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1. Taylor looks atypically androgynous in a wardrobe test for National Velvet.

2. A cameraman greets Taylor portraying Velvet Brown before the Grand National Steeplechase.

3. Giant was sold as a steamy love triangle; in fact, it was a clarion call for social justice.

4. Sleeping Giant: James Dean and Taylor relax between takes. Taylor is justifiably exhausted: Her character is the moral anchor of the movie. (Taylor and her new daughter, Liza Todd, are on Looks cover.)

5. Rock Hudsons character is flattened in Giant, after raising his fists in support of racial justice. Taylors character transformed him from a bigot to a humanitarian.

6. In Suddenly, Last Summer, Taylors character is trapped on a catwalk above the inmates in an insane asylum: a metaphor for celebrity?

7. While filming Suddenly, Last Summer, Taylor stands near a symbol of the institution that accused her of erotic vagrancy.

8. In BUtterfield 8, Taylors character refuses to be rented or owned. She scrawls No Sale on her married lovers mirror.

9. In London, crowds struggle to glimpse Taylor after her tracheotomy and resurrection.

10. Sign painters in Times Square put finishing touches on a giant, wordless billboard for Cleopatra.

11. Liz Smith said Taylor often helped a bird with a wing down--like this feathered co-star from The Sandpiper.

12. No love was lost between Taylor and playwright Lillian Hellman in Austin Pendletons 1981 production of The Little Foxes. Also shown are Maureen Stapleton and Tom Aldredge.

13. In Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Taylor and Burton share a moment of Hollywood-style intimacy: surrounded by lights, cameras and recording equipment.

14. To the confusion of their guestsa new faculty member and his wifeGeorge (Burton) aims a rifle at Martha (Taylor), who cackles diabolically when it fires. The trick gun contains an umbrella.

Copyright 2012 by M. G. Lord

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Published by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York

This electronic edition published in 2012

A Division of Bloomsbury Publishing

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Lord, M. G.

The accidental feminist : how Elizabeth Taylor raised our consciousness and we were too distracted by her beauty to notice / M. G. Lord.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8027-7864-2 (ebook)

1. Taylor, Elizabeth, 19322011. 2. Motion picture actors and actressesUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

PN2287.T18L67 2012

791.4302'8092dc23

[B]

2011038047

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For Shannon Halwes, without whom this book would not exist

Contents

YOU COULD SAY it began in 1944 with National Velvet , when Elizabeth Taylor, age twelve, dressed as a boy and stole Americas collective heart. By it, I mean the subversive drumbeats of feminism, which swelled in the stars important movies over decades from a delicate pitty-pat to a resounding roar.

Feminism may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Elizabeth Taylor. But it might if you share your definition with writer Rebecca West: I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist when I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

Elizabeth Taylor has been called many things, but never doormatnot in life and not on screen. (Except in Ash Wednesday , her 1973 movie, where that was the point.) The characters she played were women to be reckoned with. And many of her rolesthe great and the not-so-greatsurreptitiously brought feminist issues to American audiences held captive by those violet eyes and that epic beauty. While I know that writers and directors create movies, stars create a brand. And the Taylor brand deserves credit for its under-the-radar challenge to traditional attitudes: a woman may not control her sexuality; she may not have an abortion; she may not play with the boys; she may not choose to live without a man; she must obey her husband; and should she speak of unpleasantness, she will be silenced.

Although I love quoting Wests glib retort, feminism is, in fact, a tricky thing to define, because its self-identified adherents dont always march in ideological lockstep. To theorist bell hooks, it is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. To writer Marie Shear, it is the radical notion that women are people. To columnist Katha Pollitt, it is a social justice movement dedicated to the social, political, economic, and cultural equality of women and men, and to the right of every woman to set her own course. To author Rebecca Walker, it is to integrate an ideology of equality and female empowerment into the very fiber of my life.