Elizabeth Taylor

A college friend of mine used to say "I'd like to just sit on the bed beside Elizabeth Taylor, just sit there, you understand? (I didn't nod), just sit there and look at her. I wouldn't do anything, just sit there looking at her." Yeah, I know the feeling and I didn't believe a word of it, knowing him. Probably he didn't believe it either; maybe it was a fantasy of his that made him feel pure since he wasn't pure. He was a ram. A Welsh ram.
But never mind him, let's think of her.
Was she a good actress? Well, she won two oscars didn't she? I never thought her a great actress, good but not great. I always found her a bit lifeless; she posed a lot. She did give a powerful performance in "Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolf?" but I found it forced and ugly - ok, she was supposed to be ugly. The trouble was that she simply wasn't ugly; she tried to be but didn't succeed. Burton was great in it; he relished his lines like only an experienced stage actor can. She blurted her lines, shouting them agressively when she should have been more subtly cruel.
I liked her best when she was young: "National Velvet" and "Lassie Come Home"; she was charming and innocent and loveable. I don't think she was ever as loveable in adult movie life except perhaps when she acted with gay friends like Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson - then she seemed casually content.
I read a story about her and Burton in a book written by a script-writer. He went to their house on a visit to discuss a script and noticed that in their bedroom they had a trolley full of drinks by the side of their bed. So they were normal after all!
(Another tale he told was of a movie mogul who phoned him up late one night and said: "I want a one page synopsis of "War and Peace" on my desk first thing tomorow morning.")
Back to Elizabeth Taylor. She visited Cardiff with Richard Burton, went to a rugby match and, afterwards, she and Burton went to the bar of the Cardiff Athletics Club. It was packed to the door. "How are we going to get to the bar to get a drink?" she asked Burton. He said: "Just walk." She did and the crowd parted like the Red Sea did for Moses giving her a passage straight to the bar.
An actor told of a visit she made to Port Talbort to visit Burton's sister after he had died. She stayed the night in a bedroom with no toilet facilities except a pot under the bed. The following morning she came down the stairs carrying the pot, stopped halfway down and asked: "what am I supposed to do with this?" Burton's sister said: "we'll bottle it and sell it."