you capable of playing the game long enough to actually beat the game...?

jolie comparison isn't bad and i'm not sure she could pull off some of liz taylor's epic performances but i think she's vv good at what she does, probably stemming from utter confidence w/what she can do in her particular (albeit limited) acting skill set.

friend of mine has some huge pic from the giant set

this one, no liz

http://www.jamesdean.com/images/photos/giant/pics/jd5.jpg

also, just for shakey

http://chzdailywhat.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/80e40d51-01cf-4396-b3e8-56c211eaedb3.jpg

Jolie *can* act - she won an Oscar
Jolie *can* act - she won an Oscar
Jolie *can* act - she won an Oscar
Jolie *can* act - she won an Oscar
Jolie *can* act - she won an Oscar

Roberto Begnini to thread.

He was actually a good film comedian before the Holocaust hit him.

really, you hadda be there (or immersed in the history) to understand why the Liz-Jolie comparison is laughable, I guess.

it's sort of like comparing Clint Eastwood (now The Last Movie Star) in the mid/late '60s to Jason Statham

I'm kinda with Morbz on this one...don't see the comparison AT all. Compared to what Liz could do, Jolie's best performance has all the intensity of a dim refridgerator bulb. There's no child that's going to be as attached to her stupid roles in Tomb Raider as I was, or my mother was, to National Velvet.

there are several adults who will be, though

I phrased that badly but you know what I mean, hopefully.
Sorry!

girls my age (20s) use jolie as a Style Touchstone/insist that they want to fuck her pretty frequently, but they never cite any actual movies. meanwhile i can't even remember if i've actually seen her in a movie.

oh, i saw sky captain and the world of tomorrow. she was a prop but it was kind of hard not to be.

I have likely seen an unhealthy number of Angelina Jolie movies and am trying to think of one that I actively disliked. I don't think there is one.

pretty sure I've only seen AJ in Pushing Tin and The Good Shepherd

i liked the bizarro sexy alien boy look

http://webtvdeluxe.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/angelina.jpg

she was good in gia. um....i mean i'll watch anything. she doesn't approach ashley judd though as far as my i'll watch anything and like it hall of fame goes.

anytime someone says jolie is a good actress in something i always feel like its just a way of saying hey she was good in that for such a glamour puss.

Jolie is good in the Daniel Pearl movie. Regardless, Jolie is 35. I have a hunch she'll make another dozen or so movies before she's dead. Anyway, the comparison is just that: a comparison. Holding Taylor up as unique Hollywood royalty with no match is a conversation killer, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a current star *more* like Liz Taylor than Jolie. How about that?

even her dirty fingernails roles aren't THAT dirty. liz went further as far as getting to the heart of things and not caring how she looked doing it.

way fewer people have seen an angelina jolie movie than an elizabeth taylor one. when she started out people still went every week. that's one big difference.

I stopped appreciating AJ when she started Botoxing.

jolie has the regal thing and the tortuous private life thing, so, yeah, i get it. but liz was iconic royalty when she was, like, 18. that's a big difference.

i find the comparison almost insulting!

if only madonna could act we might have a better comparison. but madonna as singer/controversy/icon/etc works. kinda.

well thats a tribute to a bygone era though. nobody compares. and jolie didn't wait till she was older to start making forgettable movies. she's been doing it for years.

can't see pitt and jolie doing something as self-revealing as WAOVW

they might prove me wrong yet

I wasn't able to follow this thread today, so I'm sure this has been kicked around, but even though I think Taylor's death is deserving of all the coverage it's received, to me her period of greatest fame--the first half of the '60s, roughly speaking--runs parallel to a relatively uninteresting period in American film. Yes, there were some great films; but I'd say fewer than any other half-decade between 1940 and 1980. That was the half-decade where France and Italy and foreign films in general dominated. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm skeptical of the idea that films were so much more important then, at least as the statement applies to American films of the early '60s. In terms of glamour and celebrity, I'll endorse the idea that there is no equivalent that can match Taylor today.

FYI, Jolie's 35 is more or less Taylor's age for "Woolf," the role she is best remembered for. But another advantage Taylor had over Jolie is that she came of age in the gotta-hustle studio era, when movies were just churned out. Four movies in 1954 alone, followed in quick succession by Giant, Raintree County, Cat ..., Suddenly Last Summer and Butterfield 8. That's some hard working.

"That was the half-decade where France and Italy and foreign films in general dominated."

yeah, screw them.

id say the peak of her acting fame was the late 50s... or really just from the 40s till the end of the 60s, which is when hollywood really did change. and WAOVW was one of the films that changed it, i think. sure her personal fame went into a basically uncharted realm in the 1960s with burton.

did elizabeth taylor really break her back 5 times? how do you even do that? her body was seriously messed up for decades. how many near-death illnesses?

i need to watch some of those liz/burton movies again. stoned. there is craziness there. probably can't even get them all on video, can you?

she was good in gia

Still her best, I think.

