As only La Liz can do it (on the set of Suddenly Last Summer.)
It was the Vatican that coined that infamous phrase about Elizabeth Taylor 'descending into erotic vagrancy' around the extended time of her leisurely multiple year abandon with Richard Burton during the Cleopatra years. That movie was filming forever and when it began the public was still reeling from the Reynolds /Fisher /Liz triangle. The "insult" was published in the Vatican Newspaper but online searches have only found numerous references to it but no images (was it a front page headline befitting the Giant-ess?) and I'd love to read the whole text, wouldn't you?
But my-oh-my... it's almost like Taylor's estate should thank the Vatican, because it's such a wonderful compliment for an Iconic Screen Siren and it stuck. People, not just me, still reference it 50 years later!
Which brings us (sort of) to today's 'Taylor Tribute of Note' from Tim Robey in The Telegraph on her defining big screen image.
If there’s an archetypal Taylor scene we could focus on, it’s the image of her sprawling in bed. One suspects she felt most comfortable acting when not having to stand, since most of her key roles furnish ample excuse to take to a four-poster, a sofa or a chaise-longue in a pose of either seduction, wailing decrepitude, or occasionally both.
Wonderful piece, a must read.