Opinion | Podcast examines the rich life of Elizabeth Taylor, the original influencer

All the world’s a podcast.

And now … so is Elizabeth Taylor.

Eight marriages. Two Oscars. Fifty films. One oversized life that most Hollywood story-editors would consider far-fetched, as a biographer once put it, and a legacy that defies taut categorization. Just part of the raison d’être for “Elizabeth the First,” a sumptuously produced 10-part series that launched last month, some 11 years after the death of the violet-eyed legend. Produced in conjunction with House of Taylor (an outfit that maintains the legacy of the screen icon), and one that comes narrated by Katy Perry (a sparky bit of old-and-new star synergy), the series explores the life of Taylor as movie star, mother, wife, entrepreneur, AIDS advocate … and, indeed, as “the first true influencer.”

According to Perry, “Like most people, I was attracted to her glamour … I’m inspired by her bold activism, her constant boss moves in business, and through it all, an unapologetic way of loving — all things I try to live in my own life. It’s an honour to be able to share her story in this way.”

As we are reminded, too, in the first episode, by one of her archivists, her story is just so epic, “that unlike other iconic people at her level — Elvis or Judy Garland, a Princess Diana, or Marilyn — they did not live long lives. She had a complete life.”

I caught up with the first few episodes of the podcast this week, and was promptly fascinated by the manner in which a new medium is being used to reinvent one of the bedrocks of Old Hollywood. An exercise in celebrity resurrection.

Among the many touchstones covered? The way Taylor became the first star to pass the million-dollar threshold, plus 10 per cent of the absolute gross, when she negotiated her salary for the 1963 film “Cleopatra” (the most expensive movie ever made at that time, plus a shoot that had unfathomable drama behind the scenes). Also: the way the one-time horse-loving child star from Britain grew up to practically invent the “celebrity perfume” template, starting with her first fragrance, Passion, in the late 1980s, but and raising the bar, inextricably, with her scent, White Diamonds, in 1991. Named after her lifelong love of the lucent gem, and promising a kind of unapologetic femininity, that fragrance still looms as a top global brand. (Even in a world today with no shortage of star-branded scents, White Diamonds has had over $1.5 billion dollars in sales and counting, according to the president of Elizabeth Arden.)

Using the emotional brawn of Taylor’s own voice (via interviews she did throughout her life), and stitching it with commentary now from both friends and family, the podcast gets into the way she changed the dialogue around addiction when she became the first public person to speak about rehab (“When she entered Betty Ford, phones were ringing off the hook. She made it OK. If Elizabeth Taylor can be open with her need for help … everyone else was, like: ‘I guess I can too.’”) Also, how — in a time long before “likes” and “followers” — she created modern celebrity in the way she let people into her life, and the ways her life and her movies seemed to inextricably play off each other.

The way, too, she harnessed the power of the press — most notably in how she advocated for LGBTQ+ people during a time when few people — let alone Hollywood celebrities — would even utter the word AIDS. Getting passionate in the early 1980s — in part, because, her friend, Rock Hudson, had been struck with it, and would go on to die of complications from AIDS in 1985 — she raised millions, devoted countless hours, helped found AMFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research (plus her own AIDS foundation later), testified on Capitol Hill, took on presidents and other world leaders. (”People not only slammed doors in my face and hung up on me, but I received death threats,” she told Interview magazine in 2007. “People would say, ‘No, I’m not getting mixed up in that!’ And, ‘You have to get out of this, Elizabeth. It’s going to ruin your career.’”)

Of course, La Liz was also far from earnest. Unlike so many of the personality-lobotomized starlets of today, she was wry and saucy and lived large. The kind of person who would drop little bon mots such as “success is a great deodorant” or, well, “the problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure there going to have some pretty annoying virtues.” Her white-hot love affair with Richard Burton (bookended by two separate marriages to him) gets ample play, naturally, in “Elizabeth the First,” as do her many other amours, including her final husband, construction worker Larry Fortensky.

I am actually looking forward to the podcast getting to that last marriage because it, in part — confession! — roiled my earliest obsession with all things celebrity. A distinct memory: me, as a teenager, regularly going, after school, to the supermarket near my family home, to surreptitiously read the tabloids at the checkout counter to catch up on all the latest, re: the romance.

The details: seared into me. The two first crossed paths at rehab, when both Larry and Elizabeth were there together for different addictions. Rehab bringing things down to the basics, Liz was cleaning floors and making her own bed. She approached Larry one day while at the clinic. Larry, who was from small town California — a high-school dropout with two of his own failed marriages behind him — was smitten. She was, too.

October 1991: when she would end up having her eighth wedding. And what a wedding it was. Held at the Neverland Ranch — courtesy of Elizabeth’s friend, Michael Jackson — it was estimated to have cost upwards of $2 million, and brought out Liza Minnelli, Eddie Murphy, Nancy Reagan and Quincy Jones, among others. Helicopters flew overhead in such frenzied fashion that the groom couldn’t even hear their vows. The couple sold the photos from the wedding to People for $1 million, which Liz used as seed money to start her AIDS foundation (and the rest: history …). There doesn’t seem to have been an engagement ring but then, Liz had already had plenty of those.

Of course, it did not last … but the saga seized me back then not in an opposites-attract kinda way, but just in the way, the star of “Cat a Hot Tin Roof” loved to love. And kept moving. As one friend says in this latest podcast, “She looked forward. She did not look behind her — or around her. She used her heart as a compass.”

Elizabeth the First is available now on all major podcast platforms

Shinan Govani is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist covering culture and society. Follow him on Twitter: @shinangovani

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