Interviews With a Hollywood Legend
We have seen documentaries on Elizabeth Taylor before but these have largely retold the Hollywood star’s life story from an outsider perspective.
This isn’t the case with Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, which is currently available on HBO Max.
Nanette Burstein’s documentary tells the story of Taylor’s life via archival interviews with the actress herself. Speaking to journalist Richard Meryman at the height of her fame in 1964, she talks about her many marriages, her highly publicized divorces, and her acting career.
Taylor speaks candidly about her personal life, openly acknowledging the mistakes she made in her relationships. One such mistake was marrying Eddie Fisher in 1959, a relationship that was born out of tragedy when the two became close after the death of Mike Todd, Taylor’s third husband and Fisher’s good friend, who died in a plane crash within a year of marrying her.
Marrying Fisher “seemed like the right thing,” she says, while admitting that she was never really in love with him. Despite this, she did have a lot of affection for the actor, but their marriage wasn’t destined to last a lifetime. The same can be said of Taylor’s other marriages, most notably with Richard Burton, who she married twice.
When reflecting on her relationships, Taylor speaks about the physical and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of her first husband, Conrad Hilton Jr. Allegedly, he kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant and caused her to lose the baby. After they broke apart after only 8 months, Taylor married again, this time to actor Michael Wilding, who was 20 years her senior. Their marriage ended amicably five years later, with Taylor blaming herself for the divorce because of their incompatibility.
Taylor also speaks about her acting and how she felt incredibly insecure when she secured her first major movie role in 1951’s A Place In The Sun. Her co-star Montgomery Clift was a trained stage actor while she had never had any acting lessons herself. “I hadn’t really acted except with horses and dogs” she says, referring to her roles in such films as National Velvet and Lassie Come Home when explaining her lack of confidence.
The documentary draws from over 40 hours of interviews with Taylor, during which we discover many interesting tidbits of information, such as how she only felt safe in the company of gay men (Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowall), and that her grief over the death of her friend James Dean convinced her to divorce Michael Wilding.
Speaking of James Dean, we discover Taylor had been in the passenger seat of his car the day he fatally crashed it. Thankfully, she wasn’t in the car when Dean died on the 23rd of September, 1955, and mercifully, she wasn’t in the plane with her third husband Michael Todd either when it crashed and killed him in 1958. She had stayed at home because of a cold.
These interviews provide a treasure trove of information about Taylor’s personal life, along with anecdotes about the films she made and the people she met in Hollywood.
Taylor’s perspectives on her life are never less than fascinating, so the documentary is a must-watch if you’re a fan of the star. She was a vibrant and fascinating woman who, thanks to the “lost” interviews that have now been uncovered, will always be remembered for more than the stories that were written about her in the tabloids.
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Verdict - 7.5/10
7.5/10