Year 1967. Taormina, Sicily. Two of the biggest Hollywood stars of the moment, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, attend the film festival held on the island. They are going to collect the David di Donatello award for best foreign actors. Both. There are images of the couple enjoying a few days in the area: at the train station, in a restaurant, taking a walk and, of course, collecting their awards. But Burton and Taylor are not only the stars of the moment, they are also the couple of the moment. In the chronology of their relationship, in Taormina, they have been together for five years, since they met on the filming of Cleopatra, when they were both married—he to Sybil Williams, she to Eddie Fisher. In 1964, after she got a divorce, Taylor and Burton married for the first time. “Elizabeth Burton and I are very happy,” he summarized in a brief statement. They didn't need to say anything else, their images around the world spoke for themselves: yachts, jewelry, posh dinners, haute couture clothes, cigarettes and huge sunglasses helped build the image, and the legend, of this primordial power couple before the concept of power couple. Now, a new book about the couple, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, signed by Roger Lewis, reveals that the image projected by these two stars was not the result of chance, but of a huge team that included secretaries, makeup artists, housekeepers, personal photographers, bodyguards, nurses, chauffeurs, butlers and even staff in charge of packing and unpacking. No wonder, according to this book, they didn't exactly travel light to Taormina: they carried 156 pieces of luggage between them.
One word would perfectly define this couple: excess. We knew that Burton and Taylor drank excessively (according to love and fury, another biography about the couple, they started drinking at breakfast time and didn't stop until they went back to bed). We also knew that they spent excessively. In particular, in fine jewelry that Burton used to give to his wife, such as the yellow Krupp diamond, the Peregrina pearl (which had belonged to Philip II and appears in works by Velázquez) or the 69-carat Taylor-Burton diamond. We knew that they loved each other excessively, even getting married on two occasions. Now, we know more about his particular sweet life, go down into detail: at the Hotel Lancaster in Paris, they occupied a total of 21 rooms and “their dogs used to accompany them to restaurants, and they were fed a menu.” On other occasions, the glamorous couple booked and kept empty rooms in cities they never visited.
Their possessions are also a reflection of those excesses. According to the author, in 1967 they bought a luxury yacht, named Kalizma, which had “seven cabins with double bunks, three bathrooms and an armory containing machine guns.” The actors equipped it with Chippendale furniture and carpets that had to be replaced every six months because the pets relieved themselves there. Their dogs not only ate restaurant menus, but also had their own boat: it was in 1968, while the couple was in London due to filming, when they decided to install their pets on a boat, moored near Tower Bridge , and for a cost of 1,000 pounds a week, to circumvent the dog quarantine restrictions that existed at that time in the United Kingdom. Both were aware of their own needs and, according to the writer, constantly joked about it. “I introduced Elizabeth to beer, she introduced me to Bulgari,” he said.
This book will not be the only cultural artifact that remembers the figure of Elizabeth Taylor, already inseparable from the one who was known as the love of her life, Richard Burton. And it is precisely another lover of her excess who will return to her: a few days ago it was known that Kim Kardashian will be executive producer, in addition to one of the voices, of a new BBC documentary about the actress that aims, to a certain extent, to dismantle part of the legend that, precisely, the book claims. “For too long the story of Elizabeth Taylor has been told like a soap opera,” explains the description of the documentary, titled Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar. Yesand will be divided into three parts: “The eight marriages, the diamonds, the addictions. This series gives Elizabeth Taylor the importance she deserves, in all the incarnations of her: actress, rebel, business mogul and activist, to reveal how Taylor created the blueprint for the modern celebrity.” It will look at Taylor's craft as an actress and “how she reinvented the nature of fame, even as she broke the glass ceiling in Hollywood, before becoming a billion-dollar businesswoman, activist and advocate.” Kim Kardashian's participation is no coincidence. As revealed by media such as Variety either The Hollywood Reporterthe reality television star and millionaire businesswoman was the last person to interview the actress, who died in March 2011, at age 79.
Thirteen years after her death, Elizabeth Taylor continues to make headlines: from Bulgari collections celebrating her legacy to news about her latest romances (specifically, with Irish actor Colin Farrell). Perhaps that is the greatest reflection of how she “reinvented the nature of fame.” But her work and her characters also remain, such as Gloria, the prostitute protagonist of A marked woman; Martha, the alcoholic wife whom he gave life to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Maggie, the unforgettable cat on the roof, films that after #MeToo are remembered and vindicated from a feminist perspective. 2024 will bring it back, once again, in both excess and defect.
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