Actresses are not made like Taylor anymore; noone uses the word "legend" or "screen siren" in this century.
(Kate Muir, The Times)
If they do, they aren't using it correctly. This was just one of many touching and fitting tributes to Dame Elizabeth Taylor, on the news of her death last month.
In all honesty, sitting here in front of my computer, trying to summon a string of words in order to pay tribute to her, feels like an impossible task. With each year that passes we lose many public figures, many people who have made a vast impression on the world. Occasionally we lose people who are entirely deserving of their 'legendary' label. And very rarely, we say goodbye to a star who we thought would go on forever. They appear untouchable by the limits of life, a soul so unique that their passing brings everyone back down to earth with a bump.
This was Elizabeth Taylor.
She began her career as a child star during the 1940s, towards the end of the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood. Her most famous early outing was in National Velvet (1945), her third film and one which, according to writer Melvyn Bragg, "made her the little princess of the Hollywood kindergarten". She was one of the last actresses to reach star status through the latter years of the studio system, and as a result became the most sought-after - and indeed the highest paid - actress of the moment.
While her private life in no way hindered her rise to fame, her talent could not be denied. In a recent documentary Elizabeth herself commented on her ability to "turn it on" for the cameras. It seemed that some directors were initially concerned by her performances during rehearsal, only to have their faith restored once the camera began rolling. She won two Oscars for perhaps two of her more challenging roles, first as a high-class call girl in Butterfield 8 (1960) and second for the title role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), where she played the 'vulgar' wife to Richard Burton's bitter professor.
It was also partly her personality that made Taylor so popular, and indeed rather special. It has struck me more so recently, with all the media coverage of her death and therefore the reemergence of various interviews, that I could watch and listen to her for hours. The best part... she was funny. For someone so absorbed by the industry at the highest possible level, she was actually very down to earth, and incredibly loving. I'm in the camp of people who believe that her eight marriages were not the result of frivolity but instead the mark of a woman who loved, perhaps at times irrationally, with all of her heart. Her fellow Hollywood starlet Shirley Maclaine said that Taylor had a desire to help the people who felt like they were misfits, and that perhaps it was because she too at times felt like one herself.
It's not just the star that the world has lost, or her incredible life and wealth of experience. It's the stories... the stories of old Hollywood that are gradually drying up, that the rest of us will never know. And the secrets. The secrets shared with old friends and co-stars who have long since become legends. Maybe it's because I'm a fan of old Hollywood, but I feel privileged to have lived in a time when a few of the original stars of the studio system - people who really, truly, deserve that status - were still alive. There will never be a time like it again. There'll certainly never be another Cary Grant, or Mickey Rooney (whom I once had the immense pleasure of meeting), another Bette Davis, or Clark Gable.
And not only will there never again be another Dame Elizabeth Taylor... There never was.
She was truly unique.
There's one scene in Burton's diaries that is gently loving and lovely. He is in bed and wakes to find that she has left the bed and is in another room. He calls out: "What are you doing?" She replies: "Playing with my jewels."
(Melvyn Bragg, The Times)
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