Elizabeth Taylor - RIP

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.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-KSJEvkth-Kc/TXmLQBX2sWI/AAAAAAAAETY/JFakfftOhP8/s1600/JaneEyre.jpg

more like jane eerie, that face at that age

it's a relief to see someone in hollywood who has gone from very young to (relatively) old and basically kept the same face

more like jane eerie, that face at that age

― omar little, Thursday, March 24, 2011 6:33 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

lmao... i wouldn't have even thought about it, but now im weirded out by it too

that vanity fair thing i swear MUST be done by sometimes ILX resident dan lacey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa-aKhOqX8g

thanks for posting Morbz!

that moment when she snorts when she laughs at 1:21 is excellent

"I'm sorry folks, I'm not used to acting" LOL

goddammit she's just so darn CUTE

"Did you see the Tony Awards?"

i think what she's mumbling after "Did you see the Tony Awards?" is something like "i screwed up my lines on that too."

yeah, she tells him how she got all the people's names wrong there too.

David Carr in the NY Times:

“I know I’m vulgar,” she once said, “but would you have me any other way?” In that respect, she was very much like Dolly Parton, another durable American star who turned sartorial trashiness into a virtue by claiming it as her own. No one invented Dolly Parton or Elizabeth Taylor, although many have claimed to, and their connection to their fans was, and has been, a visceral, living thing based on an honesty and directness.

But that is not the same as saying that she was not a lady. She was every inch a lady. It’s trite to say, but think of the biggest-wattage stars, like, say, Angelina Jolie. Ms. Jolie is remarkably beautiful and very talented, and, like Ms. Taylor, in control of her own career. But there is certain masculinity to Ms. Jolie’s appeal, a willingness to kick some tail on screen and go after whatever she wants off-screen. And before you dismiss the argument as the product of a diseased, sexist mind, a little thought experiment: Before there was Brangelina, there was Dickenliz. In the instance of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who is the alpha? It’s not really even much of a question. Yet even though Ms. Taylor’s fans adored her with far more ferocity than Richard Burton’s talents ever engendered, she deferred to him.

That may be why, apart from her manifest beauty, she remained, as the director George Stevens said, the girl every American boy “thinks he can marry.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/weekinreview/27carr.html

I get what he's saying but it feels like a condescending way to say it. Pitting Jolie's "masculinity" against Taylor's "demureness" off screen just seems like an incredibly dated and boring way to talk about those two women, if he must talk about them in the same article...though everyone seems intent on doing it.
It's like the Jackie O and Marilyn archetype, the virgin and the whore...that whole line of conversation just annoys the hell out of me.