The death of Elizabeth Taylor, at age 79 of congestive heart failure, marks, at least symbolically, the end of an era of “Old Hollywood” glamour. While in her later years more a punch line due to her fluctuating weight and multiple marriages (eight in total, to seven different men), it’s easy to forget that, in the midst of her many tabloid-ready personal problems, Taylor really was once a compelling force in the movies. With the possible exception of Olivia de Havilland – who, at 94, has outlived Taylor by at least 15 years – Taylor was the last vestige of a kind of movie making (and movie watching) that has long since passed. To refresh yourself on why Taylor was more than a series of perfume ads and the subject of an unfortunate “Saturday Night Live” impersonation by John Belushi, catch these essential performances from the violet-eyed star.
National Velvet
Though Taylor appeared in several films prior to 1944’s National Velvet, including a Lassie movie with future life-long friend Roddy McDowall, it was this wish-fulfillment drama that made Taylor a child star. The quintessential performance of her childhood career, Taylor plays Velvet, a young girl in England who rescues a horse from a rendering yard and trains it to race with the aid of one of her father’s hired hands (Mickey Rooney). Though the young Taylor plays Velvet with dogged determination and childish optimism, she remains believable when she disguises herself as a boy to ride her horse, Pie, in the big race.
A Place in the Sun
A key role for Taylor as she transitioned from child star into more adult roles, 1951’s A Place in the Sun features Taylor as unattainable debutante Angela Vickers, a girl so undeniably appealing she draws into her orbit social climber George (the great Montgomery Clift). Things go about as bad as possible for George, trapped between obligation and desire after impregnating a co-worker (Shelley Winters) at his uncle’s factory, but of all Taylor’s “object of desire” roles, this is her smartest and, under George Stevens’ direction, a devastating adaptation of a novel by Theodore Dreiser.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
In a Battle of the Ridiculously Good-Looking Stars, Taylor paired with Paul Newman (passed away 2008) in this 1958 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ celebrated play. Newman plays beaten, aging athlete Brick and Taylor is his smoldering, disaffected Southern belle wife, Maggie (the “cat” of the title). A birthday celebration for Brick’s Mississippi patriarch, “Big Daddy” (Burl Ives, reprising his stage role), leads to some turbulent family relations. The occasion gives some uncomfortable insight into Brick and Cat’s tumultuous marriage. Though it skirts around some of the more contentious themes of the play and Newman and Taylor are both clearly too young for their broken-down roles, the pair of them coast on sheer star power and bold, full performances that show both acting legends at their peaks. The first of Taylor’s Oscar nominations.
Giant
No one will really mistake Giant for Elizabeth Taylor’s movie, despite her prominent leading role as a Baltimore socialite, Lynn. Spanning decades, Giant finds Lynn the object of affection for two competing Texas ranchers, Bick (Rock Hudson) and Jett (James Dean). Lynn is the fuel for the two men’s lifelong feud, but Lynn is no damsel, no prize to be won, openly defying both men and dealing with their stubbornness with typical Taylor aplomb. A self-consciously epic tale, much like Taylor’s later, similarly grandiose Cleopatra, Giant is most famously remembered as Dean’s last leading role before his untimely death, but Taylor lends her spark to an overqualified cast.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Among Taylor’s more infamous relationships was that of her match-up with actor Richard Burton, with whom Taylor would eventually make 11 films. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, from 1966, is likely their finest collaboration, especially with Edward Albee’s play as a blueprint and Mike Nichols directing. Taylor is at her least galmourous as Martha, the boozy, brash wife of Burton’s George, a history professor at the small college where Martha’s father is president. If Taylor’s marriage to Newman’s character in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was troubled, George and Martha’s is positively apocalyptic. Entertaining a younger couple (Sandy Dennis and George Segal) after a night out drinking, George and Martha argue, insult, and fight each other in between sadistic mind games and reckless drinking. Taylor got her first Oscar for playing a down-on-her-luck call girl in BUtterfield 8, a performance even she wasn’t satisfied with, but she earned her second with this brazen, vanity-free performance.
Elizabeth Taylor’s long career is littered with oddities ( a voice on the “Captain Planet” cartoon, a stint on soap opera “General Hospital”) and forgettable failures (Boom!, Secret Ceremony, The Sandpiper), but a film career that ends with 1994’s anemic The Flintstones is nonetheless stocked with classic performances in classic films (and good performances in bad films), and the movie world grows a little dimmer without her.
