Classic Reissue: Liz’s Taylor’s MGM Fairytale Wedding
For her first marriage, Elizabeth Taylor's studio bosses put together one hell of a Hollywood production. Shame about the husband.
Most of the Gossip Reading Club focuses on profiles and reporting from the 1980s onwards, largely because this stuff is more accessible than anything predating that. But if you’re a classic gossip nerd, the online archives of Photoplay are invaluable. This classic reissue was my first Golden Ace deep-dive into an icon and her highly manicured studio wedding to a total jerk.
Photoplay. “Elizabeth’s Love Story.” May 1950. Louella Parsons.
(Image via Photoplay archives.)
The eight marriages of Elizabeth Taylor are an indelible part of her public image, as iconic as her love of jewels, her violet eyes, and that moment in BUtterfield 8 where she scrawls “No sale” across the mirror in her lover’s home. Few stars encapsulate the sheer variety and freneticism of old-school celebrity as she did. Who else could make that much money, release a diet book, win two Oscars, fight for healthcare for AIDS sufferers, pioneer the celebrity perfume business, make astoundingly bonkers films like Boom!, AND romance Colin Farrell in her Winter years? We could probably compile an entire book’s worth of Gossip Reading Club entries on profiles of the star over seven decades. But let’s start near the beginning, at a time when Taylor was a star but not the volcanic force she’d become. You couldn’t make someone like Liz Taylor, but MGM sure did try.
