Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (2024)

Elizabeth-Taylor:-The-Lost-Tapes-(2024)
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (2024)

The decade of the 1960s is looked upon with pride in the age of the counterculture revolution, and if historians are pressed for a single moment applicable to the commencement of the decade, a single event they most look to is Kennedy’s assassination. The other (the real spark to the tinderbox) is the Beatles gripping the world half an hour later during their very first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with the words “Here is joy, Here is hope, Here is an alternative.”

But there is another global trend in the mass media that has emerged which is somewhat smoother and equally important as the one ‘Gossip’ that encapsulates this age. To these new forms, the scandalous romance of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton was sculpted. This story today seems to be the height of gossip in absurdism. But this film, this documentary Nanette Burstein directed, was more than just a love story. It was a love story turned epic. It was an allegory for a love that was larger than life.

Why? The Hollywood star scandals shift romance into controversies and scandals and remain in history. The very first scandalous marriage in motion picture history remains that of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. That was the start of media through this whole ‘paparazzi’ notion. This brings forth an angle that Taylor Burton embodied glamour however the planet had not witnessed the romance that mass media facilitated before. In fact, the two were ideal times for the marriage of their romance and the two eras were when divorce rates were rising and their gamble was advanced. She started attracting attention in the early 1940s for the simple reason that she was as gorgeous as Vivien Leigh and Marilyn Monroe. This is how extravagant she was, and that is why she became the first actress to be offered a role in Cleopatra for more than one million dollars.

As per the Vatican, in the mid-60s Taylor had an extramarital affair with Richard Burton, a co-star in her film Cleopatra Lady, and went on to divorce her husband Eddie Fisher, which created quite a ruckus. The chaos started with Eddie, as expected, turning into a ruthless debaucher and feminist mogul, but there was more to it than just that. The affair was evidence that Taylor sought a new way of pursuing her sexual liberation. In her Man on the Moon documentary, she mentioned that there wasn’t ever a time where she transitioned from one partner to the next without serious intent when she got married 8 times, and each time it was her partner Harris who was the responsible one. I would say that this marked the end of Mz. Taylor’s marriage with Ms. Burton where she constantly sought love from other partners but was never dependent on it: Upon realizing that her marriage wouldn’t change was enough satisfaction for her. She was far from the woman who coined the term “freedom” and was just a simple feminist and an attention seeker during the 1960s, but that is a story for another time.

There is a whole sub-genre of documentary films on celebrity biography where the main purpose is to listen to some old audio tapes made for interviews. There is one such tape that has the audio of ‘Capotes Tapes ’. A particularly interesting documentary would never be relevant without the existence of ‘Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Or, ‘Kubrick on Kubrick’. The Lost Tapes of Elizabeth Taylor is also based on the recordings of Elizabeth Taylor which was done by journalist Richard Meryman in 1964 when he was researching for her book. In those tapes, Elizabeth’s voice sounds rather strange. Arrogant, sad, sultry, angry, tired, and somehow brutally frank which sounds lazy, if anything, is the way she comes across. Even the test includes something new and sounds rather outlandish to her.

From Mrs. Elizabeth’s perspective, I started liking all my parts whenever she spoke those words as she spoke those words with utmost affection. The documentary has extraordinary clips featuring Elizabeth out of the house, in public, although she had stunning features like those hypnotizing eyes which had to be removed once during a photo shoot for the movie National Velvet, a wonderful mouth that resembles a collection of ‘Grecian’ goddess ear rests with a very stylish modern smile, which gave the impression of being extremely flexible and beautifully cut. She was born in London while America was part of her ancestry, but she sustained only one accent her entire life which is a true blue British accent and that is the one feature that made her fury delightfully scarifying.

This continuous process, through which Burstein incorporates the story along with the work done by the Canadian historian Yvonne M. Paul, is soothing in that it is very much antique in its own way, but then again, the audience can and do take a different approach much to the ire of a Taylor, I imagine. We can imagine Taylor being ‘Giant’ and in her mind, she is in the sensual and secretive conversations with James Dean. To her, being around gay sons and actors (Dean, Hudson, Montgomery Clift, or her soon-to-be pal Roddy McDowall) even as a child had its advantages, reinforcing her position, either not in fighting mode or on the attacking side and never a target. But how ‘vile’ her ex-husband Nicky Hilton, a wealthy hotelier, would be surprised to learn: So as to ‘get rid of’ the baby she used to kick him ‘maliciously’. The ’50s movies are so horrid, she says, and the studio forced her to do those horrible movies and TV shows as nothing more than “dog shit pieces one could choke on”.

