Elizabeth Taylor - RIP

i find the comparison almost insulting!

if only madonna could act we might have a better comparison. but madonna as singer/controversy/icon/etc works. kinda.

well thats a tribute to a bygone era though. nobody compares. and jolie didn't wait till she was older to start making forgettable movies. she's been doing it for years.

can't see pitt and jolie doing something as self-revealing as WAOVW

they might prove me wrong yet

I wasn't able to follow this thread today, so I'm sure this has been kicked around, but even though I think Taylor's death is deserving of all the coverage it's received, to me her period of greatest fame--the first half of the '60s, roughly speaking--runs parallel to a relatively uninteresting period in American film. Yes, there were some great films; but I'd say fewer than any other half-decade between 1940 and 1980. That was the half-decade where France and Italy and foreign films in general dominated. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm skeptical of the idea that films were so much more important then, at least as the statement applies to American films of the early '60s. In terms of glamour and celebrity, I'll endorse the idea that there is no equivalent that can match Taylor today.

FYI, Jolie's 35 is more or less Taylor's age for "Woolf," the role she is best remembered for. But another advantage Taylor had over Jolie is that she came of age in the gotta-hustle studio era, when movies were just churned out. Four movies in 1954 alone, followed in quick succession by Giant, Raintree County, Cat ..., Suddenly Last Summer and Butterfield 8. That's some hard working.

"That was the half-decade where France and Italy and foreign films in general dominated."

yeah, screw them.

id say the peak of her acting fame was the late 50s... or really just from the 40s till the end of the 60s, which is when hollywood really did change. and WAOVW was one of the films that changed it, i think. sure her personal fame went into a basically uncharted realm in the 1960s with burton.

did elizabeth taylor really break her back 5 times? how do you even do that? her body was seriously messed up for decades. how many near-death illnesses?

i need to watch some of those liz/burton movies again. stoned. there is craziness there. probably can't even get them all on video, can you?

she was good in gia

Still her best, I think.

The Mark Harris book Pictures at a Revolution posits WAOVW as an early New Hollywood touchstone.

id say the peak of her acting fame was the late 50s

Gotta disagree with that if you append the word "fame." (The peak of the quality of her acting, maybe--I'm not a big enough fan to judge.) Butterfield 8 is '60, Cleopatra '63, and Virgina Woolf '66; those three films are surely the peak of her fame as an actress.

Yes, there were some great films; but I'd say fewer than any other half-decade between 1940 and 1980. That was the half-decade where France and Italy and foreign films in general dominated.

I can get behind this. These were the years when studio films were so dreadful that non-American actors were needed to fill the nominations (and Tom Jones won BP).

I do agree about the importance of Virginia Woolf--in its own right, and as prelude to The Graduate.

As far as Jolie goes, I just...Liz was SO good that I think there *is* a place for just talking about how great Liz was...I feel like it cheapens who she was to try and compare her with current actresses. But thats me. Its not like it pisses me off or anything, it just seems sorta, pointless

If you're talking about Oscar-style 'fame,' she was nominated every year 1958-61. And she already had a husband dying in a plane crash by then.

Liz & Dick also did an episode of Here's Lucy circa 1971. I believe Liz's wedding ring went down Lucy's drain.

Is that same one Desi Arnaz Jr.'s career went down?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FntN7Tr_O0Y&feature=related

i do concur that the 1960s, especially the early 60s were not a great time for hollywood by comparison with the 50s or 70s. a lot of the action moved to england after 'tom jones', hence all the great joseph losey movies, 'spy who came in from the cold', etc. they key book on that is called 'hollywood, england' and you could see it as a logical development from the runaway productions of the 1950s. the big epic films were made in spain and italy iirc too. what im saying is, 60s hollywood was pretty dope if you include spaghetti westerns and beatles films as 'hollywood'.

If you accept '67-68 as the New/Old Hollywood turning point, Taylor's decline coincides almost perfectly.

I'd be tempted to argue that Hollywood still takes the careers of men more seriously as far as prestige goes and that it'd be difficult for a talented actress to cultivate a glamorous, social image while being taken seriously in this environment.

Meryl Streep is the exception, no?

and her public profile has never been higher – I mean, her movies are actual hits now.

Streep has sort of reinvented herself as a light-comedy star, tho

something happened to streep circa early 00s where she suddenly developed like this modest sense of humour and as a result her screen presence no longer feels so burdened by craft. her filmography is ridic still

no way she was doing tons of comedys before that!

okay not tons but she went right from ironweed and a cry in the dark to she-devil and postcards from the edge and defending your life.

i love postcards. she was always funny.

Streep's (subtle) big change came c. 1990, with "She-Devil" and "Postcards from the Edge" (the latter courtesy Woolf director Mike Nichols, speak of the devil). Then "Defending Your Life" and "Death Becomes Her." She's done tons of serious stuff since then, of course, but around then the good will just started flowing her way. She practically radiated with it. And still does.

Pre-"Postcards" and (um) "She-Devil," not a lot of LOLs in the Streep catalog.

and meryl did tons of drama in the 2000's. its just that the hits were probably the comedies. they usually are.

right, pre-she devil. but that was decades ago. just saying she's been doing comedy for a while.

From Prada on, Streep *primarily* does comedies rather than mixing it up, of the Ephron-Meyers-ABBA ilk. Even her role in the Nichols HBO Angels in America was largely comedic.

can you tell i love meryl streep. love elizabeth taylor too. i actually got mad when i saw facebook lolz about her death. i never get mad about that stuff.

since prada, she has done lots of feature-length dramas. nobody saw them.

She still bores us with stuff like Doubt.

dark matter, rendition, evening, lions for lambs, doubt. i guess julie and julia is a bit of both.

i didn't see half of those. i will eventually. no hurry.

Julie and Julia is light comedy (and another hit).

I love her in Adaptation.

Same sort of parallel story role as J&J, come to think of it.

man, I have no memory of what Dark Matter or Evening were.

Anyway, Streep is an artiste w/ Juilliard cred, Taylor never really tried to convince anyone she was even when doing TennWms or Albee.

Search cackling audio outtakes of Liz's "General Hospital" guest shot.

i kinda mean more her public persona got kindof looser and adaptation was a really good role for someone aging gracefully but staying sexy and dangerous

scenes from the elizabeth taylor story starring sherilyn fenn
YOWZA

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3-HNW9t7bnA/TUf5dsuRbxI/AAAAAAAAByU/puy-P3shnFw/s1600/S%2B9.jpg
http://content8.flixster.com/photo/10/61/54/10615478_gal.jpg

and still, it's hard to be as smoldering and proportional as the real liz

http://img.ezinemark.com/imagemanager2/files/30004252/2010/12/2010-12-06-17-20-19-2-elizabeth-taylor-was-the-american-dream-and-americ.jpeg

hmmm

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/hollywood/2011/03/taylor-ascending-large.jpg

Liz was so damn breathtaking, and it was almost like a Brando thing, where she knew what she had but played it like she didnt care..or something

Child star that went credible - Jodie Foster? Private life not the same, obvs.

I don't think we're discussing the child performances enough. She's bracing and direct in National Velvet, isn't she?

on last week's 'at the movies' ebert (as read by bill kurtis) discussed the adaptation of jane eyre from 1943 w/orson welles and joan fontaine and showed a clip from the scene where she makes her first screen appearance.

I was going to post that! But I haven't seen the movie in years. I confuse her with Mary Nash.