The violet eyes framed (because of a miraculous mutation) with double lashes;
the bone-china skin and purplish-black hair; the dangerous curves,
the “dark, unyielding largesse.....
She had the sublime arrogance of a queen, and the hard pragmatism of
someone who knew that power is infinitely more desirable than beauty.
Remember, this is the self-titled “Mother Courage” who bore five
children, who married eight times, burying one husband (producer Mike Todd),
and who befriended a series of beautiful, deeply damaged men – friendships
that would lead, on one level, to her seminal and utterly critical work with
AIDS charities and education.
In 1956, she became a confidante to James Dean (her co-star in Giant):
Also in 1956, she would run to the side of her closeted gay, drug-addicted and
tragic friend Montgomery Clift when he smashed his car into a telephone pole
after leaving a party at her house. She held his broken head in her hands;
she gathered his bloody teeth until help arrived. And she remained his friend
throughout his turbulent life.
As she did with Rock Hudson, when rumours of his being gay
and HIV-positive roared through the industry and press. Since he had
just kissed Linda Evans on Dynasty, the tabloids were filled with repugnant
speculation by her and other cast members, who feared that they had
caught AIDS by talking to him, it would appear.
Michael Jackson was her last anterior husband, so to speak
(the lusty Taylor always had a romantic partner and close gay
or sexually inscrutable friend – and he was always damaged,
yet touched by her truly maternal warmth).
like the loyal-to-a-fault Egyptian queen she famously portrayed,
Taylor used her nine lives to showcase her beauty and deploy the
power it gave her.
