RIP Elizabeth Taylor
Those of you who are below a certain age may wonder what all the fuss was about. Now that Elizabeth Taylor has died of heart failure at 79, it’s almost hard to remember what a huge celebrity she was. She had kept a much lower profile in recent years, but in decades past her beauty and her escapades kept enormous numbers of fans on the edges of their worshipful seats.
Not only was Taylor a rare beauty—even as a child, when she began acting—but she lived large, partied hard, spoke her mind, loved tempestuously and often (eight marriages to seven people, Burton twice), and had enough substances to abuse and illnesses to weather and causes to foster that she could have supported an entire tabloid industry all on her own.
My favorite Taylor movie was “Jane Eyre,” in which she played the doomed and saintly Helen, a child who dies young. Fortunately, Taylor herself went on to live a long life, but her co-star Peggy Ann Garner, an astoundingly brilliant child actress who appears as Jane in this scene, never really transitioned to adult roles, had an adult life marked by tragedy, and died at 52. Here they are in their glowing, gifted youth:
Elizabeth Taylor was indeed a beauty in her youth, but she struck me as yet another example of Hollywood induced wreckage as she became older.
It seems that psychopathology and creativity go hand in hand, and with Hollywood pushing all those buttons–and all those vividly colored buttons to push, reinforcing and enabling all sorts of aberrant and over the top behavior, the end result is almost always bad and, from what I can see, few survive the Hollywood meat grinder unscathed and emerge at least marginally sane/normal.
RIP Liz.
It was a tumultuous journey. She was one of my first movie actress crushes. She was so achingly gorgeous and desirable at her early films. I speak of Father of the Bride, Ivanhoe, and Giant.
It was a disappointment to see the way her life seemed to spin out of control. How difficult it must be to deal with such beauty, fame, and riches. Not sure anyone is equipped to lead such a life in a sane manner.
Thanks neo…
as Cleopatra she had the best asp in town.. 🙂
I like LOTS of the real greats…
recent replacements are lacking
“She was one of my first movie actress crushes. She was so achingly gorgeous and desirable at her early films.”
I concur. She was absolutely gorgeous. Those violet eyes; her dark, thick hair; the lush lips; and the hour glass figure were an aphrodisiac concoction. WOW!
However, as an actress I enjoyed her middle career.
Reflections in a Golden Eye was her strangest role and she made Brando look tame before her sly seduction.
In the Taming of the Shrew she was perfectly spoiled and bitchy.
In Butterfield 8 she was smolderingly sexy and set the standard for what was alluring and dangerous.
RIP Liz.
I’ve watched a lot of movies over the years, yet I don’t particularly consider myself a movie buff.
Elizabeth Taylor was certainly beautiful in her youth, but that was a little before my time, so I never really became a fan.
I’ve seen Cleopatra on TV, but not in the theater or on a hi-def DVD. It’s not a bad movie. It has its moments.
But that movie was a watershed for Hollywood. It went so insanely over budget that it nearly ruined the studio that made it. It essentially destroyed “old Hollywood”. Something changed. There seems to be a clear demarcation between movies made in the “pre Cleopatra” and the “post Cleopatra” eras.
I know I’m not the first to point that out, and I’m sure others can fill in more details.
I’m sure others can fill in more details.
see who moved from columbia university to hollywood, and how that changed the whole of it as the movies started to have tons of points of view inserted so that they would kind of reinforce attitudes. which is why today’s films are so poor and not as enjoyable and often have to do remakes to remove the older pre progressive messages which reflected and before reinforced the culture and family, and a line of history from past into a future (Rather than just a now and no direction, as you move from now to now).
one of the more interesting things to note is what happens when you go back and you see certain films and then catch the messages that 20 or more years later would be dominant in the zeitgeist.
here is an example to look up (IF you dare)
Go back and see the moving the “Incredible Mr Limpet”. knowing how greenie stuff dominates and how it takes a position of like animals hate humans, its interesting to see the seeds that were planted that their parents pish toshed or didnt even notice.
my wife being from a foreign land often looks at me funny while i point out that people here dont see it – and get upset if you point it out (see movies like space buddies for very young children (or how they remade the rankin bass rudolf, which has voices of top stars, but when its listed around xmas, they dont list that!!! otherwise parents would say, richard dryfuss was not in the rudolf i remember.. and then watch with their kid).
take a look at rap.. and read about H RAP BROWN… originally hubert gerold brown, or now Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin… who is tupacs mother and father? which would make sense that its a cultural pipeline to a set of people in which other people do not read or know what is being said.
[feminist tropes masquerading as womens magazines do the same thing for a certain class of wome]
there are whole histories that are available to be read but people wont read them even if i point them out. they prefer to pretend the history doesn’t exist then armchair analyse things like some Marxist kaffeeklatsch person insightfully seizing the natural flow and order of the world… (so don’t disturb them with facts they dont know that spoil their solilquy, or their position may have to change. certainly they will not reassess in light of confessesed spies and other things unless its a negative from their own side).
