What a Dame! The show will go on for Elizabeth Taylor...

The writers strike has put a stop to many things, but it won’t stop Dame Elizabeth Taylor from returning to the L.A. stage next month for a performance of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” with James Earl Jones.
The great star of such classics as “Giant,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “A Place in the Sun” has been granted a one-night waiver from the Writers Guild of America stike to go ahead with a Dec. 1 performance at a theater on the Paramount Pictures studio lot which writers have been picketing for the past two weeks.
The performance is taking place on World AIDS Day and is expected to raise about $1 million for research and care.
Miss Taylor reached out to the leadership of the guild and WGA West President Patric Verrone graciously offered to remove the picket lines for that evening so the performers and the audience could enter the studio without feeling that they are betraying the writers.
“The Writers Guild of America has shown great humanity, empathy and courage by allowing our little evening to move forward,” Dame Elizabeth said in a statement.
The Hollywood legend also took the opportunity to state her support of writers in their current stalemate with producers.
“Everyone knows that my heart belongs to people with HIV and AIDS,” she said. “I also share my heart with people who must battle unfairness. Without the gifts of writers, the world would be rather empty. I beseech those in power to treat members of the Writers Guild of America with fairness and decency.”

The last time this great star and humanitarian was on stage here was back in 1983 when she appeared in “Private Lives” opposite Richard Burton, husband number five and six. Theirs was one of the great loves stories which began on the set of "Cleopatra" in 1961 when both were married to other people. On the very first day of shooting, they knew it was true love.

They finally married in 1964 after their respective divorces were final and went on to make a strong of movies including "Woolf," "The Sandpiper," "The VIPS," "Taming of the Shrew" and "Boom!" They were the Brad and Angie of their day but divorced in 1974, remarried a year later then divorced a second time. But the connection remained and Taylor has always said that Burton and her third husband, producer Mike Todd, were the two great loves of her life. Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958.

Miss Taylor had made her Broadway debut in “The Little Foxes” in 1980 and was nominated for a Tony Award for best actress in a play. She also brought that show to L.A. and took it to London and the feeling was that she would transition to a stage actress. But after "Private Lives," that was it.

Since then, the two-time Oscar winner has gotten divorced a few times, had some serious health scares, made some movies, launched perfume and jewelry lines and received almost all the top honors one can get: a special Oscar (the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Award; The Kennedy Center Honors; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, and being named a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.

But through it all, her work on behalf of HIV/AIDS has been her first priority and passion in life and for that, so many of us are forever grateful...