RIP Elizabeth Taylor

[AndyDursin]

...and here I was watching DOCTOR FAUSTUS too! (weird late '60s film with Burton and her appearing fleetingly throughout).

LOS ANGELES - Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen life was often upstaged by her stormy personal life, died Wednesday at age 79.

She died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks, publicist Sally Morrison said.

"All her children were with her," Morrison said.

Taylor had extraordinary grace, fame and wealth, and won three Oscars, including a special one for her humanitarian work. But she was tortured by ill health, failed romances and personal tragedy.

"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic."

Her eight marriages — including two to actor Richard Burton — and a lifelong battle with substance abuse, physical ailments and overeating made Taylor as popular in supermarket tabloids as in classic film festivals.

Taylor disclosed in November 2004 that she had congestive heart failure. But she still periodically dismissed reports that she was at death's door, saying she used a wheelchair only because of chronic back problems that began at age 12 when she fell from a horse.

"Oh, come on, do I look like I'm dying?" she said in May 2006 in a rare television interview on CNN's "Larry King Live." "Do I look like or sound like I have Alzheimer's?" Tabloids report such things "because they have nothing else dirty to write about anybody else," she said.

When she turned 75 the following year, she was asked about the secret to her longevity and quipped: "Hangin' in."

The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a screen goddess at 19 and a widow at 26.

She appeared in more than 50 films, and won Oscars for her performances in "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), in which she starred opposite Burton.

In later years, she was a spokeswoman for several causes, most notably AIDS research. Her work gained her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.

As she accepted it, she told a worldwide television audience: "I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame."

She accepted her many health problems with a stoic attitude.

"My body's a real mess," Taylor told W magazine in 2004. "If you look at it in the mirror, it's just completely convex and concave."

[Eric W.]

RIP.

I don't want to write something that seems classless but frankly, the only surprise here for me is that she lasted this long. She had awfully good genetics considering the years of HEAVY chemical substance abuse she inflicted on herself.

A tragic life in many ways. A great talent.

[Paul MacLean]

As weird as it sounds, I have only ever seen one of her movies -- Jane Eyre.

[mkaroly]

As weird as it sounds, I have only ever seen one of her movies -- Jane Eyre.

Lol...same here!

Personally, her name on something always made me turn the other way. Never cared for her as a personality and never wanted to see her act in movies. But I'm sure her family and friends are sad that she died, so may she RIP.

[AndyDursin]

My goodness Michael you make it sound like she starred in John Waters movies. LOL. I think more than just her family and friends care about her passing.

There's no question she was one of the last bona-fide Hollywood legends. I could care less about her personal life -- her filmography is filled with classic movies, especially towards the beginning/middle of her career.

NATIONAL VELVET is an absolute classic of the cinema, a glorious MGM production that remains an all-time studio masterwork. A PLACE IN THE SUN is tremendous. FATHER OF THE BRIDE, GIANT, BUTTERFIELD 8, VIRGINIA WOLFF, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF -- all excellent movies. CLEOPATRA an overblown spectacle but a film very much ahead of its time in terms of its impressively mounted production and her star driven salary.

There are plenty of bombs -- and some weirdly interesting curios like REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE with Marlon Brando -- and not a whole lot after the '60s worth talking about...but nevertheless, it's a career very much worth remembering. A legendary one in fact, and one that is the product of a bygone era when actors used to be able to open movies simply on the basis of their presence...an era that no longer exists.

Michael Medved's retrospective is the best thing I've read today too...

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/ ... reciation/

[Eric Paddon]

I think she was without question the last true icon of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and by that I mean the days of a Studio System that was powerful and still on top. She was also in a sense the first to introduce us to the era of tabloid celeb obsession because of her private life, but it was because she came out of that era of filmmaking that was gone by the 60s that I think always enabled her to retain that iconic quality that none of today's celebs will ever have IMO.

I think her Oscar was well-deserved for "Butterfield 8" beacuse while the film is a laughably trashy example of Hollywood in its Production Code era dealing with tawdry subject matter, I am left in awe by how Taylor just threw herself into a part she hated playing and a film she hated doing and gave us the best example of her smoldering sex appeal there was. That kind of professionalism is something I would never see or expect from anyone today and it's a reason why as an acting performance I think she didn't gyp Shirley MacLaine out of an Oscar at all that year.

"Cleopatra" is also a favorite, not so much because she looks great (I always thought Claudette Colbert was a much sexier Cleopatra), but because I found myself agreeing with George MacDonald Fraser in "Hollywood History Of The World" that she was in all likelihood closer to the real thing in terms of leadership and commanding presence.

"Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" I've also seen and liked. Saw "Virginia Woolf" once and I really wouldn't want to revisit it again.