By Mely Lerman, March 24th, 2011
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Elizabeth Taylor – Liz Taylor - died yesterday.
Many would say she was the unforgettable Cleopatra, other the actress of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Suddenly, Last Summer or Graham Greene’s Comedians. She participated in a lot of great movies and was really talented.
On Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf I read the book, I saw the play twice and even so I was impressed by her and Richard Burton when I first saw the movie.
I am not crying for her – she had a wonderful life: success, money, beauty, 8 (or 9?) marriages, 5 Oscar nominations, 2 won, everything. I am not crying but I am remembering.
My first memory of her is on Elephant Walk. I was 12 years old. She was young and lovely. At first, dressed in white, she was the symbol of a distant world, far from Africa.
In Giant she was again the stranger (this time in Texas), pure again. The other side, contrary to all she represents is James Dean.
Never mind when –in life, in East of Eden, Rebels without a cause or Giant, James Dean was always the rebel without a cause. Angry, never accepting the conventions, he was the first swallow bringing the message of the sixties. In the years to come the rebels got causes and changed the World: the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, Paris in 68, Che Guevara, the whole Latin America, Women’s Lib, the Beatles, and Woodstock. The World would never be the same again.
Somehow Giant was part of this revolution. The movie brought a kind of intellectual courage not seen at the time on Hollywood, the first line of the American conservatism.
Difficult to people understand today but the last scene: two babies one white and one black in the same play-pen was a definitive no-no at the time.
Liz Taylor and James Dean remember me the Radio Head song:
“When you were here before
Couldn't look you in the eye
You're just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You're so fucking special
But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here”
She was an angel and he was a creep and at the moment he found oil in his land he came to claim her love.
