>Gary Thompson: Elizabeth Taylor: Eyes on the prize

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OF ALL the marvelous objects – real or manufactured – that cinema has provided us, I don’t know that any surpass the violet eyes of Elizabeth Taylor.

Taylor died yesterday at age 79, and while she left behind an insanely large and varied legacy as both an actress and storm-tossed celebrity, it was her made-for-technicolor, midcentury visage that comes to mind when you think of her.

“Without question one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen,” wrote Leonard Maltin, adding, perhaps as an afterthought, that the two-time Oscar winner was a better actress than acknowledged.

Taylor was just a kid, 12 years old, when she appeared with Mickey Rooney in the 1944 hit “National Velvet,” and audiences were jolted by all that raven hair dancing around her purple irises.

Few child stars have the evolving looks, talent and fortitude to thrive on screen as they mature, to maintain their hold on the moviegoing public, but Taylor was one of the lucky, brassy ones.

She made a few movies, among them 1949’s “Little Women,” before Vincente Minnelli reintroduced her a year later to rapt moviegoers as the ingenue in “Father of the Bride,” a stature that George Stevens deftly exploited in 1951’s “A Place in the Sun” – Taylor as the ideal woman, somebody for whom Montgomery Clift is willing to kill.

Writes David Thomson: “That film not only established her own black-haired beauty, but set a popular standard for a decade. In the fifty years since, has any movie actress been so blatant about extraordinary beauty? Julia Roberts in ‘Pretty Woman’ is the only case that I can think of.”

Stevens recaptured her five years later with “Giant,” and by then she’d made so many movies, it was almost impossible to believe that she was younger than co-star James Dean.

She rose to the challenge of strong directors and writers: Edward Dmytryk’s “Raintree County,” “Suddenly Last Summer” for Joseph Mankiewicz in ’59, and another Tennessee Williams adaptation with “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” She won an Oscar as the original pretty woman in “Butterfield 8” (1960), playing a high-class hooker who wants to give up the life when she falls in love.

Meanwhile, her multiple marriages and health problems became a narrative as melodramatic as anything in a Williams yarn – she wed and shed a hotel scion, a producer, an actor, and singer Eddie Fisher.

Taylor’s fame grew during the ’50s as media evolved and Hollywood’s ability to control a star’s image eroded. A dangerous confluence of trends – in 1962 her various images as a sex symbol/movie star/notorious public figure combined and went thermonuclear on the set of “Cleopatra,” the “Titanic” of its day (in terms of expense) and ground zero for a relentlessly reported scandal detailing her break from Fisher and dalliance with co-star Richard Burton.

She and Burton made a ton of money costarring in several movies together throughout the ’60s, but the artistic payoff was negligible. When she startled audiences again – opposite Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1966 – she was a different woman: suddenly middle-aged, plump, vividly bitter, a transformation that won her a second Oscar.

And that was pretty much it.

Taylor kept working, but without many roles to reignite her interest in the craft – she was memorable in “A Little Night Music” (1977) and “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980).

Late in life, Taylor was most moved by her campaign to raise awareness about AIDS, and best known for her symbiotic friendship with Michael Jackson.

Post-boomers who know her as the old lady in “The Flintstones” would probably not believe she once dominated the popular imagination, or ignited a media fixation that lasted not just a news cycle, but a full decade. Or that she was one of the screen’s indelible faces.

But she was, and she will always have her place in the sun.

>TCM Plans Elizabeth Taylor Tribute, ‘Law & Order’ Star Gets New Gig and More

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Turner Classic Movies is planning a tribute to honor the late Elizabeth Taylor.

On April 10, the channel will air back-to-back movies from the screen legend, including ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,’ ‘Butterfield 8’ and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ beginning at 6AM.

Taylor died today from congestive heart failure. She was 79.

In other TV news …

• ‘Law & Order’ star S. Epatha Merkerson is going from the law to medicine in a new CBS pilot. The actress will play the administrative assistant to Patrick Wilson’s surgeon character. [The Hollywood Reporter]

• Lauren Graham’s Sarah Braverman will get yet another new love interest, this time played by Steven Weber. The actor has booked a guest spot on ‘Parenthood”s season finale, with the potential to return next season. [TV Line]

• Soon, Netflix subscribers won’t be able to stream current seasons of Showtime series anymore. The network said it will still make past seasons and old shows available. [Deadline]

• Another ‘Off the Map’ cast member is branching out. Jason George will guest star in an episode of ‘Castle’ called ‘To Love and Die in L.A.’ The installment will air later this season. [Entertainment Weekly]

• Former ‘Dancing With the Stars’ contestant Kristy Swanson will appear on an episode of ‘Psych.’ The actress will play a mysterious woman suspected of killing someone “vampire-style.” Hmm, flashbacks to Swanson’s role as the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, anyone? [TV Guide]

>Wales remembers Richard Taylor and Elizabeth Burton

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A close childhood friend of Richard Burton’s has shared his memories of the star and his former wife Elizabeth Taylor, who died on Wednesday.

Influential Welsh businessman Lord David Rowe-Beddoe described the couple as “the emperor and empress of the world in their time”.

Lord Beddoe met Taylor soon after she and Burton fell in love on the set of Cleopatra in 1962.

He added: “She was an extraordinary and dynamic woman.”

Friends with Burton since the men were teenagers, he recalls Taylor demanding Dom Perignon at an Oxfordshire pub in that late 1960s.

When none was available, she telephoned a London hotel and had some delivered, then treated everyone in the pub to a glass.

He said: “She was a wonderful person but a simple girl at heart.

“It was quite clear that they were two people who were absolutely destined for each other – they could not live apart and they could not live together, as history has shown.

“They remained in love all their lives, it was an enormous passion and a deep love, but I think professional jealousy led to a lot of arguments.

“They were the emperor and empress of the world in their time.”

Paul Ferris, who wrote a biography of Burton, said he felt the Hollywood machine had eventually led to the demise of the pair’s relationship.

He said: “Burton’s foster father spoke to me sadly about the beginning of Taylor and Burton’s relationship.

“I think he ached to see it as two people in love but he had to admit the Hollywood machine had obscured who they were and what mattered was what they had become, which was two people caught up in a blaze of publicity.

“I think Burton was an ordinary guy with an extraordinary talent.

‘Artificiality’

“Taylor had the ideal of celebrity ingrained in her and I think they each had an agenda of their own.

“He was the hero figure and Taylor was the queen of Hollywood- they just had to get married, but I think the artificiality infiltrated their relationship in the end.”

Mark Jenkins wrote the solo stage play Playing Burton, a film of which is just entering post production and is due for release in April.

He said Taylor had hoped to attend the opening of the new Richard Burton Theatre at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on 24 June.

Two performances of Playing Burton will be shown.

He said: “I always felt I couldn’t write a play about Richard Burton without Elizabeth Taylor looming large within that story.

“The film that always sticks in my mind is ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ where they depicted such a bitter feud and you almost felt like they were playing themselves on screen.

“I also always recall a line in my play Burton says about meeting Taylor- ‘we were like two stars in each other’s orbit’ which I think was an apt comment when you consider their story.

“They couldn’t get away from each other, they were just drawn together with such an inextinguishable love.”