Ernest Borgnine is also still with us and still active – born in 1917.
I remember the brouhaha when Eddie Fisher divorced Debbie Reynolds to marry Liz, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. People were still sad for Liz because of Mike Todd’s death, so they cut her some slack.
My favorite Liz movies are Giant, Elephant Walk, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (the most beautiful man and woman on the planet in the same movie!) and A Place in the Sun. It’ll be interesting to see which ones TCM puts on its schedule.
Borgnine not A-list? I disagree. An actor doesn’t have to be a leading man type to be A-list. The guy won an Oscar for Marty and has worked steadily for more years than most of us have been alive.
I’d consider Angela Lansbury to be A-list as well. But maybe that’s a subject for another thread.
Wow, I’m reading this in a whole different way. Joan Rivers is closely tied to Elizabeth Taylor in the public mind as the source of many, many fat jokes. She’s already been mentioned in a number of discussions of Liz’s death. I think this is Joan’s way of saying that in spite of their past (and they did make up and work together on AIDS), she remembers Liz not for her weight issues but for her charity work. When you mentioned a tacky tweet, I thought she had made a mean-spirited joke. This tweet sounds rather nice to me.
Well Angela went A-List after the golden age. Marty was great but a great small film. Also Borgnine was at the tale end of the Studio Days. He was never part of the glamorous Hollywood Star system that Liz was a shining example of.
I’ve been wiping away more than a few tears today. One story from SFGate writer Phil Bronstien made me smile though. He remembered an incident at a party hosted by Elton John:
A shame that the real reasons behind their feud will probably die with them. It had to have been a doozy to cause a falling out that’s lasted this long, but supposedly it’s still going strong in their 90s. Per accounts they’ve had some contact over the years due to family matters but very little and even after outliving almost everybody they ever knew they rarely speak and never visit.
True. I might be giving him A list status because he’s outlived almost everyone of his time.
Back to the Rivers tweet: It sounds bad because she said "to join me – which makes it sound like Joan’s saying she started the campaign. If she’d left off the “me” and just said “join in the fight”, it’d sound less self-aggrandizing. And here I was starting to like Joan again. Stars and their egos. ::shakes head::
I never considered her a beauty at all, quirkiness or no quirkiness, although I realize I’m in a minority. It’s probably because I never cared for that “1950s look,” but even before she adopted that look, I thought she was very plain-looking in her earliest 1940s films. But hey, more power to her! She had a great run.
What’s the “1950s look”? Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, Rhonda Fleming?
I’m also curious about what you mean by “plain-looking”. I see Liz as a classic beauty, but I can see where you might see it as “plain”. Her face is sorta perfect, and sometimes perfect is boring. Women like Meryl Streep, Kate Hepburn, Lauren Bacall – their faces are more interesting.
I’m trying to think of a current actress who I consider a classic beauty, and Charlize Theron is the only one I can come up with.
Who’s beautiful to you? (Truly curious, not trying to be argumentative.)