From the November 1948 issue of US Vogue comes this lovely photo shoot with a sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. Here she demonstrates the current skirt and shirt fashion that the young love for its different-every-time-look. Elizabeth was just about to appear on screen as Amy in Little Women when these photos appeared but she was already famous around the world as Velvet Brown. I do love that plaid skirt and the framing in that first photograph. Lovely.
I've been collecting quite a few old magazines, especially those with interviews and photo-shoots with Elizabeth Taylor. These photos are from the March 1957 edition of Coronet, an American magazine - a bit like a Reader's Digest style mag - from the same people that published Esquire, I think. Calling her 'The Most Beautiful Girl in the World' the writer waxes lyrical on that face: 'a strange combination of aloofness and sensuousness, she walks in beauty as few others.'
I'll also try and scan another great story from the magazine for you, about teenagers hanging out in 'milk bars' all Happy Days style. And this really was the 1950s, not the 1970s pretending to be the 1950s. Also quite cool is an advertisement for the Relax-a-cizor, a weight-loss machine so brilliantly parodied in the last couple of episodes of Season 1 of Mad Men.
I finally got around to reading Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger's account of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's relationship Furious Love (HarperCollins). Written with Elizabeth's permission and containing many of Burton's love letters to Elizabeth for the first time (they are legion, poetic, epic) - this book is a seriously guilty pleasure. Most biographies of Elizabeth devote a chapter to each of her husbands and perhaps two to her most beloved Richard, so it is wonderful to read an entire books worth of sex, gossip, legendary fights, films (some brilliant, others campy), jewels and jet setting. The book gives background on Richard's impoverished and rather unusual earlier life and is perceptive about his insecurities and his demons. And of course, Elizabeth was not without her own demons. One wonders if their love would have developed differently had they met today, and also what would have happened to their relationship had Richard not passed away so young.
And now for a few other books I've read of late and loved.
My friend Sassica introduced me to this accomplished debut When God Was a Rabbit (Headline) from English actress turned author Sarah Winman. It beautifully evokes an eccentric British childhood, first friendship and sibling love.
I was blown away by Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty so I was beside myself to read The Stranger's Child (Picador). For me it didn't quite move me in the same way, but it sill kept me entertained and thoughtful. Spanning almost a whole century, the book is all about writing biography. Who do our stories belong to? And Hollinghurst writes so brilliantly about that English upper-class milieu.
I've read all of Ann Patchett's books and although I was initially sceptical about the whole 'New World girl goes to the Amazon' plot of State of Wonder (Bloomsbury) it really works here for me. A special writer and a special book (and she's currently in Australia too, for the Brisbane Writers' Festival).
And Skippy Dies (Penguin), set in an Irish boarding school, is one of the funniest books I've read in my life. I actually had to keep reading aloud passages to the husband it was so entertaining. But don't be deceived if you do decide to pick it up - and you should - because it is also a dark commentary on modern life, and a reminder of how tough it is to be a teenager.
Movie star postcards were popular from the 30s through to the 60s and occasionally I like to take a peruse through the fabulous Flickr page and blog of Dutch collectors Truss, Bob & Jan too!. I especially love the coloured cards such as the ones I've chosen here.
Love that picture of Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida. Do you reckon the husband and I can replicate it on some hill somewhere? Perhaps minus the apron?
Everyone remembers Elizabeth in that tight white swimsuit in Suddenly Last Summer, the tulle prom dress in A Place in the Sun or the sexy slip in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but she was as equally as noteworthy in her off-duty style, which encompassed everything from the New Look of the fifties to the ethnic inspired looks of the seventies and onto the over-the-top ultra glitzy looks of the eighties (as befitted a star of her brightness). Elizabeth looked particularly ravishing in yellow (which she chose for her first wedding to Richard Burton and her 2 million wedding to Larry Fortensky) and she gave great resort wear as well as great glittery jewels. Enjoy! 
My regular readers will know that I am a huge Elizabeth Taylor fan. I've consumed a tonne of her movies, have read everything I can get my hands on about her and her life, and I've admired her ability to overcome obstacles such as grief and ill health to carve out a phenomenal career on the screen and stage, and in her charity work too. When Rock Hudson's battle with AIDS first became public he was actually kicked out of a French hospital; tragically that was the kind of stigma the disease carried then. Elizabeth's work in this arena was fundamental to changing the public perception of the disease + she raised tremendous sums of money for research. 
At US$194,800, Elizabeth Taylor's costume budget on Cleopatra was the biggest ever for a single actor, and the designer Renie must have been kept very busy as she had to come up with 64 outfit changes! The costumes, while not necessarily authentic to the period, were lavish and beautiful and set trends in the early 60s. Its not hard to see why they won an Oscar.
Dame Elizabeth is currently in hospital struggling with congestive heart failure. I hope she gets better and makes it home to her friends and family and jewels soon. I don't think any other actress could ever look as ravishing draped in genuine gold. 
All this Chanel talk has got me lusting after vintage Chanel suits. Suits or gowns, what a pity I can't afford either. Knock off anyone?
