Elizabeth Taylor’s real-life drama eclipsed that of her screen roles

Elizabeth Taylor, who during her lifetime staged a continuous battle not only with her extraordinary beauty and fame but also with her health, died on March 23 in Los Angeles from congestive heart failure.

Taylor is one of the few stars who successfully made the gradual transition from child actress, through adolescent roles and on to adult parts. She was shrewd and lucky enough to have played characters in conformity with her age as she was growing up.

Taylor was endowed with great beauty, with her striking black hair and violet eyes, but despite this, her acting capabilities were sometimes suspect. It was only when she matured into womanhood, and her roles became more demanding, that she finally received recognition, winning two Oscars and receiving three other nominations.

She had been a superstar of the cinema from the beginning of her career, but the fiction of her screen roles pales in significance next to the dramas of her private life. She changed husbands as often as she changed her mood, and her many illnesses made her come in and out of hospitals as if she owned them.

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on February 27, 1932, in London to American parents. Her father, Francis, was an art dealer and her mother was actress Sara Sothern. At the outbreak of World War II, the family moved to California. Due to her parents’ connections with the film world, she socialised with movie people and soon attracted film producers’ attention.

Her film debut was in There’s One Born Every Minute (1941), which was a box-office flop. But then she was more fortunate in having taken part in two glossy MGM Technicolor productions – Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet (1944) – which were huge successes, and her film career was launched.

She soon grew out of her child roles and entered her teenage period in films like A Date with Judy, Julia Misbehaves (both 1948) and Little Women (1949).

The 1950s saw the maturing of Elizabeth Taylor into womanhood. She was excellent as a girl getting ready for marriage in the social comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and its sequel Father’s Little Dividend (1951), now expecting a baby.

Filmmakers took advantage of her exceptional beauty and she looked strikingly radiant in A Place in the Sun (1951) and Ivanhoe (1952). However, she was wasted in insubstantial romances and silly adventure pictures like Elephant Walk (1953), Rhapsody, Beau Brummel and The Last Time I Saw Paris (all 1954).

It was only when she made Giant (1956), opposite Rock Hudson and James Dean, that her career surged upwards. It was not only an imp­rovement on her latest productions, but signalled a harsher style of acting that brought her recognition as an established star.

Taylor received successive Oscar nominations for Raintree County (1957), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly Last Summer (1959). She eventually won the coveted trophy a year later, for her part as a whore in Butterfield 8 (1960).

Her health often gave her trouble, and besides giving her some anxious moments, it would cost film companies a good deal of money.

In 1960, a production team that included director Rouben Mamoulian and film stars Peter Finch, Stephen Boyd and Taylor went to England to start shooting the epic film Cleopatra. After only a month of shooting, Liz was stricken with various ailments. Shooting was suspended, and Mamoulian, Finch and Boyd abandoned the project, which had already cost $7 million for only seven minutes of film.

When shooting resumed, Joseph Mankiewicz took over as director and Rex Harrison and Richard Burton replaced Finch and Boyd respectively, and the whole production was transferred to Rome.

One of the most expensive films ever made, Cleopatra (1963) is a love story set in ancient Rome, but it also started one of the most talked about romances of modern times between Taylor and Burton.

Taylor and Burton co-starred in 10 more films: The VIPs (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which she won her second Oscar, The Taming of the Shrew, Dr Faustus, The Comedians (all 1967), Boom! (1968), Under Milk Wood (1971), Hammersmith is Out (1972) and the TV-movie Divorce His – Divorce Hers (1972).

The standard of her films, however, began to fall and she seemed happy to be in anything, as long as she gets exposure on the screen.

The slump really began with the highly publicised film, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1965), which she made with Marlon Brando.

The only film that restored some of her dignity was the little seen musical A Little Night Music (1977). Though not a great film her role was the least ridiculous part for a long time, and in it she sang the beautiful song Send in the Clowns.

After the death of her friend Rock Hudson in 1985, Taylor devoted most of her time campaigning for AIDS research. For her work in this field and for the help she gave to the vulnerable, she was honoured with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993. In 1999 she was named Dame of the Order of the British Empire in the Millennium New Year’s Honour List.

Fame and beauty enriched Taylor’s life, and though her films ranged from the sublime to the absurd, she deserved much better than her last screen role, as Fred’s mother-in-law in The Flintstones (1994).

Taylor’s husbands were: Conrad Hilton (1949-51), actor Michael Wilding (1952-57), Mike Todd (1957-58, who died in a plane crash), Eddie Fisher (1959-64), Richard Burton (1964-74 and 1975-76), Jack Warner (1979-82) and Larry Fortensky (1991-96).

These marriages yielded four children, two from Wilding, Chris and Michael Jr, Lisa from Todd, and Maria from the first marriage to Burton.