Remembering Elizabeth Taylor, a Woman in 'Active Control'

Celebrity tell-all writer Kitty Kelley called her "the last star" in a biography of the same name. Kelley wasn't the only one to write about the woman with the violet eyes and the double-row of eyelashes -- an oft-noted genetic mutation. By 2006, the Library of Congress had already logged 53 biographies on the child star who grew up to become the film industry's first actor -- male or female -- to earn one million dollars for a single movie.

Like her friend Michael Jackson who predeceased her, Elizabeth Taylor is being remembered in ways both intimate and exploitative. The Washington Post has a detailed look at her life, while TMZ notes that her favorite West Hollywood gay bar has erected a shrine to her "in the V.I.P. room where Liz would often hang out."

It's ironic that this icon of womanhood came to fame as a child in a cross-dressing film role; at age 12 Taylor starred in National Velvet as a girl who disguises her gender in order to compete in a horse race. Unlike many of today's child stars, Taylor made the transition to a successful career as an adult actor. Yet her career was overshadowed by her tempestuous love affairs and multiple marriages -- eight in all.

Few celebrities are as firmly entrenched in the pop culture landscape as Taylor, who never fell out of the limelight for long.

Although critically acclaimed for her Oscar-winning performances in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Butterfield 8, her acting career was bookended by films more notable as TV series (Lassie Come Home was her second film and her final one was The Flintstones in which she played Wilma's mother.)

Her eight marriages brought her as much attention as her film performances. The first, to hotel heir Conrad "Nicky" Hilton, Jr. in 1950, would have made Taylor Paris Hilton's great aunt if she'd stuck it out; the couple divorced within 8 months. The eighth and final marriage  to Larry Fortensky in 1991 would have made Taylor the patron saint of cougars if such a term existed back then; she was 56 at the time and he was 40.

Her other husbands included a Hollywood producer who died in a plane crash (Michael Todd), a 1950s heartthrob singer (Eddie Fisher), an actor so gifted it was said he could read the phone book and still be entertaining (Richard Burton), and a US Senator (John Warner, R-Virginia.)

The latter union was probably Taylor's biggest marital mistake. It was no secret that her subsequent unhappiness at being a politician's wife led to a weight gain that made her the butt of many jokes. Warner's attitude toward his more famous wife and women's issues in general also began to take their toll.

Alexander Walker's biography Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Taylor exposes Taylor's resistance toward her husband's embrace of traditional gender roles:

[T]he playful differences of opinion between Warner and his wife began to assume a sour note. One of their most public clashes on the difficulty of reconciling male chauvinist ambitions and feminist issues was sharpened by the relevance of a feminist issue like fat to Elizabeth's sad condition. She chided her husband for not supporting the Equal Rights Amendment. 'I've been working since I was ten. I have supported my family and a couple of husbands...and I feel absolutely equal.'

As Walker's biography indicates, Taylor wasn't afraid to go public with these sorts of feelings. Although Taylor is widely recognized for her work as an AIDS activist, she clearly saw the world in feminist terms. One public event chronicled by Walker shows how fiercely vocal Taylor could be when she felt women were not taken seriously:

The senator was addressing a policy forum of Republican VIPs and saying that women should be exempt from the draft, when Elizabeth gave vent to a dissenting mutter and then, to the surprise of many, a prolonged boo. Warner, in what was interpreted as an attempt to placate her, succeeded in looking as if he were slapping her down. Women, he claimed, were volunteering for jobs in the services. Elizabeth's hard-edged voice split the tense atmosphere....'What kind of jobs -- "Rosie the Riveter" jobs?' Laughter broke out. Emboldened by feeling that the audience was with her, she backed up her position. 'Women have been in active control since Year One.' Look at Margaret Thatcher, she said: look at Cleopatra. Warner, now flushed, appeared to try and subdue her with a wave of his hand -- a gesture that brought her leaping to her feet. 'Don't you steady me with that all-dominating hand of yours.'

That 'all-dominating hand' didn't guide the couple very long. Taylor and Warner divorced after 6 years together.

Taylor is being remembered in many ways by many people, but to overlook her strength and focus on her beauty is to underestimate her. Taylor survived for decades in a cutthroat industry because she was a strongly opinionated woman who fought to be in "active control" no matter what came her way.  Although being a politician's wife may have been the most limiting and most dissatisfying role of her life, she didn't shy away from going head to head with American political conventions and calling out hypocrisy when she saw it...even when it was her husband who was being hypocritical.

Taylor once said, "I've been through it all, baby, I'm mother courage." May we all find a piece of that courage and pay it forward with her passing.

_{Photo of Elizabeth Taylor in 1957
© Terry Disney/Central Press/Getty Images}