Literally Love

Hello! It is with great pleasure that I present my first post published consecutively within two days. With much regret and resentment I teared myself away from SHARK WEEK (which is as supremely fascinating as it is highly addictive) just to update you beautiful non-existent readers. And if you do exist, why the heck are you wasting your time reading this, go watch a shark rip something to shreds!

On a much more glamorous note than sharks, I finally scanned in the photos of Elizabeth Taylor from the July issue of Vanity Fair. The article offered a first-time revelation of the love letters Richard Burton penned to his beloved. Full of undying love and enamor for Liz, Burton and his letters illustrated his utter bewitchment of the deliciously magnificent and grandeur movie star. Though I devoured the entire article and loved being able to sneak a peek into their tumultuous, scandalous life together, I couldn't contain my excitement at the wonderful collection of photographs that ran with it. I decided to share them all with you, along with snid-bits of the article and letters. Hopefully you enjoy as much as I did!

I love fashion magazines, but my heart belongs to Vanity Fair, where the articles focus on interesting, intelligent and relevant topics that are, for the most part, extremely well-written. Their celebrity profiles trump that of any another publication and the elegant photographs combined with the ingenuity of a simple layout make it a pleasing visual fantasy as well as a pleasure to read. (Plus I'm such a sucker for the Proust questionnaires). Beauty and Brains, imagine that.

For whatever reason I do not subscribe to said fantastic magazine. I baffle myself sometimes. So when I spotted the masthead of the mag complete with a youthful and gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor on the cover my reaction was akin to a shark on a seal. In an instant my hands grasped that magazine off the rack with stealth before it was swiftly tossed into the shopping cart before my mother knew what had just happened.

Anyone who knows me understands that I idolize Audrey Hepburn, but in fact, I idolize all of the great Hollywood icons/divas of the past. There is an air of sophistication and grace about them, this aurora of effortless perfection that preceded the days of convenient and popular plastic surgery. They were all such beautiful, self-assured, self-defined, strong women. The actresses of today pale in comparison. Elizabeth Taylor defined what it meant to be a diva (sorry Beyonce!) and she lived it through her disgustingly lavish and fascinating lifestyle. She is the epitome of a movie star radiating glamour and glitz.

The first time I was introduced to this legend was some random, summer night up at my grandparents country house in upstate New York. I couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 and the house didn't have cable, thus we spent our nights with VHS. National Velvet instantly became one of my favorite movies, probably because of the story-line about a young girl getting her own horse (Pie!), training and taming its wild demeanor and racing it herself disguised as a male. ( Because, you know, god forbid a girl be a jockey. Thanks sexism). Elizabeth Taylor was just a young woman, prior to the extraordinary life that she would lead. I thought she was an adorable girl, beautiful in the most natural of ways with eyes that literally sparkled (Tyra, if you want some "Smiling with the eyes,"you can find it in the young Elizabeth). And as I grew older and discovered her other work, I saw her as a beautiful, shining, powerful, regal woman and these photos capture that quite well.

"No matter what happens, I'm loud, noisy, earthy and ready for much more living."

-Elizabeth Taylor

Love this picture of Elizabeth! Probably one of my favorites, love the green dress and am in awe at how damn tiny her waist is!

Burton first spotted Taylor poolside, and it wouldn't be until years later that he actually met her. Yet she made quite the first impression without ever uttering a word, so much so that Burton wrote about it in his diary. "There was quite a lot of people in and around the pool, all suntanned and all drinking the Sunday morning liveners...I was enjoying this small social triumph, but then a girl sitting on the other side of the pool lowered her book, took off her sunglasses and looked at me. She was so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud... She was unquestionably gorgeous... She was lavish. She was a dark unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much, and not only that, she was totally ignoring me."

"Big girls need big diamonds."

"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked."

"I love being surrounded by beautiful things and I love being looked after."

-Elizabeth Taylor

The amount of money these two made and spent literally makes me want to throw up. Their combined film grosses was over $200 million. Yes, $200 million. Between two people. In 1967. Yeah. They drove Rolls Royces, had a 10 passenger jet, owned land in the Canary Islands and Ireland and had three homes in England, plus one in Mexico which was given to them by the Mexican government. Burton spent $305,000 (2 million today) for the Krupp diamond for Elizabeth. He then bought her the Cartier diamond, known now as the "Taylor Burton diamond." 69.42 carats. It cost him $1.1 million back then. God only knows what it costs today. It sits in the Cartier museum where more than 6,000 people visit it daily.

