Elizabeth, Her Place in the Sun

Her trip to Iran

1976 saw the one and only time Elizabeth Taylor would visit Iran. An exotic and educational excursion for Taylor, her travel partner was Firooz Zahedi, then an art school graduate and today a successful Hollywood photographer. Zahedi proved to be not only useful in documenting Taylor’s experiences and discoveries,

With James 1taylorjames

I think that< "http://www.davidpaulkirkpatrick.com/2018/03/30/james-dean-and-elizabeth-taylor-reenact-the-crucifixion-in-a-photo-by-george-rinhart/"> haunted him the rest of his life. In fact, I know it did. We talked about it a lot. During ‘Giant’ we’d stay up nights and talk and talk, and that was one of the things he confessed to me.”

Elizabeth and Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams wrote of Taylor in his Memoirs in the 1960s as “excessively beauteous” and a “marvelous female star.” In a Paris Review interview with Dotson Rader in the Fall of 1981, Williams spoke of Taylor in the context of her intimate relationships with Hollywood leading men Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson, both closeted gay men who died prematurely, and Michael Jackson, too.
While Hudson died from AIDS in 1985, Clift died in 1966 at age 45 from heart failure many believe was associated with depression and drug abuse. Taylor probably saved his life 10 years earlier when, on May 12, 1956, she witnessed him crash his car into a tree after a Hollywood party. She ran to him, and manually extricated a tooth from his throat that he was choking on.
In his 1981 interview, Williams said, “Monty Clift was one of the great tragedies among actors, even more than Marilyn Monroe, I believe. One of the loveliest things about Elizabeth Taylor was her exceptional kindness to him. Many women were very kind to him. Katharine Hepburn. But Elizabeth particularly. She’s a very dear person. She’s the opposite of her public image. She’s not a bitch, even though her life has been a very hell. Thirty-one operations, I believe. Pain and pain. She’s so delicate, fragile really.”

Goodbye Elizabeth now you are with Mike, Richard, Roddy, Monty, Rock and James Dean and all the people you have helped and healed.