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Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: side_show on March 23, 2011, 08:17:56 pm

Title: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: side_show on March 23, 2011, 08:17:56 pm
 Elizabeth Taylor is dead. (http://ca.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b232442_elizabeth_taylor_aids_activist.html?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-marcmalkin&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_marcmalkin)

I don't have a lot to say.  She was iconic for me, but in a weird detached way.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: Nabubrush on March 23, 2011, 08:41:27 pm
I almost posted this. I haven't seen very many of her films, I'm sorry to say. She was amazing in Hot Tin Roof - that's a terrific movie. She also had lunch with Nikita Khruschev.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: greenkoolayd on March 23, 2011, 10:49:25 pm
i never really discovered why liz taylor was such a big deal.  the only thing about her that i really know is that she was friends with michael jackson.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: Nabubrush on March 23, 2011, 10:55:12 pm
i never really discovered why liz taylor was such a big deal.  the only thing about her that i really know is that she was friends with michael jackson.

Quote from: Ralph Wiggum
I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Taylor) can (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000072/mediaindex) learn (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000072/)! Really! (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/03/elizabeth-taylor-aids-legacy-video.html?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=feeds&utm_source=feeds)

From the last link: VIEW one particular episode in which Taylor took on a big challenge: To get President Reagan to deliver a major speech on the crisis. It was 1987. The actress, who was serving as the national chairman of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), wrote a letter to her old Hollywood friend and colleague, and his wife Nancy, asking him to talk about AIDS at amfAR's fundraising dinner. Her letter was from the heart, and it was persuasive.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: Arachno-capitalist on March 23, 2011, 11:28:37 pm
That's going to be an awkward funeral with all those ex-husbands.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: side_show on March 23, 2011, 11:42:57 pm
The earliest memory I have of Elizabeth Taylor is  the commercial for her perfume. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVfu8-Wp6s)  I couldn't understand why the slightly portly lady was a big deal or why she was filmed in such an soft focused overexposed manner when all the rest of the characters were in clear focus.  I think because I got introduced to her not with images of her when she was in her prime, but from this commercial, I never really understood the mystique. 
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: wombat on March 23, 2011, 11:52:16 pm
That's going to be an awkward funeral with all those ex-husbands.

Are any of them still alive?

I'm with Smells. She is too much before my time to have any meaning for me.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: CortJstr on March 23, 2011, 11:55:25 pm
The earliest memory I have of Elizabeth Taylor is  the commercial for her perfume. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVfu8-Wp6s)  I couldn't understand why the slightly portly lady was a big deal or why she was filmed in such an soft focused overexposed manner when all the rest of the characters were in clear focus.  I think because I got introduced to her not with images of her when she was in her prime, but from this commercial, I never really understood the mystique. 

Exactly. I don't think I've ever seen one of her movies but I've been seeing this commercial for decades.

Are any of them still alive?

I think one of VA's former senator Warner is one of her exes. I feel like when we first moved here my mom was all "our senator is Elizabeth Taylor's ex-husband!" and I was all "who?"
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: Nabubrush on March 23, 2011, 11:59:02 pm
You guys remember Reagan though, right? And how he basically acted as if AIDS didn't exist, because if he talked about AIDS the only queer he knew, Rock Hudson, would get outed?
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: littlefallsmets on March 24, 2011, 12:10:11 am
Taylor was like Garbo to me, yeah.

I knew there was supposed to be some cultural significance but I was just too young to feel it.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: pmcd9 on March 24, 2011, 12:27:45 am
Google up a picture of her when she was in her prime.  She's one of the most beautiful women that has ever lived.  And she was a damn fine actress to boot. 
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: wombat on March 24, 2011, 01:18:12 am
You guys remember Reagan though, right? And how he basically acted as if AIDS didn't exist, because if he talked about AIDS the only queer he knew, Rock Hudson, would get outed?

I've completely blacked that era out of my memory.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: Nabubrush on March 24, 2011, 01:53:07 am
I've completely blacked that era out of my memory.

It's amazing, really, that a sitting President would just refuse to acknowledge the existence of something like that.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: littlefallsmets on March 24, 2011, 02:45:16 am
Oh, I mean, she was beautiful as hell.

But I can't relate to her specific cultural significance.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: Nabubrush on March 24, 2011, 03:15:25 am
Oh, I mean, she was beautiful as hell.

But I can't relate to her specific cultural significance.

Oh well. You should check out the whole Eddie giraffeer - Debbie Reynolds thing. Pretty crazy. They had to sit them on separate sides of the room when they had the Khruschev dinner. That's amazing to me - the leader of the USSR comes over here at the height of the Cold War and they do this hoss-trading deal so these two don't get into a cat fight.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: miles on March 24, 2011, 04:35:46 am
the only queer he knew, Rock Hudson

Oh, come on. He worked in Hollywood for nearly three decades.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: pmcd9 on March 24, 2011, 04:44:14 am
Oh, come on. He worked in Hollywood for nearly three decades.

Are you talking about the Hollywood liberal elite?
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: Nabubrush on March 24, 2011, 02:57:34 pm
Oh, come on. He worked in Hollywood for nearly three decades.

Industrial-strength blinders.
Title: Re: Elizabeth Taylor dead
Post by: side_show on March 24, 2011, 04:11:55 pm
Plus this interesting documentary (http://www.indiewire.com/article/double_lives_in_the_spotlight_kirby_dicks_outrage_takes_aim_at_closeted_u.s/) blows the lid of the underground world of US politics closet culture.