ELIZABETH TAYLOR: GIVING VOICE TO HERSELF AND TO OTHERS
LISTEN TO THE GREATEST OF MOVIE STARS IN HER OWN UNSCRIPTED WORDS
(Above: Taylor being readied on the set of her 1968 film Boom!. Tennessee Williams wrote the screenplay adaptation of his play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. Joseph Losey directed. Richard Burton and Noel Coward also starred in the film. A costar was Joanna Shimkus who marred Sidney Poitier 8 years later. It tells the story of Frances "Sissy" Goforth, a terminally ill woman living on a remote island which is invaded by a mysterious poet, Christopher Flanders, a.k.a. "The Angel of Death."
John Waters, who cites it as one of his favorites films, has claimed it is, “Beyond bad. It's the other side of camp. It's beautiful, atrocious and it's perfect. … It's so awful it's … well … perfect. My favorite bit is when Elizabeth Taylor pukes into a handkerchief, looks down and there's blood, and she says, ‘Ah! A paper rose!’ The script is ridiculous. Come on, it's about the richest woman in the world, called ‘Sissy Goforth,’ and the Angel of Death. Maybe everyone does need an angel of death who comes to them when they die and so what if your angel of death steals something from you. …
“The point is, it's a staggering movie and it's worth seeing it with a live audience because you just don't know how to react at the beginning. You think, What is the tone of this? That's the thing that is so bizarre. Apparently Richard Burton was drunk for the whole time they were filming it. Elizabeth Taylor kept wanting to buy the set because it had a roof and they had to tell her it wasn't real. She wanted to live there and they had to say, ‘We're making a movie! This isn't a real house!’
“I remember I met Elizabeth Taylor and the first thing I said is, ‘I loved Boom!’ and she got real mad and shouted, ‘That's a terrible movie!’ And I said ‘It isn't! I love that movie! I tour with it at festivals!’ Then she realized I was serious. Because it is a great movie. I feel like if you don't agree with that, I hate you. If you don't like Boom! I could never be your friend. Right now I live by the water and every time I see a wave hit a rock I shout, ‘Boom!’ like Richard Burton.”)
After the photo above popped up on my social media feed last week, I kept thinking about Elizabeth and the afternoon I spent with her at her home in Bel-Air back in 1997. We were meeting so I could write a cover story on her for POZ magazine to discuss all her important work regarding HIV/AIDS. But we also talked about her life. Her films. Being a movie star. And we laughed a lot. I loved making her laugh and hearing the distinctive sound of her delight, a cackle no diva would be able to deliver because there was no hauteur to it. It didn’t hover - it wasn’t performative - but pierced the air because she used it herself to pierce pretension and prissiness even though she enjoyed preening - now that was performative - especially when bejeweled. She had recently had brain surgery and her hair was still white and closely-cropped because she’d had to have her head shaved for the procedure. She wore a colorful caftan as she held her dog, Sugar, in her lap. We sat in a room surrounded by big lavender stones and crystals and a bit of the art collected by her father, Francis, who had been a dealer with a gallery in the Beverly Hills Hotel - a Van Gogh, an Augustus John, a Franz Hals, a Cassatt - if I’m remembering correctly. There was a Warhol in a downstairs bathroom.
I wrote an earlier SATURDAY RUBRICS column featuring Elizabeth with some transcriptions from this interview. But I thought it might be nice to let you hear her voice and her laughter.
I adored her.
The world did.
And she helped save my life as an HIV positive man. I am one of millions who remains grateful to this one-in-a-million woman.
(Above and below: This could be one of my STARS IN BLACK TURTLENECKS rubrics. Elizabeth with her parents, Francis and Sara, when they visited her in 1952 on the set of the Stanley Donen film Love is Better Than Ever which costarred Larry Parks. Taylor played the owner of a Connecticut dance school who gets involved with the “confirmed bachelor” Parks, a theatrical agent in New York. She told me her mother Sara was a “Billie Burke type” and she really didn’t get to know her father until she turned 21. She was 20 here. I was shocked when she told me that she was only 17 while filming A Place in the Sun.)
Here she talks about being of service.
Here she talks about being friends with Michael Jackson and her many surgeries.
[TO HEAR TWO MORE RECORDINGS OF HER TALKING ABOUT TRYING TO CONVINCE HER PARENTS TO ALLOW HER TO KEEP A LION CUB AS A PET, HER REMEMBRANCES OF HER CHILDHOOD IN ENGLAND WHEN SHE WAS MOST HAPPY, HER FATHER, AND WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO HAVE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES, PLEASE CONSIDER JOINING OUR PAID SUBSCRIBER COMMUNITY FOR ONLY $5 A MONTH OR $50 A YEAR. THANKS.]