ELIZABETH TAYLOR
By Lori Payne

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor sometimes nicknamed “Liz” who grew to the height of 5’2” was born in Hampstead, London, England on February 27, 1932. Her father was Francis Lenn Taylor and her mother was Sara Viola Warmbrodt, who at one time was a stage actress, but gave it up to get married; they had come to London as art dealers from St. Louis, Missouri. Elizabeth was the second born from this marriage; the first was her older brother Howard, he was seven years older. Elizabeth lived with her parents in London, until she was seven years old. They family sailed to the America, because war was beginning to take shape in 1939. Francis stayed to finish his work with the art business, but shortly afterward followed, and the family relocated to Los Angeles, California, where Sara’s family, the Warmbrodts lived.

In California, a friend of the family noticed the young Elizabeth’s striking beauty, then only nine years old, and after taking a screen test, not long after Universal Pictures singed her in There’s One Born Every Minute in 1942. Not long thereafter, she was dropped from Universal, but then was soon signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her first movie with MGM was Lassie Come Home in 1943. The success of that film led to two more films The White Cliffs of Dover and Jane Eyre both in 1944. Then came the film that made her a star in 1944, where she played Velvet Brown, a girl that trained horses to win the Grand National in National Velvet with Mickey Rooney. This film grossed over four million dollars. MGM was going to sign her with this role, but because the production was delayed, she was signed with 20th Century-Fox. Taylor went to school on the MGM lot and on January 26, 1950 received her diploma from University High School. That same year she married. Throughout her lifetime she had seven spouses.

In 1963 she became the highest paid movie star when she played in one of the most expensive films of all time; she starred in Cleopatra. She played in the 1973 made-for-TV movie Divorce His – Divorce Hers. Also in 1985 she played Louella Parsons in Malice in Wonderland, and appeared on a few soap operas, including General Hospital and All My Children. Taylor also acted on Broadway in 1982 in the revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. When her friend Rock Hudson died in 1985 she began a crusade for people suffering with AIDS. During the 90s she also manufactured a series of scents and fragrances. In February 1997 she had a brain tumor removed in a successful operation, although she needs a wheelchair to get around. In 2005 she vocally supported her best friend Michael Jackson in the California trial where he was acquitted, and had encouraged him to wear a red string as a protection from the evil eye.

She just celebrated her seventy fifth birthday. There is a student run Burton-Taylor theatre in Oxford for when she appeared in the Oxford University Dramatic Society production of the Marlowe play where she played the ghostly, wordless Helen of Troy, who is entreated by Faustus to make him immortal with a kiss. Elizabeth Taylor is the last major actress to come out of the traditional Hollywood structure, and reminds us all how Hollywood used to be.

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