But black people fall for that same argument, and they go around talking about law breakers. We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws. Those laws that keep them up, keep us down.
H. Rap Brown
If America don’t come around, we’re gonna’ burn it down.
H. Rap Brown
I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown
In terms of the revolution, I believe that the revolution will be a revolution of dispossessed people in this country: that’s the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican American, the American Indian, and black people.
H. Rap Brown
The only politics in this country that’s relevant to black people today is the politics of revolution… none other.
H. Rap Brown
Yes, politics IS war without bloodshed; and war is an extension of those politics.
H. Rap Brown
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/postgrad/current/masters/modules/ctmediastudies/
so they even teach it…
another place to look (though key people seem to be missing, hmmmmm).
ehub.journalism.ku.edu/history/1900/1900.html
you can click on the top, and see it through each decade up to 1980 from 1900…
you can read why the newspapers today gave up on serving the public (hint, the times is owned by a single family as are many other media concerns, not public companies with shares and lack control).
pay close attention to people like Upton Sinclair… (whose stories are now remembered as completely factual, which if you read more, may not be so easy or clear to know…
Sinclair’s plan to end poverty quickly became a controversial issue under the pressure of so many migrants. Conservatives considered his proposal an attempted communist takeover of their state and quickly opposed him, using propaganda to portray Sinclair as a staunch communist. At the same time, American and Soviet communists disassociated themselves from him as a capitalist. Science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein was deeply involved in Sinclair’s campaign. Heinlein tried to obscure this in later life, as he wanted to keep his personal politics separate from his public image as an author
and
so again… many of these authors and others had an agenda, and others later in life regretted their foolishness when younger, like Langston huges..
with key people moved into positions of CHOICE, and others with money to invest, they could create a trend by how they selected scripts which would or wouldnt be produced. the writers knew that if you didnt warp culture, debase it, etc… you would not earn a living as a writer. the common people were too asleep or cowed to protest this change in their viewing and reading, and living life experience.
a quiet and very slow Gleichschaltung was performed as each movie took the same line on subjects and the formuleas didnt deviate or offer opposing views (except rare things which tended to be able to be seen from both sides).
certain validities were outlawed…
you couldn’t use them, mention them, or even include them at all, or in some cases, you could but had to take the accepted ‘social’ position.
ergo. white males (which includes almost all Jewish males), are seen to lose their brains the moment they reach adult hood (That way teen white males don’t feel the pressure and can be part of those applying it, until their status suddenly changes).
ergo. women can now fight better than men, thats our input to reality since our lives have not the money to go out and be a part of it. we learn about whats real now by what shows we watch.
for a huge portion of the population that junk on tv IS reality.
I seem to be playing the role of the crotchety old man as I approach 70, but this is how I view things. Have I become too critical of things or, are there a lot more things to be critical about?
There have always been self-destructive “stars” in Hollywood–in the silent film days Fatty Arbuckle comes to mind–so the wreckage of the USS Taylor is nothing new.
My wife and I watched a WWII movie the other day, Claudette Colbert, Joseph Cotton, Shirley Temple, Jennifer Jones, Monte Wolley, Keenan Wynn and an all star cast in “Since You Went Away,” a story about how a family and society on the home front was coping while their men were away fighting. What we saw was great acting, cinematography, and music, and a very idealistic and sappy propaganda message about an idealized world, people, and a “Norman Rockwell” America that likely never really existed in quite that perfect way. The point, though, was that–naĂ©ÂŻve by today’s standards though it might have been–it was infused by what we used to call Judeo-Christian and Patriotic values, and examples of honor, strength, nobility, self-restraint and self-sacrifice, that it set a high standard, and showed us what we should aspire to, how we should and should want to behave.
However, in the course of the time since, say, WWII Hollywood has gone from being a cohesive and unifying force, and a force for good for this nation, a maker of good “propaganda” that taught us all sorts of lessons about morality, and patriotism, and values and—lo and behold–Good And Evil–to being a destructive, subversive, “transgressive” force –and I don’t mean this in a “good” way–working, nonstop, for the destructive “transformation” of this country into something very alien, and coarse, amoral and ugly, a betrayal of our history, moral foundation, and values; from my perspective, Hollywood and the Entertainment industry “went over to the Dark Side” many decades ago.
In fact, if you look at the state of the current entertainment industry–and particularly the movies of the last few years, and to a somewhat lesser extent TV and music as well–as a Rorschach test, I’d say that–with the odd exception here and there–the drug, alcohol, power, money, adulation, and sex addled producers, writers and “stars” of Hollywood and the entertainment industry are truly a bunch of “sick puppies,” very fortunate beneficiaries of a society that they loathe and despise and–suicidally– want to destroy, and to transmogrify into Fellini’s “Satyricon”; the nightmare visions that, apparently, haunt them day and night and that, in many cases, apparently provide them with their “inspiration.”