throughout her adult years, Taylor's personal life, especially her eight marriages (two to the same man), drew a large amount of media attention and public disapproval. According to biographer Alexander Walker, "Whether she liked it or not ... marriage is the matrix of the myth that began surrounding Elizabeth Taylor from [when she was sixteen]."[1]: 126 In 1948, MGM arranged for her to date football champion Glenn Davis and she announced plans for them to marry once he returned from Korea.[79] The following year, Taylor was briefly engaged to William Pawley Jr., son of US ambassador William D. Pawley.[80][1]: 75–88 Film tycoon Howard Hughes also wanted to marry her, and offered to pay her parents a six-figure sum of money if she were to become his wife.[1]: 81–82 Taylor declined the offer, but was otherwise eager to marry young, as her "rather puritanical upbringing and beliefs" made her believe that "love was synonymous with marriage."[13] Taylor later described herself as being "emotionally immature" during this time due to her sheltered childhood, and believed that she could gain independence from her parents and MGM through marriage.[13]
Taylor was 18 years old when she married Conrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr., heir to the Hilton Hotels chain, at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills on May 6, 1950.[81][1]: 106–112 MGM organized the large and expensive wedding, which became a major media event.[1]: 106–112 In the weeks after their wedding, Taylor realized that she had made a mistake; not only did she and Hilton have few interests in common, but he was also abusive and a heavy drinker.[1]: 113–119 Taylor suffered a miscarriage during one of his violent outbursts.[82][83][84] She announced their separation on December 14, 1950,[85] and was granted a divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty on January 29, 1951, eight months after their wedding.[86][1]: 120–125
Taylor married her second husband, British actor Michael Wilding – a man 20 years her senior – in a low-key ceremony at Caxton Hall in London on February 21, 1952.[1]: 139 She had first met him in 1948 while filming The Conspirator in England, and their relationship began when she returned to film Ivanhoe in 1951.[1]: 131–133 Taylor found their age gap appealing. She wanted "the calm and quiet and security of friendship" from their relationship;[13] he hoped that the marriage would aid his career in Hollywood.[1]: 136 They had two sons: Michael Howard (born 1953) and Christopher Edward (born 1955).[1]: 148, 160 As Taylor grew older and more confident in herself, she began to drift apart from Wilding, whose failing career was also a source of marital strife.[1]: 160–165 When she was away filming Giant in 1955, gossip magazine Confidential caused a scandal by claiming that he had entertained strippers at their home.[1]: 164–165 Taylor and Wilding announced their separation on July 18, 1956, and were divorced on January 26, 1957.
Taylor was three months pregnant when she married her third husband, theatre and film producer Mike Todd, in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico, on February 2, 1957.[1]: 178–180 They had one daughter, Elizabeth "Liza" Frances (born 1957).[1]: 186 Todd, known for publicity stunts, encouraged the media attention to their marriage; for example, in June 1957, he threw a birthday party at Madison Square Garden, which was attended by 18,000 guests and broadcast on CBS.[8]: 5–6 [1]: 188 His death in a plane crash on 22 March 1958, left Taylor devastated.[8]: 5–6 [1]: 193–202 She was comforted by a friend of hers and Todd's, singer Eddie Fisher, with whom she soon began an affair.[8]: 7–9 [1]: 201–210 Fisher was still married to actress Debbie Reynolds. The affair resulted in a public scandal, with Taylor being branded a "homewrecker."[8]: 7–9 [1]: 201–210 Taylor and Fisher were married at the Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas on May 12, 1959; she later stated that she married him only due to her grief.[8]: 7–9 [1]: 201–210 [13]
While filming Cleopatra in Italy in 1962, Taylor began an affair with her co-star, Welsh actor Richard Burton, although Burton was also married. Rumors about the affair began to circulate in the press, and were confirmed by a paparazzi shot of them on a yacht in Ischia.[8]: 27–34 According to sociologist Ellis Cashmore, the publication of the photograph was a "turning point", beginning a new era in which it became difficult for celebrities to keep their personal lives separate from their public images.[88] The scandal caused Taylor and Burton to be condemned for "erotic vagrancy" by the Vatican, with calls also in the US Congress to bar them from re-entering the country.[8]: 36 Taylor was granted a divorce from Fisher on March 5, 1964, in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico, and married Burton 10 days later in a private ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton Montreal.[8]: 99–100 Burton subsequently adopted Liza Todd and Maria McKeown (born 1961), a German orphan whose adoption process Taylor had begun while married to Fisher.