The Mark Harris book Pictures at a Revolution posits WAOVW as an early New Hollywood touchstone.

id say the peak of her acting fame was the late 50s

Gotta disagree with that if you append the word "fame." (The peak of the quality of her acting, maybe--I'm not a big enough fan to judge.) Butterfield 8 is '60, Cleopatra '63, and Virgina Woolf '66; those three films are surely the peak of her fame as an actress.

Yes, there were some great films; but I'd say fewer than any other half-decade between 1940 and 1980. That was the half-decade where France and Italy and foreign films in general dominated.

I can get behind this. These were the years when studio films were so dreadful that non-American actors were needed to fill the nominations (and Tom Jones won BP).

I do agree about the importance of Virginia Woolf--in its own right, and as prelude to The Graduate.

As far as Jolie goes, I just...Liz was SO good that I think there *is* a place for just talking about how great Liz was...I feel like it cheapens who she was to try and compare her with current actresses. But thats me. Its not like it pisses me off or anything, it just seems sorta, pointless

If you're talking about Oscar-style 'fame,' she was nominated every year 1958-61. And she already had a husband dying in a plane crash by then.

Liz & Dick also did an episode of Here's Lucy circa 1971. I believe Liz's wedding ring went down Lucy's drain.

Is that same one Desi Arnaz Jr.'s career went down?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FntN7Tr_O0Y&feature=related

i do concur that the 1960s, especially the early 60s were not a great time for hollywood by comparison with the 50s or 70s. a lot of the action moved to england after 'tom jones', hence all the great joseph losey movies, 'spy who came in from the cold', etc. they key book on that is called 'hollywood, england' and you could see it as a logical development from the runaway productions of the 1950s. the big epic films were made in spain and italy iirc too. what im saying is, 60s hollywood was pretty dope if you include spaghetti westerns and beatles films as 'hollywood'.

If you accept '67-68 as the New/Old Hollywood turning point, Taylor's decline coincides almost perfectly.

I'd be tempted to argue that Hollywood still takes the careers of men more seriously as far as prestige goes and that it'd be difficult for a talented actress to cultivate a glamorous, social image while being taken seriously in this environment.

Meryl Streep is the exception, no?

and her public profile has never been higher – I mean, her movies are actual hits now.

Streep has sort of reinvented herself as a light-comedy star, tho

something happened to streep circa early 00s where she suddenly developed like this modest sense of humour and as a result her screen presence no longer feels so burdened by craft. her filmography is ridic still

no way she was doing tons of comedys before that!

okay not tons but she went right from ironweed and a cry in the dark to she-devil and postcards from the edge and defending your life.

i love postcards. she was always funny.

Streep's (subtle) big change came c. 1990, with "She-Devil" and "Postcards from the Edge" (the latter courtesy Woolf director Mike Nichols, speak of the devil). Then "Defending Your Life" and "Death Becomes Her." She's done tons of serious stuff since then, of course, but around then the good will just started flowing her way. She practically radiated with it. And still does.

Pre-"Postcards" and (um) "She-Devil," not a lot of LOLs in the Streep catalog.

and meryl did tons of drama in the 2000's. its just that the hits were probably the comedies. they usually are.

right, pre-she devil. but that was decades ago. just saying she's been doing comedy for a while.

From Prada on, Streep *primarily* does comedies rather than mixing it up, of the Ephron-Meyers-ABBA ilk. Even her role in the Nichols HBO Angels in America was largely comedic.

can you tell i love meryl streep. love elizabeth taylor too. i actually got mad when i saw facebook lolz about her death. i never get mad about that stuff.

since prada, she has done lots of feature-length dramas. nobody saw them.

She still bores us with stuff like Doubt.

dark matter, rendition, evening, lions for lambs, doubt. i guess julie and julia is a bit of both.

i didn't see half of those. i will eventually. no hurry.

Julie and Julia is light comedy (and another hit).

I love her in Adaptation.

Same sort of parallel story role as J&J, come to think of it.

man, I have no memory of what Dark Matter or Evening were.

Anyway, Streep is an artiste w/ Juilliard cred, Taylor never really tried to convince anyone she was even when doing TennWms or Albee.

