Elizabeth Taylor, when I was younger, was mostly renowned for her serial marrying, especially of Richard Burton, rather than her film career, but when you actually sit down and look back through it (and the death of a movie star does encourage this kind of reflection) you realise how many great and good films she made and, more importantly, how varied her career actually was. I shall divide her career into five phases, as it is my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want...
Phase One: The Child Star. This phase was notably marked by co-starring with animals, thus creating the classic actors' nightmare for anyone else in the picture. She was in a couple of Lassie films ('Lassie Come Home' and 'Courage of Lassie'), but in between them she was in 'National Velvet', a film which is the apotheosis of girly movies, the ultimate dream of any little girl who wants a pony for her birthday. It is also that rare creature - the horse racing movie - and also a great way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon.
Phase Two: The Sultry Screen Goddess. The fifties. I am a bit of a fan of that much under-rated decade and Elizabeth Taylor managed to personify not only the glamour (she was stunningly beautiful then) but also the deeper, darker side shown in her movie versions of Tennessee Williams' plays, such as 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' and 'Suddenly Last Summer', and in other films such as 'A Place in the Sun' and 'Giant' alongside such doomed fifties legends as Montgomery Clift and James Dean respectively.
Phase Three: The Serious Film Actor. In the sixties she reached the heights of serious actordom, usually alongside Richard Burton as she made such films as 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', 'Butterfield 8', 'Reflections in a Golden Eye' and 'The Taming of the Shrew'. As well as these serious, actorly pieces she also made some of the great blockbusters of the era, including obviously 'Cleopatra'.
Phase Four: Best Not Talked About. I find it hard to think of a single great, or even good movie that she made during the seventies. She appeared in a series of workaday movies, often for TV, and seemed to have given up on the whole idea of acting being anything other than a way to a paycheck. She also made a rather ill judged and self-indulgent (by Burton, rather than by her) appearance in the film (already a bad decision) of Dylan Thomas' 'Under Milk Wood'. Best forgotten.
Phase Five: The Brief Renaissance. Just when you had pretty much written her off as a film star she made one final film of note, before sinking back into TV series and being a professional celebrity and friend of celebrities, and that is her role as the declining film star Marina Rudd in the Agatha Christie adaptation 'The Mirror Crack'd'. In many ways this part was written for her and it allowed her to bid farewell to her film career with a certain amount of grace and dignity, much like the character. One of the marks of a great actor or actress is that they can make an ordinary film good and without Elizabeth Taylor this Angela Landsbury vehicle would have been at best ok, but Taylor's performance makes that film and allows you to see past its flaws and weaknesses and makes it worth watching.
So, Elizabeth Taylor, movie star and actress and one of the true movie greats.
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