Elizabeth Taylor had sumptuous violet eyes. She was a celebrity who loved sex, jewels and marriage (she got hitched eight times). And her surname is spectacular (it’s as if she knew Tay-Tay was coming).
In the official notes on her new album, Life of a Showgirl, Swift writes this about track two, Elizabeth Taylor:
Silly but fabulous … Taylor as Cleopatra in 1963. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
Elizabeth Taylor is one of the most ultimate, quintessential showgirls I could ever imagine. You know, not in a literal sense as much as she was under a microscope so, so intense and she handled it with humour and she got along with her life. She continued to make incredible art and so this is a love song kind of through the lens of the motif of what she had to go through in her life and sort of the parallels that I feel in my own life. You know, role models are pretty hard to come by, but I would absolutely say that she’s one of mine.
The pair are also strikingly similar. Swift came into the world fully formed. So did Liz. Where Taylor went around saying: “Hi, I’m I’m 11. I want a record deal – call me!”, preteen Liz launched herself at Hollywood. Age 12, she was cast as the lead in girl-meets-horse drama, National Velvet, and was so instantly perfect – acutely vulnerable, brooding and mischievous (especially great in scenes with aforementioned animal and her on-screen mum, Anne Revere) – that the world fell at her feet and stayed there.
Like Swift, she handled adolescence with aplomb. Or seemed to (Swift has talked about the eating disorders that made life secretly agonising; Taylor, too, had a complicated relationship with food). But on screen, at least, she simply bloomed, appearing in a string of classics. She was a suitably annoying and adorable Amy, in Little Women, ie as fab as Florence Pugh in Greta Gerwig’s version. She was poutily gorgeous in Father of the Bride.
Then came the big leap. Taylor manages to be sophisticated, tantalising and above all earthy as rich party girl, Angela, in outrageously doomy melodrama, A Place in the Sun, (alongside the beautiful and talented Montgomery Clift; think Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty? Check out Clift). By the way, the strapless white “debutante dress” worn by 17-year-old Liz got lots of attention and deserved to. People go on about the way it made Taylor’s waist look tiny. Which is icky. But the fairytale gown is stunning (designer Edith Head, immortalised as Edna Mode in Pixar cartoon, The Incredibles, really knew her stuff) and is just the kind of thing Swift loves to swan around in on stage. Guilt-free dressing up. Why not?
Not every film Taylor made was a work of art. Cleopatra is incredibly silly. But Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer and Butterfield 8 (for which she won her first Oscar) have all aged well. In these movies, Taylor seethes and roars with utterly plausible sexual yearning and frustration. She’s got a libido. And she’s proud of it. She’s also fantastically raw in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (for which she won her second Oscar). You can’t take your eyes off the frayed and charismatically chaotic Martha. The venom she directs at Richard Burton’s George is especially priceless (“I swear … if you existed, I’d divorce you.”)
Power couple … Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of The Sandpiper in 1965. Photograph: API/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
Taylor’s fondness for salty jokes was legendary and many of her best gags were directed at the opposite sex (“Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses”). But if she could be insouciantly cruel, she was also kind. She doted on Clift (who tragically was never able be open about his sexuality) and adored the bisexual James Dean, whom she met on Giant (she once gave him a kitten, which he named Marcus). Her support for gay rights was unwavering. She spoke out, about HIV/Aids, when it was still massively controversial to do so. Her very best quote on being a queer ally: “There is no gay agenda; it’s a human agenda.”
Taylor had affairs with men she probably should have avoided and got back together with Richard Burton too many times. But her wayward and much-chronicled search for love is just part of her story. Swift, (a wordsmith still underestimated by snooty types), puts it so well: “She was under a microscope so, so intense and she handled it with humour.” She sure did. Taylor once said people loved to peer at her, up close, so they could go home and say: “I saw Liz Taylor and you know what? She ain’t so hot!”
Swift hearts Taylor. And now everybody’s talking about Elizabeth. Members of gen Z and gen A are probably YouTubing her film clips this very second. Truly, it’s a fabulous day.
