Elizabeth Taylor

“I don’t want to be a sex symbol. I would rather be a symbol of a woman, a woman who makes mistakes, perhaps, but a woman who loves.”

The Newbridge Silverware Fashion Museum houses one of the most sumptuous dresses worn by Elizabeth Taylor in Raintree County. Taylor was nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her role as Susannah Drake in the 1957 MGM classic. The movie also earned a nomination for its costume design by Walter Plunket. Arguably one of the most famous golden era designers, Plunket was known for his epic creations for Gone with the Wind and How the West Was Won.

Born in London on February 27th, 1932, Taylor was the second child and only daughter of wealthy American Art Dealer Francis Lenn Taylor and Actress Sara Sothern. With the outbreak of World War II, the family moved back to America, settling in Beverly Hills. Taylor was a beautiful child regularly drawing attention due to her violet blue eyes which were framed by double eyelashes. Having signed a seven-year contract with MGM she starred in classic movies including Raintree County, Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Butterfield 8, the latter winning her a first Academy Award in 1961.

Following her Academy Award, Taylor landed the title role in Cleopatra. The extravagant production was beset by problems from the start; including cost and time overruns, Taylor’s ill-health and the scandal of her on set affair with co-star Richard Burton. By the time of its release in July 1963, Cleopatra was the most expensive movie ever made and left 20th Century Fox on the verge of bankruptcy. Taylor’s basic fee for the movie was $1 million (the highest ever for a female) but her contract also included a percentage of the gross receipts. She said of her fee “If someone’s dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I’m certainly not dumb enough to turn it down.” Cleopatra became the highest grossing movie of the year and Taylor’s final take was reported to be close to $7 million.

Taylor went on to star in 11 movies with Burton including The Sandpiper, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? and Boom! The public loved to see the couple on screen as it seemed art was imitating life. The roles she was being offered in the 1960’s were ones that mirrored her own circumstances and none more so than Boom!

Raintree County Costume on Display in the Museum of Style Icons

In it Taylor plays a wealthy but lonely six-time widower who is on the brink of death when Burton’s character enters her life, almost like an Angel of Death, to relieve her of her riches. The movie was a struggle for all involved, not least because the cast and crew were often distracted by the sun, sea and booze offered by the production location of Sardinia. Taylor had difficulty with the fact that her character’s life reflected her own. The script featured numerous scenes where Flora talks about her dead husbands – one of whom died tragically in a mountain climbing accident, which bore resemblance to Taylor’s husband Mike Todd’s death in a plane crash a decade earlier. Burton later said that this haunted Taylor on set and put an uncomfortable distance between the two while filming, however, he thought it one of Taylor’s greatest performances. Taylor had mixed success in her movie career following Boom! and by the mid-1980’s focused more on television roles, however, it was her activism in support of HIV/AIDS charities in the 1990’s that became her passion and one of her lasting legacies. Following her retirement from acting in 2001, she continued to raise awareness for the HIV/AIDS cause saying she “decided that with my name, I could open certain doors, that I was a commodity in myself…I could take the fame I'd resented and tried to get away from for so many years – but you can never get away from it – and use it to do some good…” Through her activism Taylor help raise over $270 million.

In later life she was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honour (1987), received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1993), the Screen Actors' Guild Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanitarian service (1997), the GLAAD Vanguard Award (2000), and the US Presidential Citizens Medal (2001). She was considered a style icon, both on and off screen, and upon her death on March 23rd, 2011 of congestive heart failure, the world lost one of the last great Old Hollywood stars.

Our Museum of Style icons also have a white kaftan worn by Taylor in Boom! on permanent display.