Because I was born in 1974, I didn’t know Liz Taylor as an actress. I didn’t even know her as an AIDS activist, because she started that crusade several years before I’d heard of the disease. The first time I saw Liz Taylor, she was “Michael Jackson’s friend,” which carried a lot of weight with a girl who wanted nothing more than to get a replica of his red jacket. My dad, a former Marine, wouldn’t let me indulge my growing appreciation of the King of Pop because he was suspicious of his high pitched voice and crotch-grabbing. (Consequently, that Thriller album was the last one I’d know by heart.)
However, I’d occasionally pick up bits and pieces about Mrs. Taylor. I noticed, for example, when she criticized President Bush for not doing enough for AIDS, when her friend Rock Hudson died of the disease, when I saw White Diamond perfume ads in my Seventeen magazine, and when she married a construction worker.
Only yesterday, when I heard the news of her death, did I ever sit down and read about her many accomplishments — and marriages — and the person who once seemed to me only a potential punchline for a Letterman monologue began to seem real and very impressive. I was amazed at her many lead film roles and about how her private romantic life made headlines for years. (Let’s just say she would not have been Team Aniston.)
And such is the fleeting nature of fame. Perhaps the most famous movie star (and sex symbol) in history, her death causes barely a ripple amongst entire generations. It should be a gentle reminder to all women — all of us who struggle with those last ten pounds, who don’t even own four-inch heels, and who sometimes despair of glamour while driving three kids to school in a minivan — that legacies are not built on fame or sex or wealth, or even by a Drudge headline on the day of our passing. Our legacies instead are built by the kids in that van and by the husband who’s with you from the moment you wore white and said “I do” to the moment one of you says your final earthly goodbye.
Faithfulness, children, enduring marriage, and stretch marks. They may not be sexy, but they are the true legacies that even the most glamorous, upon reflection, wish they’d had.
My compliments. The last two paragraphs are two of the most wonderful paragraphs I have ever read.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you. That was truly beautiful and I agree with superteem, those last two paragraphs were perfect.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYour ignorance of film history is no excuse to denigrate a woman who was more than a movie star. Watch (among innumerable other titles) National Velvet or Orson Welles' Jane Eyre. A talent such as Taylor's comes along very infrequently. Time, treasure and talent are given equal weight as gifts to the Christian church and to the faith for a reason. It is not up to you to decide that the world should value one quality less (or more) than the others.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBeast - the post had nothing denigrating to say about Ms. Taylor. The point being made was that, as glamorous as she was, she was virtually unknown to a couple of generations. Legacies are built on more enduring foundations.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow Kaffee, snark much? My favorite "memory" of Miss Taylor was the line from the occasionally brilliant Doonesbury "a tad overweight, but violet eyes to die for!"
Unfortunately for her memory, the last 30 years of her public life was covered by General Hospital cameos, White Diamond commercials, and being MJ's Grand-beard.
How sad that's how so many will remember her, rather than Cat on a Hot Tin Roof/Virginia Woolf?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMs. French, you are unfamiliar with Taylor's movie career because she was born in 1974. Uh, ever heard of TCM or other channels which carry movies made long before you were born?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was born in 1968 in Virginia and I too have always been mystified by the amount of press attention garnered by Elizabeth Taylor. I am even a classic film buff who has watched all of the alleged classics starring the late Ms. Taylor. I find nothing extraordinary about her performances. She strikes me as a pedestrian actress from the mid-1940's through the mid-1960's. After the mid-1960's she strikes me as a has-been who endorsed products on commercials and conspicuously adopted liberal social causes.
I remember seeing her at a GOP rally in 1978 for then-candidate for U.S. Senate John Warner. I was with my parents and my mother swooned that she was in the same room with Elizabeth Taylor. I didn't understand then and I still do not understand today.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOf course, last night CBS News had to replay her bashing of George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle and Sen. Helms; I don't recall her or other "AIDS Activists" calling for the slightest restraint on the part of libertine homosexual men. Since AIDS was the first "political" disease, the enemy soon became Conservatives, rather than just the virus.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Faithfulness, children, enduring marriage, and stretch marks. They may not be sxy, but they are the true legacies that even the most glamorous, upon reflection, wish they’d had."
Is there really any reason we should believe this assertion to be true? "They are the true legacies" that everyone wishes they'd had? Clearly these are things that Ms. French values over all else, but why should we think that the rest of humanity feels the same way? Children, for instance, are not for everyone.
The last two paragraphs (which the commenters admire so much) read to me like typical suburban mom-supremacism. The sort you run into at grocery stores as mothers wielding kid-filled carts aggressively assert their maternal right of way in the cereal aisle.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI just had another thought about Elizabeth Taylor; I think she may be analogous to Elvis Presley.
Everyone has one of two images in his or her mind of the late Mr. Presley. He is either young, slim, and dressed in black; or he is middle-aged, mutton-chopped, a little overweight, and dressed in a white rhinestone encrusted jumpsuit. Younger people usually think of Elvis dressed in white.
I think everyone has one of two mental images of Elizabeth Taylor. Older people picture her in one of her pre-Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf movie roles. My mental image of Elizabeth Taylor is the SNL John Belushi caricature of her where she is engorging herself on chicken, nearly chokes to death, and then resumes devouring the chicken after receiving the Heimlich Manuever. I always had mild contempt for her, the same way I have mild contempt for Elvis, and I suspect most people who are younger than about age 55 feel the same way.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Your ignorance of film history . . . ."
What a laugh. I mean, I go to all the classics, on the big screen, no less -- but please, let's be serious.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor me, I just like to romanticize old Hollywood, and Elizabeth Taylor represents that version of Hollywood--which, as we know today, was not that more glamorous than today's Hollywood.
I'm just indulging that part of me that loves a good classic film. Plus, I rather remember Elizabeth Taylor's for her films, the ones in which her beauty radiates. As she has said so herself, she wasn't much of an actress, but, boy, did she look radiantly beautiful. The only way to describe my romanticization of old Hollywood is to compare it to Tom Brokaw's insistence of that the American people who grew up in the 30s and 40s were the greatest generation.
Just like Brokaw wants to idealize the people and values of that generation, I want to idealize the glamour--yes, however, fleeting--of that bygone era when beauty and fame coalesced on a flickering screen in a dark movie theater.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseElizabeth Taylor had four children (three her own, one adopted) and nine grandchildren. She probably had stretch marks, too. She wouldn't have been caught dead in a minivan.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou are cleverly moralizing. I am neutral towards Elizabeth Taylor as I too only knew her in relationship to Michael Jackson. Nevertheless the woman had a life of fame, a serious body of work, a great impact on many people as well as several husbands. How all this pans out in the light of Eternity is between Elizabeth and her God. I resent your pseudo-Christian misrepresentation of what life is supposed to look like and where it has it's ultimate value according to human reason, as if it's some kind of recipe.
Elizabeth Taylor lived her own life and it was unique. Oh and by the way, she had children too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNancy, I agree with you! You keep up the good work! I am so thankful you stand up for the truth and what is right. --Staci
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn all the criticism's of Ms. French's piece, I have not seen a real rebuttal of her central claim:
that fame, wealth, se xiness may be celebrated as the mark of one's greatness, but, as ends of themselves, they are empty, fleeting and do not endure. Therefore, value the things that are good and that do not fade away.
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