Dubbed "Liz and Dick" by the media, Taylor and Burton starred together in 11 films, and led a jet-set lifestyle, spending millions on "furs, diamonds, paintings, designer clothes, travel, food, liquor, a yacht, and a jet."[8]: 193 Sociologist Karen Sternheimer states that they "became a cottage industry of speculation about their alleged life of excess. From reports of massive spending [...] affairs, and even an open marriage, the couple came to represent a new era of 'gotcha' celebrity coverage, where the more personal the story, the better."[91] They divorced for the first time in June 1974, but reconciled, and remarried in Kasane, Botswana, on 10 October 1975.[8]: 376, 391–394 The second marriage lasted less than a year, ending in divorce in July 1976.[8]: 384–385, 406 Taylor and Burton's relationship was often referred to as the "marriage of the century" by the media, and she later stated, "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."[8]: vii, 437 Soon after her final divorce from Burton, Taylor met her sixth husband, John Warner, a Republican politician from Virginia.[8]: 402–405 They were married on 4 December 1976, after which Taylor concentrated on working for his electoral campaign.[8]: 402–405 Once Warner had been elected to the Senate, she started to find her life as a politician's wife in Washington, D.C. boring and lonely, becoming depressed, overweight, and increasingly addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol.[8]: 402–405 Taylor and Warner separated in December 1981, and divorced on 5 November 1982.[8]: 410–411
After the divorce from Warner, Taylor dated actors Anthony Geary[92] and George Hamilton,[93] and was engaged to Mexican lawyer Victor Luna in 1983–1984,[8]: 422–434 and New York businessman Dennis Stein in 1985.[94] She met her seventh and last husband, construction worker Larry Fortensky, at the Betty Ford Center in 1988.[8]: 437 [1]: 465–466 They were married at the Neverland Ranch of her close friend Michael Jackson on October 6, 1991.[95] The wedding was again subject to intense media attention, with one photographer parachuting to the ranch and Taylor selling the wedding pictures to People for $1 million (equivalent to $2.24 million in 2023), which she used to start her AIDS foundation.[96][70] Taylor and Fortensky divorced on October 31, 1996,[8]: 437 but remained in contact for life.[97] She attributed the split to her painful hip operations and his obsessive-compulsive disorder.[98][99] In the winter of 1999, Fortensky underwent brain surgery after falling off a balcony and was comatose for six weeks; Taylor immediately notified the hospital she would personally guarantee his medical expenses.[100] At the end of 2010, she wrote him a letter that read: "You’re a part of my life that cannot be carved out nor do I ever wish it to be."[101] Taylor's last phone call with Fortensky was on February 7, 2011, one day before she checked into the hospital for what turned out to be her final stay. He told her she would outlive him.[102] Although they had been divorced for almost 15 years, Taylor left Fortensky $825,000 in her wil
Taylor struggled with health problems for most of her life.[65] She was born with scoliosis[121] and broke her back while filming National Velvet in 1944.[1]: 40–47 The fracture went undetected for several years, although it caused her chronic back problems.[1]: 40–47 In 1956, she underwent an operation in which some of her spinal discs were removed and replaced with donated bone.[1]: 175 Taylor was also prone to other illnesses and injuries, which often necessitated surgery; in 1961, she survived a near-fatal bout of pneumonia that required a tracheotomy.[8] She was treated for the pneumonia with bacteriophage.[122] In 1968 she underwent an emergency hysterectomy, which exacerbated her back problems and contributed to hip problems. Perhaps self-medicating, she was addicted to alcohol and prescription pain killers and tranquilizers. She was treated at the Betty Ford Center for seven weeks from December 1983 to January 1984, becoming the first celebrity to openly admit herself to the clinic.[8]: 424–425 She relapsed later in the decade and entered rehabilitation again in 1988.[1]: 366–368 Taylor also struggled with her weight – she became overweight in the 1970s, especially after her marriage to Senator John Warner, and published a diet book about her experiences, Elizabeth Takes Off (1988).[123][124] Taylor was a heavy smoker until she experienced a severe bout of pneumonia in 1990.[125]