Search cackling audio outtakes of Liz's "General Hospital" guest shot.

i kinda mean more her public persona got kindof looser and adaptation was a really good role for someone aging gracefully but staying sexy and dangerous

scenes from the elizabeth taylor story starring sherilyn fenn
YOWZA

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3-HNW9t7bnA/TUf5dsuRbxI/AAAAAAAAByU/puy-P3shnFw/s1600/S%2B9.jpg
http://content8.flixster.com/photo/10/61/54/10615478_gal.jpg

and still, it's hard to be as smoldering and proportional as the real liz

http://img.ezinemark.com/imagemanager2/files/30004252/2010/12/2010-12-06-17-20-19-2-elizabeth-taylor-was-the-american-dream-and-americ.jpeg

hmmm

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/hollywood/2011/03/taylor-ascending-large.jpg

Liz was so damn breathtaking, and it was almost like a Brando thing, where she knew what she had but played it like she didnt care..or something

Child star that went credible - Jodie Foster? Private life not the same, obvs.

I don't think we're discussing the child performances enough. She's bracing and direct in National Velvet, isn't she?

on last week's 'at the movies' ebert (as read by bill kurtis) discussed the adaptation of jane eyre from 1943 w/orson welles and joan fontaine and showed a clip from the scene where she makes her first screen appearance.

I was going to post that! But I haven't seen the movie in years. I confuse her with Mary Nash.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-KSJEvkth-Kc/TXmLQBX2sWI/AAAAAAAAETY/JFakfftOhP8/s1600/JaneEyre.jpg

more like jane eerie, that face at that age

it's a relief to see someone in hollywood who has gone from very young to (relatively) old and basically kept the same face

more like jane eerie, that face at that age

― omar little, Thursday, March 24, 2011 6:33 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

lmao... i wouldn't have even thought about it, but now im weirded out by it too

that vanity fair thing i swear MUST be done by sometimes ILX resident dan lacey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa-aKhOqX8g

thanks for posting Morbz!

that moment when she snorts when she laughs at 1:21 is excellent

"I'm sorry folks, I'm not used to acting" LOL

goddammit she's just so darn CUTE

"Did you see the Tony Awards?"

i think what she's mumbling after "Did you see the Tony Awards?" is something like "i screwed up my lines on that too."

yeah, she tells him how she got all the people's names wrong there too.

David Carr in the NY Times:

“I know I’m vulgar,” she once said, “but would you have me any other way?” In that respect, she was very much like Dolly Parton, another durable American star who turned sartorial trashiness into a virtue by claiming it as her own. No one invented Dolly Parton or Elizabeth Taylor, although many have claimed to, and their connection to their fans was, and has been, a visceral, living thing based on an honesty and directness.

But that is not the same as saying that she was not a lady. She was every inch a lady. It’s trite to say, but think of the biggest-wattage stars, like, say, Angelina Jolie. Ms. Jolie is remarkably beautiful and very talented, and, like Ms. Taylor, in control of her own career. But there is certain masculinity to Ms. Jolie’s appeal, a willingness to kick some tail on screen and go after whatever she wants off-screen. And before you dismiss the argument as the product of a diseased, sexist mind, a little thought experiment: Before there was Brangelina, there was Dickenliz. In the instance of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who is the alpha? It’s not really even much of a question. Yet even though Ms. Taylor’s fans adored her with far more ferocity than Richard Burton’s talents ever engendered, she deferred to him.

That may be why, apart from her manifest beauty, she remained, as the director George Stevens said, the girl every American boy “thinks he can marry.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/weekinreview/27carr.html

I get what he's saying but it feels like a condescending way to say it. Pitting Jolie's "masculinity" against Taylor's "demureness" off screen just seems like an incredibly dated and boring way to talk about those two women, if he must talk about them in the same article...though everyone seems intent on doing it.
It's like the Jackie O and Marilyn archetype, the virgin and the whore...that whole line of conversation just annoys the hell out of me.

TAKE THAT LOHAN

http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/see-helena-bonham-carter-as-elizabeth-taylor.html

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2013/06/05/05-burton-taylor.o.jpg/a_560x0.jpg

They both look so good/similar to Taylor and Burton. However, I'm still not sure we really need a movie about them whether it has good actors or not.

omg @ dominic west

wow

Anyone ever seen X, Y and Zee, aka Zee and Co.? Domestic fights w/ Michael Caine AND a love scene w/ Susannah York!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zee_and_Co.

Kael loves her in it. I saw it once when I had a local video store but rented The Sandpiper instead.

It's showing in 35mm at Lincoln Center tomw night.

http://filmlinc.com/page/-/uploads/films/Zee3.jpg

Liz is very funny in it, mostly intentionally and especially in the first half. There's a weird lesbophobic early '70s ending, no wonder Kael loved it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8GdEYIzP2k

NYC retro, lots on 35mm... i have still never seen Secret Ceremony and Ash Wednesday.

https://quadcinema.com/program/essential-liz/

Secret Ceremony is weird, good-bad but worthwhile. Only thing I remember about Ash Wednesday is plastic surgery.

