PG, 102 minutes
4 Stars
Streaming on Binge
Review by © Jane Freebury
Early in the movie career of Elizabeth Taylor, a film critic of some repute declared her so rapturously beautiful that he didn’t know or care whether she could act or not. It was the mid-1940s, when many besides James Agee, novelist, screenwriter and critic for Time magazine, were smitten with the looks of the young adolescent girl who had just appeared in National Velvet, in her first leading role.
Praise like that would have been a mixed blessing for Liz Taylor. It seems that she of the heart-shaped face and deep blue eyes with luxuriant lashes, had concerns about how seriously she was being taken as an actress. It comes up a noticeable number of times in this intimate new documentary on her life and career, offering interesting insight into one of the last screen legends of Hollywood’s golden age.
The idea that she was nothing but a ‘vacuous petty face’ as another critic had said, clearly troubled her throughout her acting career, as she wonders during the interviews that are the foundation to this engaging doco, whether she was a movie star or an actress. This from someone who received the best actress Oscar on two occasions. For Butterfield 8 and her unforgettable turn in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A movie star or a serious actress? It clearly troubled her throughout her career
This work of award-winning writer-director Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) is anchored in a cache of audio tapes from the Taylor archive dating back to 1964 that have come to light in recent years. They were originally recorded by Richard Meryman, a journalist with a long list of celebrity monologue interviews to his name. The 40 hours’ worth on Taylor is not a massive amount of primary source material, but it offers fascinating key insights into a spirited woman who, despite certain insecurities, had the confidence to do things her way in her personal and professional life and the grace to own up to making bad mistakes.
In between the richly illustrated montage of clips and stills, the interview atmosphere is recreated. As brief close-ups of a reel-to-reel tape recorder set the scene while Taylor is heard in voiceover, cigarette smoke curls from ashtrays and whiskey glasses clink. It’s easy to envisage a relaxed, free-flowing conversation between interviewer and subject.
At 18 years, Taylor became public property with the first of her celebrity marriages. It was just the beginning of a life lived big that she recalls with refreshing frankness. What of her marriage to fourth husband, crooner Eddie Fisher? Oh, she liked but never loved him. How was her first meeting with Richard Burton, number five? Oh, he was hungover from one of his benders, but she helped him sober up with coffee. Taylor was married eight times, in all.
She had stood up to the studios as best she could, and divorced the husbands she wasn’t happy with
The legend of the tempestuous Taylor-Burton partnership lives on. When Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor began their affair during the Cleopatra shoot in Rome, Taylor recalls how the Pope opined about her very negatively, but the surging crowd of film extras on set refused to take any direction from that and shouted ‘Leez! Leez! Baci! Baci!’ instead as she made her triumphal entrance into ancient Rome. An astonishing moment captured on camera.
As an officially endorsed legend, Taylor occupies seventh place on the American Film Institute list of greatest ever. She may have been prone to self-doubt and expressed candid regret over some of her roles, but she is on the record as the first screen actor to receive $1 million for her work. She had stood up to the studios as best she could, and she had divorced husbands she wasn’t happy with. Quite the independent woman, really.
After all those marriages, she spent the last decades of her life a single woman, working for the wellbeing of victims of HIV/AIDS. She had seen the disease up close in high-profile victims like her friend Rock Hudson.
And she reflects on how she surrounded herself with gay men friends, men who weren’t going to come on to her. Roddy McDowall and Montgomery Clift, who had been co-stars of hers, became lifelong friends. It’s a fascinating comment on the downside to being too beautiful, as Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes reflects on the many dimensions to a woman who worried that being gorgeous got in the way of being taken seriously.
First published in the Canberra Times on 9 August 2024. Jane’s reviews are also published by Rotten Tomatoes