A beguiling star who loved melodrama

Christopher Bray

IF THE DEFINITION OF A MOVIE STAR IS AN actor you’ll watch in anything, Elizabeth Taylor was the most stellar star of them all. In a career lasting more than half a century she made just one picture which would be worth watching were she not in it. As for the fifty-odd others, the bulk of them can be endured only because of Taylor’s beauteous, bestial presence. Even the most moribund of her films — The V.I.P.s, say, or The Only Game in Town — crackle to life whenever she enters the frame. She was a Klieg light on legs. Not that her gams were great. As Taylor’s fifth (and sixth) husband, Richard Burton, rather ungallantly pointed out, “She has wonderful eyes, but she has a double-chin and an overdeveloped…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2024

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