Liz Taylor to the last scene "He left the stage in a chair someone wheels pushed to the center. His body seemed to have reduced, was the body of the woman who had overcome a brain operation, multiple complications in the back, a long history of addiction, a pneumonia that nearly killed her, an intense life, so much so that they could several people enjoy and suffer. But the look had an intensity unchanged, his eyes never dwarfed by the passage of time, gave off the same brightness, the smile seemed to say, nothing has happened here. It was his last appearance at a charity event for AIDS research. After the applause with which it was received, the lady was serious and began count how many people die worldwide each hour for this virus. Suddenly it was quiet and said something unexpected: "I have forgotten the glasses." The audience then stood up. Elizabeth Taylor had spoken as always, the woman who made the error and excellence in their own style or, as I said a New York Times columnist, good taste and bad taste irrelevant, because the viewer always had its peculiar blurring clothing to see only the diva, whose personality stood out any excessive brightness. Encouraged by applause, Taylor stood a moment to throw one of those cries a bit ordinary jeans encourage the party started. "Yes, I'm vulgar," he once said flirting with the audience. "But if it were not," I would want to? ".
" The American newspapers have dismissed the actress with a generous display of information about his life and his movies. They know that saying goodbye to Elizabeth Taylor closes a phase, a way of being outdated star in the film world. Taylor, his presence still served to the rhetoric on the big screen and the darkness that is revered in the sentimental and sexually educated several generations. Taylor, exponent film as art, but also big industry, that movie was the best cultural ambassador of the rule for decades.
One of the most striking beauty of great moment in American cinema was born in England. Daughter of Francis Taylor, a shy art gallery, and Sara Sothern, a great temperament exactriz fulfilled his dream through his daughter, little Liz was raised in a British accent, which, when his parents moved to Los Angeles providing looming disaster of the war, helped him to be chosen as the star of National Velvet. He had allegedly british accent Amazon should be small. In each and every one of the profiles in these days have written about it never misses a reference to his short height, 1.63 meters. A standard height for a English, but in the U.S. became a remarkable peculiarity, a physicist with acid humor describing the man who lived his hottest romance, Richard Burton: "To Elizabeth the most beautiful woman in the world is nonsense. Her eyes are wonderful, I agree, but Gill, an excessive chest and short legs. " Still, Burton was so crazy for her to be her husband twice and have left open the possibility of third, Taylor said, if the actor had not died at age 58.
The wonder of life and career of Taylor is that his growth, maturity and old age were in public view inside and outside of the screen . He had the ability to go through adolescence without being one of the few physical changes that hinder the transition from child actress to adult actress. Elizabeth was always herself: her face just changed Lassie films to those of the bride's father, and only 19 years was starring in A Place in the Sun, next to Montgomery Clift: "The first time," he recalled, "I felt that he was acting in my life." Also the first time that critics praised their work after nine years of performing the confetti of the lovely lass that forced the Metro Goldwyn Meyer.
This real birth as an actress has a parallel in his private life. Liz first married at age 19, and from that moment it did not stop until the very end of his days. Eight marriages to seven men. A little moralistic desire to formalize relations or seriously try again that earned him the nickname of serial wife (wife included). It was not love women, but husbands. An eccentricity multiplied the public interest to you. Somehow, the people who swore by a unique emotional swings death would have liked to live the life she enjoyed. "My problems started," he would say, "because I had a woman's body and emotions of a child." And so, I suspect, until the latter third act where the body was old and childish emotions.
Movies were happening as happened husbands and those close friends that she did it know to be true. When I was riding with Paul Newman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was hit by the death of her third husband, producer Mike Todd, who just had a daughter. He was, along with Richard Burton, one of the men in her life. "I've always been lucky," she said remembering. "All I was given, beauty, fame, wealth, honor and love. But I paid the fortune to disaster: serious illness, loss, destructive addictions, broken marriages."
