Posts Tagged ‘Elizabeth Taylor’

In the latest telephone interview granted by Doris Day from Carmel, the actress told LA Times reporter Susan King that Hollywood stopped calling after she moved up the coast, and that there was never any Cary Grant-like effort to lure her out of a benevolent retirement from showbiz. But perhaps the actress meant only that no major studio mogul paid her a personal visit.

In the reader comments, user pebrogan reminds that Day was approached to discuss starring in Murder She Wrote, Dynasty and other TV series. He also accurately points out that there was at least one notable feature film entreaty:

There were multiple film offers, most notably from Albert Brooks who went to Carmel in the mid-90′s to offer Miss Day the title role in Mother. Miss Day met with Brooks but ultimately decided against doing the film. Distinguished columnist Liz Smith reported in the early years of the new milennium that Elizabeth Taylor was interested in working with Doris Day.

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Before joining the Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Miller covered real estate for the Los Angeles Business Journal. It’s a beat he knows well, from Scientology historic to Brentwood garish.

This week, thanks to realtor Russ Filice, Miller was able to construct a most colorful opening paragraph. For an article, “Sierra Towers: The Secrets of L.A.’s Strange, Sexy Celebrity Condo Building,” that also reminds just how slickly Janice Min has revamped the once staid trade:

One day in the early 2000s, Filice gave a tour to Eddie Fisher, the former teen idol and singer, and his daughters  Tricia Leigh Fisher and Joely Fisher. The late entertainer’s brood wanted him to move into the 31-story West Hollywood high-rise, and the visit brought back memories for Fisher, former husband to both Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, then in his 70s.

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Recollections about the great Elizabeth Taylor continue to arrive, in all media forms.

At one end of the spectrum is a commemorative magazine published by American Media, parent company of Radar Online and The National Enquirer. At the other is a delightful piece by Joanna Clay in today’s Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot, part of the LA Times family of community newspapers.

Eighty-two-year-old Britsh born resident Sydney Mack (pictured) spent a full year working as Taylor’s stand-in on the mega-budgeted 1963 epic Cleopatra, under the name Patricia Beattie. She became friends with the actress’ husband Eddie Fisher, and got to spend time with Taylor and Burton away from the set:

While out with the couple one day, Mack said she experienced a more vulnerable side of the actress. Taylor had walked away and Burton asked her to go check on her.

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In the wake of Elizabeth Taylor‘s death, reporters who crossed paths with her away from the movie set have been sharing their experiences. Hollywood Reporter film critic Todd McCarthy once bumped into the actress in the foyer of Chasen’s, for example.

But the best such recollection so far comes from Southern California AP reporter Jeff Wilson (pictured). When he was a teenager, he worked as a busboy at the now razed Mexican restaurant the El Chiquito Inn, which was right across the street from Warner Bros. in Burbank. During the filming of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, he served Taylor and husband, co-star Richard Burton many times:

I was awestruck. Those violet eyes took my breath away. And that cleavage, well, it (they?) meant a lot to a 16-year-old high school kid… She was a jaw-dropping beauty like no one else.

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Barbara Walters, who was in contact with Elizabeth Taylor right up to the death of the beloved 79-year-old icon in Los Angeles early this morning, told Good Morning America that the actress wanted to be remembered above all for her work in the 1966 film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

That’s no surprise. Of the nearly dozen film collaborations Taylor made with the love of her life, Richard Burton, this searing adaptation of the Edward Albee play stands as the pair’s best. It won Taylor one of her two Best Actress Oscars and presented the UK born stunner in a far different light, partly because she was willing to gain 30 pounds to play middle-aged Martha. (Haskell Wexler, who took home the Oscar for Best Cinematography that year, was brought on as a last minute replacement to help “beautify” the actress, but that idea thankfully quickly went out the window.)

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Even though Blood Moon Productions mastermind Darwin Porter lives in a Victorian home on Staten Island with a menagerie of once-abandoned pets, his focus remains squarely on Hollywood.

Earlier this year, Porter uncorked a series of wild accusations in his book Hollywood Babylon Strikes Again! (co-authored with Danforth Prince), including the charge that Walt Disney regularly hired male prostitutes. Now, alongside his many celebrity biography endeavors, the former Miami Herald bureau chief for Key West has started a new weekly gossip sheet called Dirty Laundry, which promises to share “all the gossip unfit to print.”

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