ADSactly Hollywood Legends: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, marriage of a century
Few are the girls who never dreamed of becoming an actress, a movie star, a Hollywood icon. Even fewer are the girls who never swooned over a hot movie star. Whether we like it or not, Hollywood is still the film-making capital of the world, and if you look at many of today’s starlets you would believe that all it takes is a nice face and a lot of well-placed silicone. However, Hollywood became the stuff of dreams decades ago when the movie stars were larger than life. This series is about the Golden Era of Hollywood and the legends on whose blood, sweat and talent the success of the modern film industry was built upon.
If there’s one thing Hollywood never lacked, it’s romance - which is only natural considering the density of beautiful women and equally fascinating men. Yet, of all the love stories ever spun in Hollywood, there never was on quite like theirs: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, twice married, twice divorced, never fallen out of love with each other.
With both of them glamorous, strong-willed and fiery temperaments, their love was like a volcano, a furious all-consuming passion punctuated by violent outbursts, some of them fueled by alcohol.
‘Liz and Dick’ became the hottest news story in 1962, when the two met on the set of ‘Cleopatra’, a highly-publicized and extremely costly production.
At the time, Elizabeth Taylor, famous for her almost violet eyes and double lashes, was one of Hollywood’s best paid actresses, was married to her fourth husband and had three children. Burton, on the other hand, was better known for his theater career in London and was still building his Hollywood reputation. He was also married at the time he met Taylor and had two daughters.
News of their affair broke when the paparazzi scooped a picture of them relaxing on a yacht in Italy, where filming took place. The term paparazzo had been recently coined by director Federico Fellini in his 1960 ‘La Dolce Vita’ and the new supercouple was hounded by journalists spying their every move. Not that they tried very hard to hide their relationship which they both knew from the start it was not an ordinary affair. Early in the story, when Burton once told her he didn’t want to divorce his wife, Liz Taylor overdosed on sleeping pills. On the other hand, Burton was so determined to have her he famously showed up drunk at a party hosted by Liz and her then husband Eddie Fisher and dared her to kiss him, which she did, in front of all her guests.
This is how Richard Burton described her in his diary:
“I have been inordinately lucky all my life but the greatest luck of all has been Elizabeth. She is shy and witty, she is nobody’s fool, she is a brilliant actress, she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography, she can be arrogant and willful, she is clement and loving, Dulcis Imperatrix, she is Sunday’s child, she can tolerate my impossibilities and my drunkenness, she is an ache in the stomach when I am away from her, and she loves me!”
In the end, they both divorced their partners and got married in 1964, establishing themselves as Hollywood royalty. As always, producers were quick to exploit the chemistry between them and the immense publicity surrounding them by paring them in 11 movies, among them ’Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ (1966), the most acclaimed performance of her career. They also starred together in Shakespeare’s ’The Taming of the Shrew’(1967) and ’Under Milk Wood’(1972) based on a play by Dylan Thomas.
For all the box-office success, what truly kept them in the public’s eye was their glamorous lifestyle. They made a lot of money together and spent it just as easily. Burton lavished her with expensive gifts - furs, jewelry and even an airplane he bought her on a whim. ’She was not displeased’, he then noted in his diary.
The most extravagant gift was a 33-carat diamond he bought for her in 1968. After her death, the stone became known as the ‘Elizabeth Taylor Diamond’ and was sold at auction in 2011 for $8.8 million. In 1969, Burton bought her a 68-carat diamond, at an auction where he almost lost to another bidder. Taylor said it didn’t matter if he could not get it, but Burton went crazy and vowed he’ll get her the stone ‘if it cost me my life or 2 million dollars whichever was the greater’, as he wrote in his journal. In the end, he did get it and the stone is now called the ‘Taylor Burton Diamond’. When stories like these made it to the newspapers, it is easy to understand the people’s fascination with the ‘Liz and Dick’ story.
While they did spend time as a normal family, travelling or playing Yahtzee with the kids (Taylor’s daughter Liza from a previous marriage and Maria, the girl they adopted together), they also fought a lot, each blaming the other for their problems. Yet, even when their relationship became really troubled and rumors of a split were swirling, Richard Burton did not hesitate to take a 30 hour round trip from Italy to California just because Liz was to undergo minor surgery and wanted him to come and hold her hand before the procedure.
They divorced in 1974, at a time Liz Taylor was concerned he might be having an affair with Sophia Loren, with whom he was making a movie at a time. The Italian movie star never confirmed such an affair, but spoke instead of Burton’s consuming love for Elizabeth Taylor. The divorce turned out to be more of a break in ‘the marriage of a century’, as one year later they were back together. They remarried in 1975, but the problems between them had grown too big and the union did not last. The second Burton-Taylor divorce took place in 1976, but they remained close enough for Burton to come to Liz Taylor’s 50th anniversary in 1982, at a time they were both divorcing their new partners.
Whatever feelings they still had for each other, they did not get back together. Burton went on to marry another woman, who was with him until his untimely death in 1984, at the age of 58, following a brain haemorrhage. At some point in their life together, Taylor and Burton had discussed being buried together, but Burton’s widow took care to purchase the adjoining lot and raise a monument to prevent Liz finding her resting place there.
Years after his death, Liz Taylor released for publication Richard Burton’s letters to her, which offer a glimpse into the passion that devoured them. There was one letter she never revealed, one that she received just as she was returning from his funeral. She said in his last letter Richard Burton expressed his desire to get back together and ‘come home’. That letter she kept on her bedside until her death in 2011.
“In my heart, I will always believe we would have been married a third and final time... from those first moments in Rome we were always madly and powerfully in love.”
She did marry again after his death, but she never found real love. As she put it in an interview:
"After Richard, the men in my life were just there to hold the coat, to open the door. All the men after Richard were really just company."
As she reflected upon their fabulous time together, Liz Taylor concluded:
“Maybe we loved each other too much.”
Post authored by @ladyrebecca.
References: Wikipedia, Furious Love, A Passionate Love: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton Through the Years
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Sometimes loving too much can also be bad! Liz Taylor is one of the best known actresses of all time not only because of her eccentricities and violet eyes but also because of her loves, she married eight times. I remember reading in many magazines the life of excesses, his unusual friendships, among them the King of Pop, and that last husband, young and who the gossipers catalogued as a vividor. When we read the letters of Liz and Richard we cannot stop thinking about how corny love can be, but also that there are eternal loves, which despite distances and separations, remain. Taylor herself once said it: They lacked life to love each other. Thank you for this series, @ladyrebecca
Another couple emblematic of the golden years of Hollywood, and conflicted, like all those who are marked by passions of spectacle, fame and wealth. I remember them as actors together in *Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Burton in films that particularly interest me like Equus and 1984. In her, of course, I was always attracted to her beauty and her performance, but she did not keep in my affective memory any particular film with her. Thank you for your interesting follow-up to these cinema figures, @ladyrebecca.
Definitely this couple lived a love of legend, a love so passionate and crazy that it hurt until the end, both for what they loved and for not being able to die together. Lyz Taylor and Burton transmitted love and passion even on the screens, their love scenes were very moving. Thank you for sharing this series @ladyrebecca and @adsactly for spreading it.