#ClassicFilmReading: Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger
This is one of my favourite books, one I recommend to people who want to know what's on my bookshelf, and I'm so so glad that I decided to revisit it this summer!
For my money, short of anything personally written by Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton, this is the definitive tome of Le Scandale: the total takeover of Liz and Dick at their absolute height and all the juicy details about how they came to be, sustained it, and ultimately how they became so big, they couldn't help but fail.
Briefly, if you don't already know it: Elizabeth and Richard met on the set of Cleopatra (after a brief, brief meeting a decade earlier in which they didn't make much of an impact on each other or really interact), they fall in love, scandal ensues, they become the most famous people on the planet, and develop their own ecosystem throughout the '60s and early '70s.
What makes their story so compelling, aside from the glitz and glamour of the major players, is the writing. Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger are two talented, dishy writers who have written other great books and articles for Vanity Fair (including one about Hollywood in the '50s where each chapter is about a different actor or actress). It's so deliciously told, the quips, the asides, the explainers written like catty members of Liz and Dick's entourage.
You don't just get all the gory details of their lives, and trust me, Sam and Nancy do a thorough job in telling in it such a fun way, you get a complete portrait of Hollywood tastes, European filmmaking, and how their itinerant lifestyles—largely aboard their yachts or their suites in luxurious European hotels—made them the ne plus ultra of culture at the time.
There's politicking for Oscars that Richard Burton never won (don't get me started); there's a detailed breakdown of the Liz-Debbie-Eddie affair drama; there's sordid details about their lovemaking and how freely they loved each other everywhere; there's minute details about all the jewelry and art Richard bought his wife. You learn all about how Richard wanted nothing more than to be a serious writer, a poet, a true Welshman, and how much he hated acting though he was so great at it. You learn more about how Elizabeth wasn't just a pretty face with scandal swirling around: she was an adept businesswoman, a consummate professional, and could act circles around every single one of her co-stars. That she gets written off for her (many) love affairs is a detriment to her legacy.
I also love how this book isn't in the business of breaking down the plot points of each movie they made. The writers make assumptions that you don't need the plot of Cleopatra, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Taming of the Shrew, etc., etc., etc., explained to you. You hear the pertinent backstage gossip that makes up the largesse of their legacies; you don't need to know more about the plot.
You need to know just how much money 20th Century Fox was pissing away every day on Cleopatra.
You need to know how Elizabeth was terrified of attempting the Bard's words in Taming of the Shrew and how Richard really coaxed her into believing in herself.
You need to know how much professionalism and business acumen they poured into Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Not to denigrate his talents, but would Mike Nichols have blown up on his own without their insistence that he direct them in that film? I'm sure he would've easily made the transition to directing movies at some point, but nobody was considering him for a heavy film like that.
You need to know that they invested so much of their own money into their films; they took genuine risks and didn't rest on the laurels of being the perpetrators of Le Scandale. How easy would it have been to coast, to make big popcorn movies (if this were modern times, to avoid becoming reality TV stars and to monetize every Instagram post). Instead they challenged themselves, they took on serious films with subject matter that sparked conversation (homosexuality, with both of them getting a turn at the material, for one), and made sure that all that investment into them paid back in dividends.
I can't recommend this book enough; if you read nothing else about Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton's epic love affair, make sure it's this one.
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Okay, you all know that I love sharing all the gossip in these old biographies, but if I were to do that for Furious Love I'd basically be transcribing the entire book back to you. It's so juicy and ripe with details. But one of my favourite bits of stray gossip is that Princess Grace was invited to Elizabeth's 40th birthday party and ended up leading one of the conga lines; and that Elizabeth had, a few years earlier, disrupted Grace's 40th birthday party by showing up in her largest diamonds, outshining the royal!
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