Feeling Blue

Now that I think of it, I actually do remember seeing one of Elizabeth Taylor's movies. Ironically, it was one of her least memorable films. It was The Blue Bird, based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play about two children who seek the bluebird of happiness.

How could I forget? That had to be one of the worst movies I ever saw!

Directed by George Cukor (!), this 1976 adaptation of The Blue Bird was a joint U.S.-Soviet production filmed in Russia, and it clearly worked out much less successfully than the Apollo-Soyuz space mission of the previous year.

The movie's horridness wasn't really Elizabeth Taylor's fault. Give her credit for trying something different. But casting Elizabeth Taylor in a fantasy film made about as much sense as casting John Wayne in a Truffaut picture would have. Anyway, Taylor's miscasting wasn't the biggest of this movie's problems. Not when it also featured Cicely Tyson as a cat, in a feline costume that made her look more kinky than cute.

I don't remember much else about The Blue Bird. I don't even remember when I saw it or how I came to see it. I only remember that it was awful.

Back on Monday.

Elizabeth Taylor: 1932-2011

I was never a big fan of Elizabeth Taylor, who died today of congestive heart failure, though not because I didn't think she was a good actress. By all accounts she was a great one - and one that knew how to be a celebrity and how to put fame to good use (consider everything this veteran actor did to help fight AIDS while another veteran actor, President Ronald Reagan, did not). I just never saw any of her films. I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that, but it's the truth; I have seen many classic films, and I have idolized many actors I was too young to see the movies of in the theaters rather than on TV. But Elizabeth Taylor movies? I somehow didn't get to seeing any.

But she was a formidable presence in Hollywood, and she left an indelible mark on our culture. The AIDS fight was one aspect, and so was the way she carried herself in public. Despite her many marriages, despite her fluctuating weight, despite all of that, she still knew how to be a star - how to be Elizabeth Taylor - and while she may have lent herself to parody, she never parodied herself. She was who she was. R.I.P.

Now I have to see some of her movies.