On the other hand, two weeks after the end of the divorce proceedings, she spent the afternoon in her son Michael Wilding’s office with the well-known producer Mike Todd, who had requested her to visit him.

On seeing her, he went ahead to announce his intentions to marry her, and, at the end of the lecture, she remained exasperated. She then goes on to explain “He could take the gold from your mouth”. 

Moreover, there are the nagging “cognitions” about the fact that truth be told, she never actually grieved for having been unfaithful as a wife in the first place. ‘She never seemed to mind,’ she says with a grin ‘because I can be quite dreadful and I don’t mind being that way.’

Other than that, she got a little bit of Todd’s bravado while she was with him. The death of her husband in a plane accident was enough to send her into a tailspin, which in turn, left her totally lost and confused. The relationship with Eddie Fisher was out of desperation (she says that she’s fine with him only), which was then supplanted with an overwhelming feeling of deep affection for Burton. “The Lost Tapes” does not go overboard with dramatizing the lives of the people involved but rather the Kunst.

However, the film doesn’t shy away, just like Liz herself, from the relative sobekayoatsy of her work as an actress. Yes, she was a child actress and an angel in the film ‘A Place In The Sun’ alongside ‘Giant’, but she too was battered as a Ted in one of the tragic victims of the candy-colored studio spyware of the 50s much as ever Brando was.

Even though she tries to be diplomatic, she is critical of ‘Butterfield 8’, the movie that earned her an Oscar, all this while suffering from pneumonia while shooting for ‘Cleopatra.’ This is why she states “I was awarded an Oscar because I accidentally slashed my throat. Excuse me, but I won that award for sympathy votes due to the poor quality of the film.” Despite this there is still a strong sense of anger in her performance when watching ‘Butterfield 8’, and she also states that she got ‘butchered the award with that movie’. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Taylor who believes that she did more than just perform a role. A deterioration of taste governs the entire portrayal of her tragic prostitute character in ‘Butterfield 8’ as the character addresses a sentiment with moderate Hays Code remnants. If only Taylor resigned herself to saying that “Butterfield 8” was a badly made film then she would only be telling half the story. But she does emphasize that the character the tragic prostitute was trying to emulate straddled the intersection between romance and traditionalism but instead of defining whether it succeeded or failed, she remembers feeling furious.

Her description of meeting Richard Burton is hysterical. “It was the start of the shooting of “Cleopatra” and I walked into the set and Burton was there, he was the most drunk gentleman I ever saw.”

He would chuckle from one end to the other Not only is he incapable of steering the automobile, but he’s even incapable of clutching the coffee cup he ordered for himself, which is why Liz had to take care of that as well.

“He wasn’t indifferent towards me. He used to seem a bit sweet even though he was always anxious and shivering all the time. The first contrast I noticed was the tender feeling I had towards him.” Anna managed to grow and evolve even after assuming that the only role she could ever do was that of a child actress; he helped her gain a daily broader perspective, but he himself did not change his Autochthonous stance. Burton says, “What makes Elizabeth interesting, is the fact that she is unreachable.” 

At the end of the day, it was apparent that both of them could save each other while simultaneously having the capacity to eliminate each other due to alcohol-related issues, which eventually shaped the direction in which George and Martha dwelled in the past. Much the same as the media placed a certain halo on their heads, so too did the media tear them apart.

George Hamilton says that Liz wanted to destroy glamor. And that’s exactly what she did during the later part of her life and career with the help of Lost Tapes. For the most part, Taylor focused on aiding those who were afflicted with AIDS, and we can see the destruction that she left behind in the later stages of her life.

When you think of Taylor’s life, it is easy to imagine that the world gifted her with everything, but the world had to pay for that gift. Even in her younger days, she supports the idea of Madona to fully get behind her. But for her to think that after all that Taylor went through, that as a God she has lost none of her purity which was blessed upon her seems wrong.

For More Movies Like Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (2024) Visit 123Movies

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top