Elizabeth Taylor Takes Off
Elizabeth loses weight and writes a book about it.
She makes an appearance in The Mirror Crack'd.
Never again will she be a headlining movie star.
"In that wig, you could play Lassie."
She divorces Warner and moves back to Los Angeles. She goes to her first baseball game in her 50s.
Liz & Dick reunite for Elizabeth Taylor's 50th birthday bash in New York City but after a few nights together he bashes her in the press.
Elizabeth Taylor successfully headlines the Broadway play The Little Foxes although allegedly Lillian Hellman doesn't like her performance.
"A man who has opened a door to our future!"
The success of that play encourages Elizabeth Taylor to lure Richard Burton back to the stage alongside her.
She produces the show Private Lives. It's gets terrible reviews but goes on a somewhat successful tour. People say Elizabeth Taylor is difficult to work with and she is constantly complaining to Burton that she is lonely.
You have an immoral memory!
At her nadir she seeps into a drug- and alcohol-infused haze. Her family stages an intervention. She is one of the first celebrities to admit going into rehab, the Betty Ford Clinic. The former first lady is her personal sponsor.
Elizabeth Taylor dates around, including Malcolm Forbes and George Hamilton.
Although once friends with Ronald and Nancy Reagan (during her John-Warner days), Elizabeth Taylor is furious with their response to the AIDs crisis. When her good friend Rock Hudson dies, she comes out in support of AIDs patients and her gay male friends. She forms AIDS foundations, (The National AIDS Foundation, AMFAR, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDs Foundation), and raises a lot of money. Her celebrity friends eventually come to her events (all but Frank Sinatra).
Hey Swamp! Hey Swampy!
Elizabeth Taylor goes into business selling the hugely successful Passion in a purple bottle. Tons of celebrities will brand their own fragrances after this.
There's also a very soft-focus commercial for Passion.
"Passion, I see, is catching!"
Elizabeth Taylor develops Osteoporosis and has a drug relapse. During her second stint in rehab she meets a construction worker named Larry Fortensky and she attempts to make him over.
They get married at Neverland Ranch because Elizabeth Taylor has become friends with Michael Jackson, who personally spends 1.5 million on this wedding. Her relationship with Michael Jackson lasts longer than the marriage. Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor gift each other exotic animals.
She starts selling White Diamonds and Passion for Men.
"These have always brought me luck."
In 1992 Elizabeth Taylor voices the first words of Maggie Simpson on The Simpsons.
"Daddy"
Elizabeth Taylor takes a fall in 1994 which requires hip surgery. After her latest marriage ends, she becomes depressed and agoraphobic. She dates Rod Steiger.
In 1997 she gets a brain tumor. and when she is 69 she falls again and breaks her back. Then in 1999 she falls and breaks her back again.
Ironically, her ex-husband Fortensky gets drunk one day and falls down (or is pushed down) some stairs and breaks his neck and back too. He is never the same and will die in 2016 at the age of 64.
Elizabeth Taylor admits she has never gotten over Richard Burton and all the subsequent men have only been followers and purse holders. She wants to be buried next to Richard Burton but his final wife puts the kibosh on this idea by securing the next-door spot for herself.
This is a blank space in Elizabeth Taylor's life. She's thankful she was sober when she learns of Richard Burton's death. Otherwise, she claims, she would never have survived it.
Richard Burton Dies
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton reunite for a campy version of Private Lives. Elizabeth Taylor hopes for a reunion as lovers as well but one never comes. Richard Burton instead marries Sally Hay who looks and acts a lot like Sybil, his first wife.
Allegedly Richard Burton keeps talking about Elizabeth Taylor a lot to friends, even in front of his later-day wives.
Richard Burton dies of a brain hemorrhage in 1984 after finishing the movie Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was 58 years old.
The story of his death varies between his wife and friends. He either dies suddenly in his sleep or he sustains a head injury during a bar fight and dies later on the operating table.
Snap went the dragons!
He will never win an Academy Award.
The Poem
We live our lives looking behind
the stairs of the lighthouse
where the water sprays out like an emotion
and from the top of the stairs,
there is only you
surrounded by the glass and the railing,
except before you and for you
an ocean of love.
1-2-3
1-2-3
we lose the contract
we lose the covenant
tomorrow doesn't exist
tomorrow is much too long.
Richard Burton is buried near his home in Céligny, Switzerland. All his children arrive at his funeral, even his step-children with Elizabeth Taylor. But Elizabeth Taylor herself is asked not to come by the final wife of Richard Burton.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton corresponded until his death. Allegedly he wrote a letter to her that arrived days after his death. Elizabeth Taylor keeps the letter in her bedroom drawer.
Buffy Sainte-Marie Interlude
