She was arguably the brightest star in Hollywood’s golden era – and her death, after the recent passing of Tony Curtis and Blake Edwards, turns out a light in the Tinsel Town firmament.
Elizabeth Taylor, who died on Wednesday aged 79, won two Oscars – for Butterfield 8 in 1960 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966 – but her impact on the movie industry extends beyond that.
“Her artistic contribution to the motion picture industry is immeasurable,” said Chris Dodd, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, after her death in Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
“In a career spanning more than 70 years and 50 films, her talent endured the test of time and transcended generations of moviegoers,” added Mr Dodd, head of the umbrella body for Hollywood’s major movie studios.
No other actress – apart from perhaps Marilyn Monroe – had made such an impact on American cinema.
She was the first to command the symbolic $1 million for a film, when she made Cleopatra with Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1963.
Franco Zeffirelli, who notably directed Ms Taylor and husband Richard Burton in The Taming of the Shrew in 1967, said she had “a winning combination of rare qualities.
“She was beautiful, intelligent ... People like Liz don’t exist anymore ... because fairy tales no longer exist,” he told the Ansa news agency.
Ms Taylor’s death from congestive heart failure follows that of Some Like it Hot star Curtis last September, Pink Panther director Edwards in December, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star Jane Russell in February.
The number of stars still alive from the era when Hollywood produced masterpiece after masterpiece seems to dwindle with each passing month. After Ms Taylor, Kirk Douglas is now the surviving grandaddy of the classic Hollywood epoch.
The unforgettable veteran of Spartacus and Gunfight at the OK Corral made a surprise appearance at this year’s Oscars show in February, still able to work an audience at the age of 94. Women of his generation and the next who worked in Hollywood in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are increasingly few in number: the oldest is Olivia de Havilland, 94, who lives in Paris. The legendary Lauren Bacall, 86, was given an honorary Oscar in 2009 – the only one of her career – in a ceremony in which she played on her age to humorous effect.
“Some of you are surprised, aren’t you?” she said, adding of her Oscar statuette: “I can’t believe it – a man at last. The thought that when I get home I’m going to have a two-legged man in my room is so exciting.”
Briton Julie Andrews, 75, is still telling anecdotes about making 1964’s Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music in 1965 – and has done voices in a number of animated films in recent years, including the Shrek series. Actresses Doris Day, 88, and 78-year-old Debbie Reynolds – whose husband Eddie Fisher was stolen from her by Ms Taylor – as well as Leslie Caron, 79, are the last survivors of the classic musical comedy era. But there was only one Elizabeth Taylor.
“She created the whole business of fame, the way we know it today,” said William Mann, who wrote “How to be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood.”
“Everyone continues to try to follow the template that she laid down in the 1950s and 1960s, with varying degrees of success. But she’s the one that invented it,” he told the CNN network.