Taylor's health increasingly declined during the last two decades of her life and she rarely attended public events after 1996.[121] Taylor had serious bouts of pneumonia in 1990 and 2000,[68] two hip replacement surgeries in the mid-1990s,[65] a surgery for a benign brain tumor in 1997,[65] and successful treatment for skin cancer in 2002.[121] She used a wheelchair due to her back problems and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2004.[126][127] Six weeks after being hospitalized, she died of the illness aged 79 on 23 March 2011, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.[128] Her funeral took place the following day at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The service was a private Jewish ceremony presided by Rabbi Jerome Cutler. At Taylor's request, the ceremony began 15 minutes behind schedule, as, according to her representative, "She even wanted to be late for her own funeral."[129] She was entombed in the cemetery's Great Mausoleum.[130]
Taylor was one of the last stars of classical Hollywood cinema[133][134] and one of the first modern celebrities.[135] During the era of the studio system, she exemplified the classic film star. She was portrayed as different from "ordinary" people, and her public image was carefully crafted and controlled by MGM.[136] When the era of classical Hollywood ended in the 1960s, and paparazzi photography became a normal feature of media culture, Taylor came to define a new type of celebrity whose real private life was the focus of public interest.[137][138][139] "More than for any film role," Adam Bernstein of The Washington Post wrote, "she became famous for being famous, setting a media template for later generations of entertainers, models, and all variety of semi-somebodies."[140]
Regardless of the acting awards she won during her career, Taylor's film performances were often overlooked by contemporary critics;[10][141] according to film historian Jeanine Basinger, "No actress ever had a more difficult job in getting critics to accept her onscreen as someone other than Elizabeth Taylor... Her persona ate her alive."[140] Her film roles often mirrored her personal life, and many critics continue to regard her as always playing herself, rather than acting.[138][140][142] In contrast, Mel Gussow of The New York Times stated that "the range of [Taylor's] acting was surprisingly wide", despite the fact that she never received any professional training.[10] Film critic Peter Bradshaw called her "an actress of such sexiness it was an incitement to riot – sultry and queenly at the same time", and "a shrewd, intelligent, intuitive acting presence in her later years."[143] David Thomson stated that "she had the range, nerve, and instinct that only Bette Davis had had before – and like Davis, Taylor was monster and empress, sweetheart and scold, idiot and wise woman."[144] Five films in which she starred – Lassie Come Home, National Velvet, A Place in the Sun, Giant, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – have been preserved in the National Film Registry, and the American Film Institute has named her the seventh greatest female screen legend of classical Hollywood cinema.
Taylor has also been discussed by journalists and scholars interested in the role of women in Western society. Camille Paglia writes that Taylor was a "pre-feminist woman" who "wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy."[145] In contrast, cultural critic M.G. Lord calls Taylor an "accidental feminist", stating that while she did not identify as a feminist, many of her films had feminist themes and "introduced a broad audience to feminist ideas."[146][b] Similarly, Ben W. Heineman Jr. and Cristine Russell write in The Atlantic that her role in Giant "dismantled stereotypes about women and minorities."[147]
Taylor is considered a gay icon, and received widespread recognition for her HIV/AIDS activism.[140][148][149][150] After her death, GLAAD issued a statement saying that she "was an icon not only in Hollywood, but in the LGBT community, where she worked to ensure that everyone was treated with the respect and dignity we all deserve",[148] and Sir Nick Partridge of the Terrence Higgins Trust called her "the first major star to publicly fight fear and prejudice towards AIDS."[151] According to Paul Flynn of The Guardian, she was "a new type of gay icon, one whose position is based not on tragedy, but on her work for the LGBTQ community."[152] Speaking of her charity work, former President Bill Clinton said at her death, "Elizabeth's legacy will live on in many people around the world whose lives will be longer and better because of her work and the ongoing efforts of those she inspired."[153]
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