MARCH 23, 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Ann Hawthorne" <aphawthorne@verizon.net>
Date: Mar 23, 2011 3:28 PM
Subject: MARCH 23, 2011
To: "Wittenberg, Holly" <holly.wittenberg@gmail.com>

 

 

 

     I asked one friend what word came to mind when she thought "Elizabeth Taylor" and she said  'legend."  I guess my own would be "beauty," just the unadorned noun.  But there are plenty of words we could use.

 

    She started acting as a child in the 1940s.  It was a different time.  The movie palaces glittered with famous names--Gables and Garfields, Hayworths and Hepburns.  Many were legends;  many were beauties, but Elizabeth Taylor was, somehow, special.  She first became famous, I guess, for "Lassie Come Home." Her first big, big hit, at age twelve, was "National Velvet."  Just a girl and a horse, back in 1944.

 

     Then came grownup roles--A Place in the Sun, Giant, Raintree County--the first of five Best Actress Oscar nominations.  Others?  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer.  First Oscar--1960s Butterfield 8.  Cleopatra.  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf-- 2^nd Oscar win.

 

     Well, I could go on and so, if you're old enough, could you.  The glamour, the beauty, and magic mattered, somehow, more than all the gossip, all the husbands.

 

     I don't know where dead souls go, but I hope hers finds a happy place.  Good-bye, beauty.  We'll miss you.