View From the Phlipside - R.I.P. Elizabeth Taylor

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

There are some deaths in the world of the media that simply require a moment’s consideration.  Such is the death of Elizabeth Taylor.  If you’re much younger than I am you may not have the kind of visceral attachment that two previous generations have to the actress.  So let’s lay a little ground work.

Elizabeth Taylor was an old school movie star and there are fewer and fewer of them left these days.  Add into that in her prime she

was stunningly, heart stoppingly beautiful.  But there are more than a few beautiful women in the movies then and now.  Taylor was something new.  She had the stop traffic looks of a Grace Kelly but also the heart racing sexuality of a Jane Russell.  Plus she could act.  It was a devastating and game changing combination.  And she wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted.  Her classic response to criticism that she was in a relationship with singer Eddie Fisher within months of the death of her husband (and Fisher’s best friend) Mike Todd she responded “What did you expect me to do?  Sleep alone?”  In 1958 that was bold new territory for a female star.  Taylor wasn’t going to pretend to be something she wasn’t.  She didn’t just love life, she lusted for it.

I’m always torn on the question of whether Taylor was a great actress.  Her position as a movie star is as high as you can get.  She certainly could be a great actress.  Movies like A Place in the Sun, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? have to be weighed against a train load of decidedly inferior projects.  Taylor seemed to play at the level of the material, never elevating a lesser movie by her presence.  And that’s a little sad.  Then of course we have Cleopatra a movie that very nearly killed 20th Century Fox Studios.  Taylor played the Queen of the Nile on screen and the archetype movie diva off screen apparently.

Her onscreen brilliance was too often over shadowed by her multiple marriages, weight problems and other  real life difficulties.  It’s easy to focus on her perfume business and forget that she was a tireless and generous benefactor of many causes, most especially HIV/AIDS activism.

There was never anything simple or easy to pigeonhole about Elizabeth Taylor.  That may have been part of her incredible allure as well.  Lots of current female actresses would like to claim the role of a modern day Elizabeth Taylor.  None of them come close.  Even in later life the Doonesbury cartoon strip had to pay deference to her with the line “ A tad overweight but violet eyes to die for”.  Yes indeed.

Elizabeth Taylor was 79.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2011