Icons: September 2006 Archives

If you flip all the way back to page 149 of the new issue of "People' magazine and look at the right page facing a tacky Geico ad, you will find a rare interview with screen legend Elizabeth Taylor written by Jess Cagle. Excuse me, but Hollywood royalty deserves better placement than that. I remember a time when any Taylor interview would have warranted the entire cover. Sure, times change and new stars emerge, but Taylor is a living icon who still has plenty of interesting things to say at the age of 74. She remains a staunch AIDS activist and oversees a wildly successful jewelry and perfume business empire.

Instead, we get a cover of Anna Nicole Smith and her late son, Danny, an upper right corner picture of Clay Aiken with an alleged "exclusive" that essentially had the same info as his GMA interview with Diane Sawyer! And here's the real kicker: in the bottom right corner is a picture of a bony Kate Bosworth with the headline "Shockingly Thin." Aaaarg! I'm so bored with the stories about too skinny celebs. I say to all of them: "Have a milkshake! Grab a burger! Get a life!" Anyway, I've posted this 1959 picture of Dame Elizabeth Taylor so some of these pin-thin girls can see what a real star looked like in her physical prime. I may be as gay as the day is long, but I do not think it gets any better than that.

So, to this skinny Nicole Richie/Kate Bosworth/Mary-Kate Olsen crowd, take off your oversized sunglasses for a minute and read on: Elizabeth Taylor was not only beautiful decade after decade, she also won two Academy Awards (five nominations) and starred in such classics as "National Velvet," "Father of the Bride," "A Place in the Sun," "Giant," "Raintree County," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" "Suddenly Last Summer," and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" Sure, she had seven husbands but, hey, only two in the past 30 years. She also raised four children to whom she seems close. And for the last 20 years, when she wasn't receiving such tributes as the Kennedy Center Honors, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, an honorary Oscar for humanitarian work and being bestowed the title of Dame by the Queen of England, Taylor has been on the front lines speaking out about AIDS, from treatment to prevention to research. In the "People" article, Cagle describes her as trembling with outrage when talking about the disease: "People have become so lethargic. Teenagers mainly - they just don't believe it can happen to them." She remains a dedicated activist who is campaigning for stem-cell research and recently funded a $500,000 HIV/AIDS care unti in New Orleans.

This is a REAL star and interesting human being of the kind that none of these personalities that dominate the magazine covers today will ever be (except maybe Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron). And what a friend to the gay community. Taylor was famously close to closeted actors Montgomery Clift, James Dean and Rock Hudson, among others. In closing (this got long!), Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky hasn't been a saint: she broke up some marriages, ate too much, drank too much, and spent too much. But she's never stopped growing, never stopped getting wiser, and never stopped giving.

What a dame...