The one I look forward to is The Driver's Seat, which I've seen a couple of times but on poor prints.

i don't remember even hearing of that one.

Liz was one of the many inspirations for my new name.

John Simon called Secret Ceremony "worse than bad, militantly loathsome," Pauline Kael called it "truly terrible" and Rex Reed called it "a piece of garbage." So definitely go see that one.

But I have seen all of Joseph Losey's 1962-71 films except for it! Also, there's the presence of Mitchum and Mia, and Fernando Croce finds it intentionally funny:

http://www.cinepassion.org/Reviews/s/SecretCeremony.html

Kael loved Ash Wednesday for her lurid performance

xp As he says there, it parallels Boom! in many ways. Same kind of borderline laughable provocation.

both Ash Wednesday and Secret Ceremony are kinda bad -- even tho Losey is a better filmmaker than Larry Peerce, Mia Farrow is particularly grating in SC, and the dialogue, oy. Still, it has a scene where Liz belches after chowing down on breakfast pastries and sausage.

Kael loved Ash Wednesday for her lurid performance

hmm, not so:

In a few scenes, Elizabeth Taylor is done up like Arletty playing Garance in CHILDREN OF PARADISE, and she's absolutely ravishing, in an unearthly, ageless way. But the film is a long-drawn-out ghoulish commercial for cosmetic surgery-made, apparently, for people who can't think of anything to do with their lives but go backward. Jean-Claude Tramont is credited with the script and Larry Peerce is credited with the direction, but there is no script and there is no direction. With Keith Baxter, Helmut Berger, and Henry Fonda giving a sour, dumb performance.

I disagree about it being a "commercial" and Fonda btw. Keith Baxter plays her gay fashion photographer confidante.

The Sandpiper is worth a look if you can deal with lush, hopelessly miscast turkeys. When the titular bird flies onto Liz's head in the middle of a romantic tete-a-tete with Dick...

Kael:

https://letterboxd.com/notpaulinekael/film/the-sandpiper/

Whenever I see that movie I just wonder about the real-world pricetag of that fabulous beachfront "shack" in Big Sur that Liz is slumming in

Kael:

https://letterboxd.com/notpaulinekael/film/the-sandpiper🕸/

It's Kael -- I remember the Taylor cupping-the-breasts line.

this movie is ridiculous and I have enjoyed it several times

It is the handle of someone on Letterboxd who has transcribed Kael's writing. xxp

Yes, Liz certainly has a nice wardrobe for a struggling artist and single parent. I could read Burton's mind: "Christ, these lines."

Charles Bronson stepped in as Cos the sculptor when Sammy Davis Jr had to bow out.

That link above is weird though, it's sort of cut-and-pasted from Kael's review in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang but jumbled up and with new phrases added, such as "massive-headed Burton"

I think she reworked her old reviews for the mini-reviews that made up the 5001 Nights at the Movies compilation (per the Letterboxd tag).

Aug 12 71 the only time I get testy with E is when she has had a couple & has taken a pink pill..in conjunction with the booze gives her a kind of false euphoria & becomes sentimental & a reminiscent of her mother. Since her mother is the bore of all epochs this can be a bit hard

— Richard Burton (@BurtonDiaries) August 12, 2019

Have been quarantining with Liz Taylor movies I've missed.

Father of the Bride (1950): Spencer Tracy's film really, and I've never seen him better. Something very real about the dad who puts up with all kinds of craziness to make his daughter happy. Witty, satirical script. This and the sequel Father's Little Dividend were Joan Bennett's last big movies before her "scandal," and she is enjoyable as always. Liz was 17 playing 20 in this, which is kind of unusual.

A Place in the Sun (1951): More noir-ish than I expected. Liz really glows. Montgomery Clift's problem is he falls in love too quickly.

Ivanhoe (1952): Not sure why she felt she was miscast in this role because she's fine and convincing playing the Jewish girl Rebecca (years before she converted irl). Robert Taylor perhaps too old to play Ivanhoe, but this is classic old school MGM.

Elephant Walk (1954): Certainly nice to look at. Very 1950s psychology with Peter Finch driven to madness trying to live up to the greatness of his deceased father. Liz wears awesome clothes. The film is generally nutty but it only gets truly laughable at the climax when the elephants take more control of things. This is the Rebecca plot essentially.

Forgot about how describing children as 'no-neck monsters' came from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

Where else have you heard it?

I saw it in some interview a long time ago; the interviewee (don't remember who, sorry) brought it up in regards to not liking children, and attributed it to Williams without saying where Williams said/wrote it originally. It's a great, vicious phrase, and it's backed-up wonderfully in the COAHTR movie (that stuff with the ice cream...).