Liz Taylor: A star when it meant something

IF TATTLE were writing 50 years ago, Elizabeth Taylor, who died of congestive heart failure yesterday at age 79, would have been the gift who kept on giving.

While today's scandals happen mostly to pseudo-celebrities, wannabes and fame whores willing to have dimly lit sex on a tape later to be mysteriously found/stolen and distributed/or not after rounds of public legal posturing, Taylor was a MOVIE STAR, back when being a movie star meant something.

She was also a serious actress, strikingly beautiful and catnip to men.

Oh, you youngsters say, she's just like Angelina Jolie.

Talk with us in 2050.

Although it wasn't her debut role, Taylor got her first shot at stardom in 1942 (age 10) in "Lassie Come Home," opposite Roddy McDowall, who was four years her elder and would become a lifelong friend. At the time, MGM was paying her $100 per week.

Two years later, she was part of the global consciousness, starring as Velvet Brown in "National Velvet," becoming a fixture in Hollywood, and later the gossip mags, for nearly 70 years.

Take that, Not-so-"Real Housewives."

Taylor worked steadily throughout her teens without any drunken pratfalls and always managed to wear underwear when photographed. She did not feel the urge to become a singer or release a clothing line, and yet her career still prospered. By 1950, she was earning $2,000 per week and starring opposite Spencer Tracy in "Father of the Bride." That was followed a year later by "A Place in the Sun," proving that Taylor, still only 18, was ready for adult drama.

And she had plenty of adult drama.

Taylor wed hotel heir Conrad "Nicky" Hilton in May 1950 (he was 24), but Hilton was an abusive drinker and the marriage ended quickly.

Husband No. 2 in 1952 was British actor Michael Wilding (he was 40, she was 20). When Taylor became pregnant that year, MGM worked her extra hard to get the aptly titled "The Girl Who Had Everything" in the can before she started showing. The film, alas, wasn't worth the rush.

Michael Wilding Jr. was born Jan. 6, 1953. Christopher Wilding was born Feb. 27, 1955. Michael Wilding Sr. was officially out of the picture Jan. 27, 1957, but the marriage was on the rocks before that. Taylor married Husband No. 3, "Around the World in 80 Days" producer Mike Todd, on Feb. 2 - the woman did not like to be single for long.

Liza Todd was born Aug. 6, 1957, so you do the math.

Less than a year later, in March 1958, Todd was killed in a plane crash in New Mexico. The plane was named Lucky Liz.

Taylor took a year off from marriage following Todd's death, but in May 1959, she married Philadelphia crooner Eddie Fisher (Husband No. 4), for whom she converted to Judaism. Fisher happened to be Mike Todd's best friend and best man, but the grieving heart wants what it wants. He also happened to be the husband of Debbie Reynolds and father of her two children. Debbie, who was Liz's BFF, was a bridesmaid when Taylor married Todd.

As the National Enquirer quoted from a Reynolds interview, Debbie said that she found out about the affair when she called Liz to chat and Fisher picked up the phone.

"I yelled at him, 'Roll over, Darling, and let me speak to Elizabeth.' "

When he got home, Fisher told Reynolds, "I'm sorry. Elizabeth and I are in love and I want a divorce."

"If you marry her," Debbie replied, "she will throw you out within 18 months!"

Reynolds was prescient. In 1960, Taylor fell in love with Richard Burton while the two of them were shooting the big-budget "Cleopatra" in Europe, for which Taylor got paid $1 million. The paparazzi had a field day with the illicit relationship. (How ironic that Jolie, whose relationship with Brad Pitt was often compared with Taylor-Burton's, with Jennifer Aniston in the Reynolds role, is now developing her own cinematic spin on Cleopatra.)

Taylor and Fisher, who co-starred opposite her Oscar-winning role as a call girl in "Butterfield 8," stayed officially married until March 6, 1964.

She married Husband No. 5, now-single Burton, a supremely talented, womanizing boozer, nine days later in Montreal.

The ever-optimistic Taylor said, "This marriage will last forever."

In Taylor years it did. Although the marriage was often tempestuous, the pair stayed hitched for 10 years, got divorced, then remarried 16 months later. The second go-around didn't last even a year. (With classic Taylor speed, Burton remarried the following month.)

The Taylor-Burton union produced no offspring (Taylor did adopt Burton's daughter, Maria), but it did produce the film version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" for which Taylor won another Oscar.

After the volatility of the Burton years, Taylor went a little more low-key with Husband No. 6, John Warner, a former secretary of the Navy when Taylor married him five months after her second Burton divorce became official. During their 6-year marriage (the fortysomething Taylor was clearly slowing down), Warner was elected a Virginia senator.

They split during his first term.

By this time, 1982, Taylor was more a celebrity than a movie actress. Although she still worked regularly in films, television and even theater, she became famous to a new generation for her work founding the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation, following the AIDS-related death of her longtime friend Rock Hudson. Taylor also became a best pal to Michael Jackson, who wrote a song for her 65th birthday. Not busy enough? She was the face of three of the most popular perfumes of all time and wrote a book about her love affair with jewelry - specifically diamonds.

Taylor wed construction worker Larry Fortensky in 1991 at Jackson's Neverland Ranch and that marriage, her final try, lasted five years.

For her work in the battle against AIDS, Taylor received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award during the Academy Award ceremony in 1992. In 1999, she became a dame of the British Empire. Philadelphia also gave her the Marian Anderson Award in 2000.

Taylor spent a good portion of the final five or so years of her life denying that she was dying. Diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2004, she got progressively weaker as time wore on but continued working and fundraising. Her last major public appearance was at Jackson's private funeral service in 2009.

In our present age of prefabricated Disney Channel "stars," reality TV "stars" and faux-celebrity news broken in 140 characters or less on Twitter, Elizabeth Taylor was the real deal, with the looks and acting chops to back up more than a half-century of worldwide fascination.

She was not a great wife, but she was a great mom (all four of her children were with her when she died) and grandmother (she had nine grandchildren), a great actress and a great humanitarian, who'd raised tens of millions of dollars for her causes over the years.

In the course of one of the richest and most amazing lives of the past century, Taylor grew from sex symbol to elder statesman, from 1940s child star to senator's wife to confidante of Michael Jackson, from husband-stealer and rotating-door bride to one of the leading philanthropists in the fight against AIDS.

You wouldn't want Elizabeth Taylor eyeing your husband, but you sure would want her in your movie . . . or on your side.