Elizabeth the Great

Been reading all the back and forth on Bill's blog--the comments and his replies--about the great Elizabeth Taylor

Like everyone else on the planet I love the films for which Dame Liz is best known and justly celebrated... but of all possible ET movies to recall as I read the comments, for some reason I'm thinking of "X,Y and Zee", the "daring" '72 flick starring Dame Liz, Michael Caine and Susannah York, in which we are asked to believe that the logical explanation for Liz's obsession with the delectable Susannah was strictly to save her (Liz's) disintegrating marriage to the dishwater dull Caine. (Mmmm...yeah.)

Not a great film by a long shot (It was directed by Brian G. Hutton who seemed on firmer terra cotta when he was helming macho adventure stuff like "Where Eagles Dare" and "Kelly's Heroes") but I retain a perverse affection for it. For one thing Elizabeth, who had just that year turned 40, looked incredible.

I also love "Secret Ceremony", "The Sandpiper" and--of course--"Butterfield 8", for which she'd won the Oscar. (That breathy, emotional acceptance speech...) Trust me--films like these are a perfect way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon. (Okay, an almost perfect way.)

Is "Ash Wednesday", the '73 film she made with Henry Fonda in which her character resorted to a face lift (as opposed to a steamy lesbian seduction) to rescue her faltering marriage, available on DVD now? I've never seen it but have wanted to for years... also "Divorce His/Divorce Hers" the two-part TV movie she made around the same time, with her most famous partner, Richard Burton.

And whenever I have occasion to see "Gone With the Wind", and it comes to the part where Rhett and Scarlett are sparring about their willful little daughter, Bonnie Blue, I lament once again that the child actress Elizabeth was not cast in the role--she was the perfect age and she was strikingly beautiful, with an eerie resemblance to Vivien Leigh's Scarlett. As memorable movie entrances go, that would have been a perfect role for such a legendary star :-)