In Contention

Tag: Elizabeth Taylor

  • Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)

    Forgive the recent posting drought — I’m trying to get back on track. I’m also sorry that it’s taken the passing of one of history’s greatest honest-to-God movie stars to get me back on here, but there we have it — whether you first encountered her in “National Velvet” or as the voice of young Maggie Simpson (just please tell me it wasn’t as Pearl Slaghoople in “The Flintstones”), Elizabeth Taylor’s career is one of those that has been so extensively bronzed into legend that revisiting her films first-hand can yield some real surprises.

    I’d write a full obit here, but allow me some inter-site shortcutting. I was invited by The Guardian to contribute this “Career in Clips” piece, in which I trace her career trajectory through eight defining performances, ranging from deservedly legendary work in the likes of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Who’s Afraid Virginia Woolf?” to less prominent, but no less fascinating, curios like “Secret Ceremony.”

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  • The evolution of the actress, part one

    Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a DreamThis is the first of a two-part study of legendary screen actresses through the years.  Stay tuned tomorrow for part two.

    We often hear about the great actors in movie history: Brando, Nicholson, Duvall, Hoffman, Hackman, Washington, Freeman and DeNiro, men who advanced the craft into an art of the highest order.

    But what of the women? They have never really been taken seriously in Hollywood as trend-setters.  Historians have even documented the genuine shock by studio heads when they realized that a woman, Vivien Leigh, had carried “Gone with the Wind” for its more than three-hour running time.

    Leigh, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn were the greatest of classic Hollywood, and certainly Elizabeth Taylor’s astonishing performance as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” broke ground for women in terms of what they could portray on screen and get away with. A genuine movie star, Taylor gained a great deal of weight for the film and was willing to play down her stunning good looks in the name of her art.

    Brash and loud, vulgar and sexual, Martha was the greatest challenge of Taylor’s career, to which she responded with one of the cinema’s great performances. This was years before Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull,” which received substantially more attention. But all of the aforementioned actresses in one way or another broke ground for the fairer sex.

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