She looks like the prow of a great ship; that’s what I thought mulling my initial glimpse of Elizabeth Taylor.

July 2, 1973. The phone rings. It is my friend Bill, fanatically devoted Elizabeth Taylor fan and junior paparazzo. "Elizabeth is in town. She’s at the Regency. Nobody knows she’s here. Come down and see her."

Taylor had not much interested me in my formative movie-going years – Marilyn Monroe was a much safer (dead!), tenderer icon, though I was always aware of Taylor; who she was and who she was supposed to be – The World’s Most Beautiful Woman. I thought that moniker inappropriate for a woman with such a soft jawline.

But in her mid-career rococo period – "Boom," "Secret Ceremony," "X, Y and Zee," "Ash Wednesday" – she got under my skin. She was obviously out of her mind (a fur coat thrown over a teeny pink bikini on the cover of Look magazine, for Christ’s sake!), didn’t care what she ate, drank or wore and remained – no matter what the box office said – The Biggest Star in the World. She was pretty fabulous, I had to admit. (When Barbra Streisand sang "I Am the Greatest Star" in "Funny Girl," I kept looking around the screen for Miss Taylor.)

I hurried over to the Regency.

It was hot. "A blazing white-hot" day, as Miss T. herself described the weather when cousin Sebastian got eaten by hustlers in "Suddenly Last Summer." There were only six photographers, myself and friend Bill waiting. It was high noon when Richard Burton made his appearance. He didn’t look good; he didn’t smile and did not acknowledge requests to pose. Burton got into the limo and scrunched himself into a corner. One of the photographers nudged me, "Something wrong with those two. They never come out separately."

Ten minutes later there is a rumble from inside the hotel. Two big men run out. One stands near the door, the other at the limo. It’s time.

Stepping into the brutal sunshine is Elizabeth Taylor in skintight bell-bottom jeans, a tight yellow T-shirt and a wild collection of faux and real jewels, dangling across the bosom, on the wrists, the fingers, the ears. She is shockingly short, surprisingly slender and much more beautiful than I had expected. The eyes were cobalt. The hair was black, generously flecked with gray. The nose perfect. She had freckles! I had prepared myself for the occasionally blowsy, always over-painted woman of movie magazines and recent screen appearances. But she looked surprisingly fresh.

Taylor moves in cinema slo-mo. The paparazzi is instantly frantic – so much more than they’d been for Richard – but they keep a respectful distance. She turns her head and smiles at each pleading, "Please this way, just one more …" I was mute. Agog. An idiot. She looks right at me. She passes me. How slim her hips are! What a pert, winking ass! What a surprise! Into the car she climbs. From nowhere a man leaps toward the half-open widow of her shiny chariot. He is clutching photos. "Sign just one!" The big men drag him away. From the car comes a familiar, girlish shriek, the voice of a high-school junior. "No, no … I’ll do it. I’ll sign!" Out comes a rather square hand with a hugely square Krupp diamond on it. She scrawls an almost unreadable autograph. Up goes the window. Taylor is now safe within her cocoon and continues to smile and pose; a little of this, a little of that – now give ‘em the profile. Richard Burton does not look at his wife.