No representa, sin embargo, a ese tipo de figura trágica que encarnaron otras grandes estrellas. No es Marilyn Monroe; tampoco Judy Garland. Mientras el alcohol, las drogas o los desengaños amorosos cercenaron la existencia de otras actrices de su tiempo, Elizabeth Taylor representó a la perfección el paradigma de una vida deseable, la de quien hace exactamente lo que desea sin importarle demasiado el juicio ajeno; la opinión de un público que la criticó duramente cuando le robó el marido a la muy querida por los americanos Debbie Reynolds. Ese capítulo, por cierto, del más puro cotilleo hollywoodiense, era narrado por la hija de Reynolds, Eddie Fisher (la princesa de la saga de La Wars), a monologue on Broadway.
life view of all, without this, and it sounds paradoxical, the actress complained about an invasion of his privacy, because it always gave the impression that it was impossible to violate their true privacy. She was the mother of four children, who accompanied her in the moments of his death, and he supported his sweeping sensuality with a special devotion to children. Also towards the dogs. One of its most costly extravagance was to pay their pet's stay on a boat on the Thames as she rolled. It was the only way to get close to their animals, who had not had the necessary quarantine to set foot in London.
The audience remained in their jobs and also in life, as another of the roles she had been assigned. Life of extravagance, excess. And to top it, no more suitable partner than the actor Richard Burton. The Hollywood actor and quintessential classic. The two, joined by Mankiewicz, in that Rome, in which Cleopatra shot, where it was difficult to count, find in a trattoria to a Liz Taylor's makeup for the role, pirate pants, drinking until you stand up and kissing with Burton. Although at the time the two were still married to their former partners, not hiding. There did not seem overly concerned about the co-stars had to wait for them to finish one of those sexual encounters which to base screams, groans and gasps were a participant to the entire team. In the same way that the press has made the names of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to end up being the brand called Brangelina, Liz and Richard were baptized as Dickenliz.Burton covered her with jewels. Led to the outbreak of one of its more expensive addictions. The only compulsion which showed with pride, even eventually publishing a book in 2002 on this unique collection: My love affair with jewelry. In another of his compulsions, food, wrote another book, in which he spoke of his struggle to lose weight. Of the most dangerous, alcohol and pills, often spoke in interviews. There was no taboo. Not shrink from the curiosity of the press. A candid answer questions calmly and always choose something huge or extravagant who does not mind sharing. With sincerity, but without tears, a sense of humor.
was, without doubt, his unique sense of humor, sexy, bold, no free tacos, which is not so common in America, what became an icon of the gay community. Jewelry, carded, excessive, exaggerated style which was gradually transforming the girl or in a worldly woman. From early on he felt a special devotion to his comrades different: Monty Clift, James Dean and Rock Hudson, who publicly kissed her lips in a time when there were so many people did not dare to reach out to sick AIDS. This symbolic act, full of humanity and compassion, rose like heroin for a group that suffered so many casualties in the eighties. That and making the fight against the disease in a personal matter. Sponsored the cause, raised funds for research, contributed to the stigma that has enveloped the poor began to be demolished. He was rewarded for it. Although he won two Oscars for his work in film, the Academy wanted to reward her well for her humanitarian work. The gay community worshiped.
While players these days contribute to good causes supported playing with a face of tragedy, Elizabeth Taylor, so excessive in his style, never lost his smile. He was famous for having appeared in the Senate, fundraising events, festivals to honor the patients, looking at the neckline a stunning emerald necklace. For example. And that was more authentic presence.
Lassie The charming girl, the youngest of a place in the sun with which, as stated by the director George Stevens, had wanted to marry any American boy , the mature woman torn played in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, all had something of the real woman was Elizabeth Taylor. Not kowtow to the characters, the characters made to look like her. Even the villain of Truman Capote, always ready to denigrate in any way to his subjects, he surrendered to his presence. He began by describing a woman with big head, commensurate with its size, and ended up writing about her charms: "The face, with those purple eyes, is the dream of an inmate, the fantasy of a secretary, unrealistic, difficult to achieve, but at the same time is a shy woman, vulnerable, very human. "
The eyes, those eyes that did not smother or jewelry, or the impossible carded or nothing discreet paint or generous chest rising above the neckline, the eyes, which were not purple, but deep blue , were the same as always in this life in view of the public who was told from age 10 to 79, though she stopped being stubbornly itself. Those eyes always narrate the history of cinema the story of a woman who was able to retain its luster to the last scene. "
Elvira Lindo, for" El Pais in Spain, edition Digital April 10, 2011.