When Show Biz was Show Liz

Elizabeth Taylor represented woman power—at complete ease with her sexuality.

When I was very young, about one and a half feet tall, one evening, my father went off with a friend to watch the film Cleopatra. When he returned, I asked him what the movie’s story was about. He thought a bit, and said: “Elizabeth Taylor.”

By the time I was more sentient, Taylor’s heydays as a film star were behind her. But hardly a week passed without some newspaper or magazine carrying a photograph of her dressed in some outlandishly expensive dress, and diamonds the size of eggs, shopping in Paris or Milan like there was no tomorrow. I came to know about her affair and marriage to Richard Burton, which had the world agog for years (some American newspapers gave ‘Liz and Dick’ stories more prominence than the Cuban missile crisis). It was only much later that I realised that in today’s fragmented media and entertainment scenario, it is nearly impossible to gauge the sort of stardom that Taylor had enjoyed, what it was like to be the world’s biggest film star.

Yes, that’s what she was, the world’s biggest film star, perhaps the biggest ever in the history of cinema. And, as detailed in William J Mann’s recent book, How To Be A Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, it was not only about beauty and oomph and acting talent. Taylor instinctively understood stardom, and lived life to the lees in full public view (which, of course, made her an even bigger star). She became the first actress to command a million dollars as fee for a film, the first actress to break free of the studio system and, of course, the first to openly flaunt her love for a married man (Burton), while she herself was married (to singer Eddie Fisher). She cocked a snook at the world and got away with whatever she had set her heart on.

Brought to Hollywood at the age of nine by an ambitious mother, Taylor’s childhood was far from normal. She never went to a normal school, never met any boys, never went on a date. At the age of 18, her studio, MGM, decided to carry out the biggest publicity stunt in history: marry Taylor off, to coincide with her first adult starring role, in the film The Father of the Bride. So she married Conrad Hilton, scion of the hotel family, in a grand ceremony. The marriage lasted six months; Mr Hilton turned out to be a wife-beater.

Her next marriage, too, according to Mann, was most probably studio-sponsored. MGM felt that a nice married life with a couple of kids would be just the right image makeover for her. So Michael Wilding, a minor British actor 20 years Taylor’s senior, was chosen, despite insistent rumours that he was more gay than hetero. Taylor married Wilding and dutifully produced two children. But that was the last time she ever listened to MGM.

She was now a star, and ready to write her own rules. She had always loved to live it up, and she started doing so, often outrageously. She was also moulding a new morality in a society recovering from the dreary 1950s. In Butterfield 8, she played a compulsively sexually promiscuous woman, something no star had dared before, and won an Oscar. While shooting Cleopatra in Rome, she walked out on her husband and moved in with Burton. Her lifestyle kept her in the news constantly, which drove audiences into the theatres, and her star status kept growing, regardless of the quality of films she was making. At its height, her popularity would have been something an Angelina Jolie or a Cameron Diaz can merely dream of. 

In fact, the way she lived her life would have impacted the lives of women around the planet. “I don’t pretend to be an ordinary housewife,” Taylor once said. But for millions of ordinary housewives, she represented woman power, complete comfort with her carnality and sexuality, a woman who could have her cake and eat it every time she so desired. She was an icon, a dream, and a star in every sense of the word. Adjusted for inflation, Cleopatra is the most expensive film ever made. So what was the story about? Elizabeth Taylor.

About The Author

Sandipan Deb

Sandipan Deb is an IIT-IIM graduate who wandered into journalism after reading a quote from filmmaker George Lucas — “Everyone cage door is open” — and has stayed there (in journalism, not a cage) for the past 19 years. He has written a book on the IITs.