A lot of people didn’t think Elizabeth Taylor was that great an actress, but I did, simply because I love how passionate she was (something I was known for in my heyday). She could play a temperamental romantic woman in love like none other of her time. Plus she was in some of my favorite movies including Life with Father, The Sandpiper, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Lassie Come Home, Father of the Bride and others.
She also wore some of my favorite outfits in film including the casual chic nautical look below - playing a beautiful and fashionable expat in The Last Time I Saw Paris-
and if you have seen The Sandpiper where she played a free spirited artist and single mother living in Big Sur, than you will most likely remember the red poncho that we see more than once – a sensible detail that made this fiery character all the more real -
(Photo by Everett Collection / Rex Features)
You won’t find that poncho appreciation here in this New York Times movie review or any other appreciation of the film The Sandpiper for that matter. I find the review to be particularly surprising because it is so judgmental, and yet it comes from the notoriously humanistic and liberal American newspaper, The NYT. Go figure! But I guess all tides have to turn and The NYT is no more immune to the swing of the political fashion pendulum than the American sitcom. And I also don’t suppose the NYT like their (treasured)' ‘intrusive, cheap, indelicate implications’ straight up any more than the thinking man does his thinking girl pin-up. And certainly they must uphold their right to stand behind the precepts of faith when it suits them, whether they believe in them and understand them or not. (No liberal shades of gray here – No, no better or worse, only bad and good, a highly inhuman, unorthodox and ultimately inapplicable set of morals they suddenly choose to defend.)
ANYWAY. Some of the worst sculpture and paintings I have ever seen form the backdrop of this story, but I love the story itself, and the set design of this movie is perfect…a Vincente Minnelli specialty.
Passion didn’t really work out for me. But it seemed to suit Liz just fine. She certainly stayed committed to it throughout her life. And it is her passionate female characters I will always remember.