"I wanted that diamond because it is incomparably lovely. And it should be on the loveliest woman in the world."

-Richard Burton

"Richard was magnificent in every sense of the word...and in everything he ever did. He was magnificent on the stage, he was magnificent in film, he was magnificent at making love...He was the kindest, funniest, and most gentle father."

Burton really wanted to be a writer rather than an actor, he claimed his heart had never been in acting. He could have been, he wrote so elegantly and with so much passion.

Doesn't she just seem to glow? She appears so regal and I love the way Burton just stares at her, completely fascinated and amused.

"I worship you. There is no life without you, I'm afraid."

-Richard Burton

Elizabeth would fuss over Burton and was fixing his hair one day on set. He got so fed up with it that he just poured a pitcher of beer over his head.

My darling sleeping child,

I am oddly shy about you. I still regard you as an .... inviolate presence. I have treated women, generally, very badly and used them as an exercise for my contempt except in your case. I have fought like a fool to treat you the same way and failed. One of these days I will wake up--which I think I've done already- and realize to myself that I really do love. I find it very difficult to allow my whole life to rest on the existence of another creature. I find it equally difficult, because of my innate arrogance, to believe in the idea of love. There is no such thing, I say to myself. There is lust, of course, and usage, and jealousy, and desire and spent power, but no such thing as the idiocy of love.

Who invented that concept? I have wracked my shabby brains and I can find no answer. But when people die... those who are taken away from us can never come back. We are such doomed fools. Unfortunately, we know it. So I have decided that for a second or two, the precious potential of you in the next room is the only thing in the world worth living for. After you death there shall only be one other and that will be mine. Or I possibly think, vice versa.

Ravaged love,

And loving Rich

After their announced separation Burton wrote this letter to Elizabeth. Although they would be divorced, Burton and Taylor remained connected for the rest of life, truly being one another's best friends. There was even a remarriage, but it ended within nine months.

So My Lumps,

You're off, by God! I can barely believe it since I am so unaccustomed to anybody leaving me. But reflectively I wonder why nobody did so before. All I care about--honest to God-- is that you're happy and I don't much care who you'll find happiness with... Never forget your strange virtues. Never forget that underneath that veneer of raucous language is a remarkable and puritanical LADY. I am a smashing bore and why you've stuck by me so long is an indication of your loyalty. I shall miss you with passion and wild regret...

Burton had the most curious nicknames for Elizabeth, including 'Twitch,' 'Twit Twaddle,' and 'Scrupelshrumpilstilskin.'

Still separated, Richard wrote to Elizabeth almost immediately after his first letter,

"I love you, lovely woman. If anybody hurts you, just send me a line saying something like "Need" or "Necessary" or just the one magic word "Elizabeth,"and I will be there somewhat faster than sound. You must know of course, how much I love you..."

"You asked me to write the truth about us... I suffer from a severe case of "hubris," an overweening pride. Prometheus was punished by the gods forever and is still suffering in all of us for inventing fire and stealing it from the gods. I am forever punished by the gods for being given the fire and trying to put it out. The fire, of course, is you..."

"Well first of all, you must realize that I worship you. Second of all, at the expense of seeming repetitive, I love you. Thirdly, and here I go again with my enormous command of language, I can't live without you. Thirdly, I mean fourthly, you have an enormous responsibility because if you leave me I shall have to kill myself. There is no life without you , I'm afraid. And I am afraid. Afeared. In terms of my life, scared. Lost. Alone. Dull. Dumb. (That will be the day.) And fifthly, and I hope I will never repeat myself, I fancy you. I bet that you would be alright if you loved me and stuff like that. Sixthly, I bet if you could persuade me to stop acting, which is a practice I've always deplored, I could work out a way whereby I could stay alive until I'm fifty-five..."

Elizabeth keeps the last letter she ever received from Burton in a drawer next to her bed. She refuses to share it verbatim, believing it to be too personal. Richard had been happiest with her and he wanted to come home. It is one of her most prized possessions.

"Richard is a very sexy man. He's got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense."

"More than anything else in the world I wanted a man who could control me."

All photos and letters are from the July 2010 issue of Vanity Fair.