memories of elizabeth taylor

©2011, Monika Roe

I am so sad to be posting this today. Rest in peace Elizabeth Taylor.

My first memory of Elizabeth Taylor comes from my grandmother. My grandmother LOVED Elizabeth Taylor. Not for her acting ability or her charitable works. No, my Grandma-dear (she loved when I called her that) was an avid reader when it came to Elizabeth Taylor's personal life in the tabloids! I think part of her wanted to have the colorful, wild life of Liz Taylor, whether it was accurately portrayed in Star magazine or not.

When I heard that Elizabeth Taylor passed away this morning my first thought was how fabulous it will be for her spirit to be reunited with the two great loves of her life, Mike Todd and Richard Burton. My second thought was that when Elizabeth got to the pearly gates of heaven, my grandmother would run those two guys over trying to get to her first!

In 1991 Ms. Taylor launched her fragrance, White Diamonds. Oh how I drooled over that bottle design when the ads first appeared in my fashion magazines! I HAD to have that bottle with it's crystal encrusted gold bow stopper. I thought about it all the time. After saving up my money I cut school one afternoon (sorry Mom!) and drove to the nearest mall, which was more than an hour away from my small town, and bought the biggest bottle I could afford. It happened to be the smallest bottle they could sell, but I loved it. It was the subject of many pen and ink drawings for awhile. Today that very bottle stands on a shelf in my mom's bathroom amidst the other small perfume bottles she's collected over the years.

As my love of classic films grew over time I became a big fan of Ms. Taylor. When she's on the screen I can't take my eyes off her. Her presence, her wardrobe, her grooming, her talent as an actress. She may have partied like the starlets of today off camera, but the difference was that she still went to work and she BROUGHT it! Some of my favorite films of hers are Giant, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, although the latter is so gritty and so real, I couldn't even finish it the first time I watched it. Now THAT'S acting!

In 2002 Simon & Schuster published Elizabeth Taylor's book "My Love Affair With Jewelry". If you are fan, I highly recommend it. The photos are stunning and besides the jewelry it's full of her personal photos. Who besides royalty in today's world has such a jaw-dropping personal collection of real jewels? Who could pull off actually wearing them?

Only Elizabeth Taylor.

She will be missed.