Truvy (played by Dolly Parton): “When it comes to pain and suffering, she's right up there with Elizabeth Taylor.”—Steel Magnolias (1989), screenplay adapted by Robert Harling from his stage play, directed by Herbert Ross
First she was the child star, then the adult beauty, then the star onscreen and off. But, in the end, she made the greatest public impact as friend and survivor.
Steel Magnolias was made over 20 years ago, but by that time Elizabeth Taylor had already endured nearly three decades of medical conditions that could have killed her. Her first Oscar, for Butterfield 8 (1960), was widely regarded at the time by many (including, evidently, the actress herself) as a sympathy vote, coming a mere few months after a near-fatal bout with pneumonia. Over the years she also contended with a bad back (courtesy of a fall from a horse, at age 12, while shooting National Velvet), respiratory problems, weight issues, alcohol and pill addiction, and, in the end, congestive heart failure.
Time, W.H. Auden wrote, “is indifferent in a week/To a beautiful physique.” As indicated by a rather nastily titled Doonesbury collection by Garry Trudeau from the early ‘80s--A Tad Overweight, But Violet Eyes to Die For--Taylor’s fame lasted longer than her looks.
But the fact is, amid the wreckage of so much of her life (eight marriages!), she did endure. If Lindsay Lohan wants a model of how to emerge on the other side of the worst that life can throw at you, she can do far worse than look at Taylor for a role model.
People should be remembered not simply for the sum of their worst moments, but for what they were at their best. In that light, I chose for the image accompanying this post a movie still that Taylor herself, I suspect, might have cherished. It comes from A Place in the Sun (1951), a film released when she was only 19, co-starring Montgomery Clift. Yes, it shows the looks that made women envious and men temporarily insane (critic James Agee, more than two decades her senior, admitted, after seeing her in National Velvet, that he was "choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were both in the same grade of primary school"), but details so much more.
Clift’s conflicted sexuality prevented the two from ever having a physical relationship, but Taylor’s deeply felt relationship with her co-star was, in its way, as loving as any she enjoyed with any of her husbands. He died young, but knew that she would always be there for him. You might be down on your luck, but as long as Taylor was around, you were rich in friends.
Maybe it was that ability to be there for someone else that was the instinct behind her advocacy for AIDS victims (prominently including another closeted gay friend, Giant co-star Rock Hudson), including through the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. Maybe it was through this instinct that--years after the end of a career she increasingly regarded as superficial, and years after medical problems that would have killed anyone else--Taylor lived and is recalled instantly by those who never saw her in her celluloid heyday.
First she was the child star, then the adult beauty, then the star onscreen and off. But, in the end, she made the greatest public impact as friend and survivor.
Steel Magnolias was made over 20 years ago, but by that time Elizabeth Taylor had already endured nearly three decades of medical conditions that could have killed her. Her first Oscar, for Butterfield 8 (1960), was widely regarded at the time by many (including, evidently, the actress herself) as a sympathy vote, coming a mere few months after a near-fatal bout with pneumonia. Over the years she also contended with a bad back (courtesy of a fall from a horse, at age 12, while shooting National Velvet), respiratory problems, weight issues, alcohol and pill addiction, and, in the end, congestive heart failure.
Time, W.H. Auden wrote, “is indifferent in a week/To a beautiful physique.” As indicated by a rather nastily titled Doonesbury collection by Garry Trudeau from the early ‘80s--A Tad Overweight, But Violet Eyes to Die For--Taylor’s fame lasted longer than her looks.
But the fact is, amid the wreckage of so much of her life (eight marriages!), she did endure. If Lindsay Lohan wants a model of how to emerge on the other side of the worst that life can throw at you, she can do far worse than look at Taylor for a role model.
People should be remembered not simply for the sum of their worst moments, but for what they were at their best. In that light, I chose for the image accompanying this post a movie still that Taylor herself, I suspect, might have cherished. It comes from A Place in the Sun (1951), a film released when she was only 19, co-starring Montgomery Clift. Yes, it shows the looks that made women envious and men temporarily insane (critic James Agee, more than two decades her senior, admitted, after seeing her in National Velvet, that he was "choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were both in the same grade of primary school"), but details so much more.
Clift’s conflicted sexuality prevented the two from ever having a physical relationship, but Taylor’s deeply felt relationship with her co-star was, in its way, as loving as any she enjoyed with any of her husbands. He died young, but knew that she would always be there for him. You might be down on your luck, but as long as Taylor was around, you were rich in friends.
Maybe it was that ability to be there for someone else that was the instinct behind her advocacy for AIDS victims (prominently including another closeted gay friend, Giant co-star Rock Hudson), including through the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. Maybe it was through this instinct that--years after the end of a career she increasingly regarded as superficial, and years after medical problems that would have killed anyone else--Taylor lived and is recalled instantly by those who never saw her in her celluloid heyday.
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