A lot of people now qualify as stars, and it seems like one or two die just about every day. But once in a long while a celebrity’s death creates pause, as if time is required to absorb the loss and adjust to a world absent one of its cultural touchstones.
Such was the case with Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, John Lennon, Princess Diana and Michael Jackson. And it was certainly the case with the death of Elizabeth Taylor last week.
Taylor was a good, if uneven, actress who was in some very good, and very bad, movies. Her glamorous and often controversial lifestyle made her the tabloid queen of the 50s and 60s. But it was her ravishing beauty that made her iconic.
With a voluptuous body, thick brunette hair, double lashes and blue eyes so deep that they appeared violet, Taylor was breathtaking throughout a prime that lasted more than two decades. On the screen or in photographs you didn’t just look at her, you stared. To behold her was to consider the meaning and the power of beauty.
Gay men have always worshipped beauty, but our relationship with Taylor was deeper than that. Through her friendships, her choice of roles and the bold way she flouted convention in her personal life, it was clear she was on our side. In more secretive and repressed times, all you had to do was read between the lines.
She was close friends with her effete Lassie Come Home co-star Roddy McDowall. She mothered Montgomery Clift, and famously cradled him in her arms when he almost died in a car accident not far from her home. She befriended and protected closeted Giant co-stars James Dean and Rock Hudson.
And at the height of her bankability she chose roles in challenging non-commercial productions that dwelled in sexual ambiguity. If you want to experience Taylor after her passing at age 79, skip Cleopatra and rent the movies that speak directly to her gay fans.
A Place in the Sun (1951), features a ravishing 17-year-old Taylor as a spoiled socialite who lures Clift away from his pregnant factory-worker wife, played by Shelly Winters. Message: Desire trumps convention, even when the consequences are tragic.
In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Taylor plays Tennessee Williams’ memorable Maggie the Cat, a woman desperate for the affection of her tortured gay husband, played by the equally stunning Paul Newman. Message: Gay is gay, and not even the sexiest woman in the world can change that.
Taylor is also married to a gay man, this time an Army major played by Marlon Brando, in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). She ridicules his masculinity; he takes it out on her by flogging her horse. There’s also a neighbor who cut off her nipples after giving birth, an effeminate houseboy, and a hunky enlisted man who rides horseback naked. Message: Follow desire where it leads or things get ug-ly!
My favorite Taylor movie was penned by two gay screenwriters, Williams and Gore Vidal. Suddenly Last Summer (1959) is memorable not only for its stellar cast Taylor, Clift and Katharine Hepburn but also its delicious Southern Gothic plot.
Hepburn plays the wealthy mother of unseen Sebastian Venable, who used her money and looks to attract boys during their summer vacations together. But when Hepburn grows too old to be desirable, Sebastian casts her off for luscious cousin Taylor, who goes insane after witnessing him being eaten alive by street urchins. Now Hepburn wants Taylor lobotomized so she won’t reveal what happened.
Is that what love is? Using people? Taylor asks Hepburn as they stroll through Sebastian’s garden filled with meat-eating Venus Flytraps. Maybe that’s what hate is not being able to use people.
Message: Plot doesn’t matter as long as the repartee is scintillating.
It’s all subtext, but homosexuality plays a role in each of these movies from a golden era in which Taylor won two Best Actress Oscars. By the 1980s, Taylor knew it was too late for nuance. She loved gay men, they were dying all around her and no one was speaking up about it. So she became the first major celebrity to embrace AIDS activism. Taylor angrily battled HIV discrimination and raised more than $100 million for research, treatment and education programs.
It’s bad enough that people are dying of AIDS, she said, but no one should die of ignorance.
Even in her later years, gay men found sources of identification. Taylor overcame alcoholism, drug addiction and weight fluctuations, all while enduring love continued to evade her.
It is very strange that the years teach us patience, Taylor said toward the end of her life. The shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.
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