"You see, she didn’t care about being a star. She cared about living a certain way. It was what she was used to. And she lived that grand life with [Richard] Burton and thought they’d have it forever. That’s what was most important to her: to have a great companion in her great life … it was all about being with him. That’s all that really mattered."

So chimes in photographer Gianni Bozzacchi, on Elizabeth Taylor, in William J. Mann’s new book, How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood.

***

This is an entertaining work, revealing much of the machinery behind star-building and star-maintaining back in the day. (The trajectory of gossip queen Hedda Hopper’s relationship with Elizabeth – from adoration to loathing – is deliciously conveyed.)

But the book is also (mostly) a testament to Taylor’s iron willfulness and how she bent the rules to suit herself, while keeping her career boiling for quite a long time. So long, in fact, that once her box-office collapsed in the late 1960s, she carried on just as before, and carried media and world attention with her. She was a movie star who didn’t need to make movies. Her hold has lessened in recent years, but not for lack of true interest. Steadily declining health has cast a shadow on the star; she is less visible and, when she does appear, poignantly fragile.


Image: Amazon

I don’t think Mr. Mann breaks any new ground – his take on Elizabeth’s unique position has been written up before. And a lot of it by this columnist, who knew Elizabeth and Richard well during the halcyon days of their international travels and movie-world domination. (The best thing I ever wrote on the Burtons was following the pair as they ate, drank, mock-argued and shopped. Elizabeth never actually answered one question I’d been sent to ask her!)

But there is a nice, juicy quality to this book; the author is an admirer and he is pretty accurate. There are no shocks. We all know by now that Elizabeth didn’t marry every man she slept with. (This was her old defense, taken as gospel by many.) In that case she’d have had more than eight marches down the aisle. We know some of her marriages – Eddie Fisher – were based solely on s-e-x. Or as Carrie Fisher puts it, "My father consoled Elizabeth with his penis."

***

The worldwide effect of La Liz’s serial husband-snatching might seem impossible to believe now – after all, it was only a little adultery! But think of the biggest star in the world today. Then magnify that star 1,000 times. You still wouldn’t be close to what Elizabeth Taylor was. The world – and the industry – was enslaved by this woman. Twentieth Century Fox actually sold off part of its back lot to finance "Cleopatra"! The star of stars. I don’t call her that for nothing.

Mr. Mann does an excellent job capturing the media/public frenzy of her greatest years. (When the Vatican denounced ET for her affair with Burton, her first response was an angry, "Can I sue the pope?")


Miss Taylor herself would probably not appreciate the slightly jaundiced eye Mann casts on the brief but legendary marriage of Elizabeth and Mike Todd, which ended in Todd’s death in an airplane crash. It was more than love and lust at first sight. Elizabeth wanted the grand life Todd could provide. Todd wanted the reflected fame Elizabeth brought to the venture. Of course, they were in lust and love, but less romantic issues were on the table.

Later, she would do it all over again with Burton. Only bigger and better. Yes, she was mad for him, but also much attracted to his mind. He would be the education she missed out on at MGM. Yes, he was mad for her. But her fame seduced him as much as her wild ways in bed, or her beauty. (She would elevate Burton to a position of taking care of her as she wished to be taken care of. He would come to feel he’d made a Faustian bargain, and grew weary of life á la Liz. Elizabeth? She worried constantly that she "bored" him!)