![\"51iorNOljBL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/51iorNOljBL._SY344_BO1204203200_.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nNEXT BOOK on the essays shelf<\/a>:<\/p>\n Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays<\/a> \nWhen Elizabeth Taylor died it felt like the end of an era. Something vital had left the landscape. One of our Movie Goddesses, and unlike so-called “serious” actresses, Movie Goddesses are repositories of dreams and fantasies and projections … so that when THEY go, it’s disorienting. And Elizabeth Taylor, my God, she was THE movie goddess. Her heyday may have been in the 1950s and 60s, but when I grew up – the 1980s – she was still omnipresent, not just in her random TV appearances or guest spots, but in her tireless work and advocacy for AIDS research, which may be her most important legacy (and that’s how she referred to it too: “This is my life’s work.”) Elizabeth Taylor was not a nostalgia act. She was in the NOW. The only “nostalgia” about her was that her beauty was so extraordinary that she seemed timeless, or like she should be flying about on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Her beauty was ferociously in your face, and it changed over time. <\/p>\n \n \nAs a child, she gleamed like a star in the sky. Her violet eyes emanated bolts of light. As a young woman, she was so beautiful your bones ached just looking at her. I love 1960s Liz, jet-setting around with two-time hubby Richard Burton, looking plump and luscious in her go-go boots and minis and huge fur hats. As a middle-aged woman, the earthy side of her (always there) exploded out into one of her most defining and entertaining characteristics. Like any Erotic Muse, she is timeless. She herself is not androgynous, she’s all Woman, but her appeal is vast, from straight men to straight women to gay men to gay women to everyone in between. She’s an Icon of Identity. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. The world has changed too much. Sex-Bomb Movie Goddesses are out of style (more’s the pity). <\/p>\n \n When she died, there was an outpouring of grief at all we had lost. It was supremely touching. Because, of course, outside of her Movie Goddess-ness and her tabloid life, she was a hell of an actress. As a child she had a gift. She could project her inner life. Grown-up actors WORK to be able to do what she could naturally. <\/p>\n Critic Dana Stevens and I had a discussion about National Velvet<\/i> (and, strangely, I published it just days before she died. It was uncanny timing.) \u201cSo Many Currents In Such a Little Puddle\u201d: Dana Stevens and I Chat About National Velvet<\/a><\/p>\n Here’s the piece I wrote when she died:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nPhoto by Roddy McDowell. They were child actors on the MGM lot together. They went to school on the MGM lot. Their classmate was Dean Stockwell. Just so you know.<\/i><\/p>\n