Elizabeth Taylor
The actress was born February 27, 1932 and died March 23, 2011. She was only 79 years old. She was born to American parents in Britain. At the age of three, she took ballet lessons, and later that year, she danced before the Royal Family. She and her family returned to the United States before WWII and resided in Los Angeles.
She made her first screen debut at 10 years old at Universal in There's One Born Every Minute, a low-brow comedy. Since then, she has acted in more than 50 films, from Lassie Come Home (1943) to The Flintstones (1994). She launched her perfume lines and spent the rest of her life traveling the globe and raising millions of dollars for AIDS research.
She even did the voice over for Baby Maggie in the animated TV series, The Simpsons.
Marriages
She dated Howard Hughes at 17 years old and married Nick Hilton at 18. In 1952, she married actor Michael Wilding. In 1957 she married Mike Todd, who died in a plane crash one year later. Eddie Fisher, who was the best man at her previous wedding, married Elizabeth in 1959.
After that, she began her on-screen romance with Richard Burton on Cleopatra (1960). They married in 1964. She won her second Academy Award for her performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? (1966). She divorced and remarried Richard Burton publicly in the 1970s. They finally divorced in 1976. On her seventh marriage, she married a former Secretary of the Navy, John Warner, in 1978. They divorced in 1982. Almost 60 years old and at a treatment center for drugs and alcohol, she married for the ninth time to Larry Fortensky, who was 20 years younger than her. They were divorced in 1995.
The film: The Taming of the Shrew
The tumultuous relationship between Richard Burton and herself can be brilliantly seen on screen in the 1966 film The Taming of the Shrew, which was exceptionally directed by Franco Zeffirelli, written by Suso Cecchi d’Amico and Paul Dehn and co-produced in America and Italy. Elizabeth Taylor was cast as Katrina and Richard Burton as Petruchio.
This film does a great adaptation from the Shakespearean language to the script. The film's director, Franco Zeffirelli, originally planned this film as a vehicle for Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.
This film is a play about a man’s domestication of his spirited and rebellious wife, a great comparison with the actors' real lives. There is a great deal of sensual energy, song and laughter as well as the giddiness and gaiety of youth.
In the Elizabethan era, a husband was expected to control his wife. So this film is about Burton attempting to control Taylor. That makes this Shakespearean drama filmed with chaos and argument when these roles are inverted. The Taming of the Shrew is not a feminist tract.
Elizabeth Taylor's character is broken down by Richard Burton through prolonged emotional, intellectual and physical assault throughout the film.
This is by far their best film roles played together. They were ever-quarreling lovers in real life with their on-again and off-again marriages. They are both great actors, and it shows in these performances.
The film is 122 minutes in length.
Daniel Kazel - Kazel produces Stress-Free Living TV shows for Discoverhelp, Inc. and cooking food recipes for NY Times website About.com. He lectures ...
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