Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon

Great book it’s a nice to have a in a collection

This book was wonderful to read. Been a fan of Elizabeth’s for many years. Thought I knew everything but this book made me know her even better in an intimate way. Author has captured her perfectly.

This was a riveting book in that it was difficult to put down but it was incomplete. We got a good look at Taylor's childhood, life, and marriages. Most compelling was her charity work to raise funds for AIDS. We have the story of a young girl who worked very hard to get the role of Velvet Brown in National Velvet and then later in life claimed she had no childhood. If she had not been a film star, would she have had the luxurious lifestyle she led? However, the book left many things unanswered. What was her reaction on her father's death or Michael Wilding's (the father of two of her children). The book spent a great deal of time on her marriages to Mike Todd and Richard Burton (both loves of her life) but I would think the death of the father of her children would have been hard on her. We also get to hear what happened to her jewels and costumes but not to her home. There are excerpts from some letters she wrote to various people as well as interviews with friends, co-stars, and family members but I would have liked to have more in depth questions with the children. We know during the Burton-Taylor time, life was a circus for them but did their mother's multiple marriages cause them any trouble. For a more complete picture of her marriage to Burton, I would suggest the book And God Created Richard Burton by Tom Rubython. While we got some hints on what her children were doing with their lives, it would have been nice to have followed up on that as well. I would have liked to have seen a family tree with Elizabeth and her marriages, children, and grandchildren. There was no filmography or any update as to her brother or her relationship with any nieces and nephews.

I don't usually read biographies because they can be dry and boring, but not this one! She's someone who has always interested me my entire life, even when I was a little girl hearing news stories about her and Richard. Just found out she's one of my VERY very distant cousins when doing my genealogy, so that helped me be more interested as well. Extremely well written, it really flows and I couldn't put it down. I loved reading this and you can tell it was written with great respect to Elizabeth Taylor.

What makes this particular biography special are the people from Ms Taylor’s family, friends and acquaintances who sat down with the author and shared their experiences. The incredible amount of documents that the author was given permission to access, lend a strong sense of what the gentle reader is experiencing, is the truth in this page turner. The book confirms the Elizabeth Taylor I have always admired and could never get enough of, was real to the core.

Examples of incorrect facts are when the book states Jean Simmons is younger when she’s older than Elizabeth. Another is that Sybil had another daughter during her second marriage, not a son like the book says. Also, Elizabeth may have worked for a studio since nine years old, however, it wasn’t full time at all until the 1950s when she was 18. The book emphasizes more than once how overworked Elizabeth was as a child actor. But when you check her films, she wasn’t in many films as a child, and some roles were very small. For people who have read every book there is about Elizabeth, this book seems to emphasize things about Elizabeth that don’t seem to be correct.

I am about half way through this book and it still holds my interest. When I first saw it I thought it was a little large for a biography but went for it. So far it is worth it, she had a much larger than life story to be told and the writing keeps it interesting. Great job!

This book is riveting and even though many of us knew about many events and watched her interviewed, this is an amazing insight into how a strong, gorgeous talented actor survived the studio system from childhood to adulthood, being very famous and battling addiction. "..with violet eyes to die for" as Doonsbury used to say.

Produto em perfeitas condições

I didn't learn that much from this bio, because I've read nearly every other bio of ET, but it was good. New info about her last ten years or so. I recommend it to people who want an encapsulation of her life.

Kate Anderson Bower's Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit and Glamour Icon is the definitive biography of an incredible lady, the likes of which we'll not find outside of royalty. Everyone who met her fell in love with Taylor, and while I'd never met her, I too fell under her spell over a centrefold picture I'd purloined from a magazine while at boarding school in 1948. She could be beautiful as in Cleopatra and ugly as in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf. She loved her friends and gave short shrift to anyone who attempted to take advantage of her. She loved animals and on the humanitarian front she took she up the HIV/AIDS cause raising millions for research, campaigned right up to the White House for it to be recognised as an urgent health issue. She love jewellery and of her seven husbands, Richard Burton was never far from her thoughts. It's a different world from the one Elizabeth Taylor came into, we'll never see the likes of her again, but then she probably wouldn't have liked the world it's now becone

This book corrects a lot of misinformation published about Elizabeth over the years, and is the only authorized biography that has been published. The author conducted many interviews with the various Taylor/Burton family members. An excellent read throughout.

Loved it