Dim the lights

It can’t have escaped your attention that the actress and Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor has died of congestive heart failure. She was 79.

There are about a squillion obits, appreciations and retrospectives of her out on the Web. There’s a lot of verbiage since Taylor gave people a lot to talk about throughout her life.

I’m sharing the Telegraph’s obituary because, frankly, they do these things with class. & Taylor personified a unique classiness, even when she was boozing it up with Richard Burton or marrying a truck driver 20 years her junior at Neverland. There was something about her escapades that the current crops of mega-celebrities just can’t approach for style and attitude. Eight marriages (two of them to Burton), film roles ranging from the sublime to the cringeworthy, riding pillion on Malcolm Forbes’ motorcycles...she did what she wanted to do.

Not to mention the jewelry. Jeez, that woman had more bling than a convention of rappers. “Big women need big diamonds,” she shrugged. ’Nuff said.

Of course, she was more than a star; she was a friend. Taylor getting up in front of the world in the mid-80s to raise millions of dollars to fight the virus & stigma of AIDS was the first a lot of people learned about the disease. She did it because she had AIDS-stricken friends & she was completely fearless in her advocacy for awareness, research & treating victims with dignity.

(The LA Times’ obit gives more detail on this.)

I’m not ignoring the fact that she was stunningly beautiful from about age 14, but what I liked most about Taylor was her laugh. That dame had a throaty, grab-me-in-the-gut laugh, with an edge of witchiness, almost a screech. It so epitomized her persona for me: that sense of being so involved in whatever sparked the laughter that she didn’t care what it sounded like. She just belted out her pleasure & made you want to join her.

Maybe that was it—she had such an earthy, wise-woman view of her life. “Some of my best leading men have been dogs & horses,” she commented.

Ain’t that just the truth? & if it was so for a woman who set the standard for beauty & wealth I guess the rest of us shouldn't be surprised by what we get.