SUZANNE MOORE: Forget the marriage guidance book, just feel Taylor and Burton's chemistry
Elemental force: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1965. Who can look at a picture of Taylor and Burton together and not think they were a fabulous match? Their marriages are politely referred to in the obituaries as volatileShe overdid it. She got married too many times, bought too many diamonds, put on too much weight. She was not much interested in limiting herself. She was simply a star, not just an actress.The fascination with her even now is still over her relationship with Richard Burton. They married twice. It was the role she most enjoyed. It is this grand passion we may remember her for as much as her movies she made a lot of not very good films as well as some great ones.
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- AMANDA PLATELL: Elizabeth Taylor, a star who beguiled with class not cleavage
Interviewed once on American TV about their rows, Taylor laughed wickedly and said that marital togetherness is about out-and-out outrageous fights.
In the same! intervi ew, Burton teased her about her double chins and fat belly. She called him pock-marked and flashed those luminous eyes. He said resignedly that Elizabeth has no weak points.She did, of course. Physically, often, she was very sick. She nearly died in childbirth. But he was her real weak point.He was a terrible alcoholic who never really believed that acting was a manly enough profession. She drank, too. More than most men, but she was not destroyed by it as he was. In these days of AA and rehab, Burton would have been carted off and possibly helped. Who knows?The great myth of undying love exists only if we forget that what killed him was addiction. For him, the affair never stopped: A love affair like ours is never ended only temporarily abandoned.Asked, 25 years after his death, if she would marry him again, Elizabeth replied: In a heartbeat. When he first sidled up to her on the set of Cleopatra, she thought his lines corny. He thought she had apocalyptic breasts. He was in absolute awe of her dark, unyielding largesse.
They were soon conducting an affair that was to be condemned by the Vatican. They were both married and she had said she could not have sex with men unless married to them.The stories of the diamonds, the excess, the parties and the booze became an early definition of what we now call celebrity. Taylor was often in her boudoir. When Burton asked what she was doing, she would say: Playing with my jewels.The on-screen sparring between them in Whos Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? gave us a glimpse, we felt, of something real though Liz played a vulgar, blowsy woman. The Elizabeth we mourn is intrinsically linked to this crazed love story.Todays beautiful people like Angelina and Brad often look basically miserable. Burton
and Taylor looked as if they were having the time of their lives. And they were. My head knows one of these lives was cut short by booze but, my God, one look at Taylors sheer gorgeousness still makes my heart leap.Burton once wrote to her: I am forever being punished! by the gods for stealing fire and trying to put it out and the fire, of course, is you.Ablaze, magnificent, this elemental force of a woman inspired passions that mere mortals only dream of. Such dreams are what the best movies are surely made of.
Britain needs a Spring too
Amid the latest batch of war porn and I am sorry but endless information about different types of aircraft, tanks and missiles is just that a few voices are saying we are meddling in the wrong country. Again.
Most of us are entirely confused about what we are doing in Libya. Is it an invasion? Is it an intervention? Is it humanitarian?
Shouldnt we really be in Syria? Yemen? Iran?
The desire to prevent Gaddafi murdering his own people is laudable but what are we to end up with, apart from partition? That worked so well in Ireland and India, didnt it?
Some are now saying it is our job to arm the rebels, even though there is a UN embargo against doing so. This means we are once again talking regime change with no idea of who will lead the opposition.
How is it possible to launch a military operation with no long-term plans, no agreement over the objectives, no real exit strategy?I would like an Arab Spring, yes. But I would like a British Spring, too, where politicians had to explain to a wavering public why we cannot afford to look after the elderly but we can afford to launch cruise missiles at nearly a million pounds a pop. Forever friends? Cameron may need a yes man, but Clegg's value even as that is plummeting with every protest, every cut, every sacred thing smashed I am not queuing for iP! ad 2 as iPad 1 has been under the bed for months.
Clegg leaves his mic on and says something mind-blowingly devastating to Cameron. We cant go on like this, I am a laughing stock, perhaps? No, its yet more chumminess.Cameron may need a yes man, but Cleggs value even as that is plummeting with
every protest, every cut, every sacred thing smashed.
I now feel slightly silly that I ever bought it, though this is not to say that I shant be purchasing another silly thing that I dont know quite what to do with again.Indeed, I have just enquired about a new Virgin Media Super Hub that promises to make my home life more exciting. Just dont ask me how.
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