Elizabeth Taylor: A Life

The obituary page of The Economist is one of self’s favorite features of the magazine.

They sometimes write up very obscure people.

But the obituary of 2 April 2011 was on Elizabeth Taylor.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

Besotted with her radiant beauty, men lined up to lay huge jewels at Elizabeth Taylor’s feet.  Their size didn’t matter so much to her, she said.  Though the Krupp diamond was 33.19 carat, flaming with life when the line shone through it, and the Taylor-Burton 69.42 carat, so big that it made Princess Margaret’s eyes start out of her head, what mattered more was the emotion that lay behind them.

So the $10,000 diamond and platinum ring that Nicky Hilton, the first of her seven husbands, presented to her in 1950 was the biggest thing that had so far happened to her, as marriage was.  In the end, it meant nothing, because he beat her.

Dear blog readers, perhaps reading that last sentence gave you as big a jolt as it gave self.  The other part of the review that self found tremendously moving was the following:

. . .   as she often told the press, acting wasn’t real to her.  Pain was:  colitis, crushed discs, exhaustion, or the pneumonia that almost killed her during the making of “Cleopatra.”

So that’s how she developed so much empathy for others (AIDS sufferers and the like).  That’s why she became such good friends with tortured souls (Michael Jackson and the like):  she identified with their suffering.

What a fearless and indomitable woman Elizabeth Taylor was.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.