In 1964, Life magazine published a lengthy article about Elizabeth Taylor, titled “Our Eyes Have Fingers,” referencing a quote from the actress describing the extraordinary magnetism she shared with her fifth husband, Richard Burton, from whom she would later divorce before starring in another marriage and subsequent divorce with him. That text was the result of nearly 40 hours of conversation Taylor had with Richard Meryman Jr. for the autobiographical book – Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor, published in early 1965 – for which the journalist was hired as a ghostwriter.
Sixty years later, those recordings are the backbone of Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, a documentary directed by Nanette Burstein recently released on HBO Max that offers an intimate look at the turbulent life of the actress, utilizing fragments from her films, archival footage, home videos, and personal photos.
Given the limitations imposed by its audio base, although Taylor lived until she was 79 – passing away in 2011 due to heart failure – the film primarily revisits periods and episodes corresponding to the first half of her life, including her contract with the production company Metro Goldwyn Mayer that made her a child star, the first six of her eight marriages, and her rise to superstardom thanks to films like National Velvet (1944), Little Women (1949), Father of the Bride (1950), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). By the mid-60s, the actress had just premiered Cleopatra (1963), at that time the most expensive film in history – so costly that it nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox – had begun a relationship with Burton so controversial that even the Vatican condemned it, and was about to start filming Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1965), the film that would officially showcase her acting talent. “All I’ve accomplished is being a star who has delivered a decent performance one or two times,” she is heard lamenting at one point in the documentary. “I’m not satisfied with what I’ve achieved; I want to improve.”
Considering how meticulously calculated public access to the private lives of celebrities is today – no Instagram post is casual or spontaneous – it may be surprising how candidly Taylor speaks to Meryman. “What do you think your public image is?” he asks, and she replies: “I’d say they see me as an unreliable, completely superficial woman […] Maybe because of my personal life, I give the impression of being immoral, but I am not. I’ve made mistakes and have paid for them, but it hasn’t been enough. I know I’ll never be able to pay fully.” The harassment that the actress and Burton faced at the time from paparazzi is one of the main reasons she is considered one of the first modern celebrities today. “The Elizabeth that my family knows is a real person; the other Elizabeth Taylor, the famous one, really has no depth or meaning for me, she’s just a commodity that makes money,” she explains at another moment in the film. “One Elizabeth is flesh and blood, and the other is cellophane.”
Taylor was established as a sex symbol from the very beginning of her teenage years, and largely for that reason, she was forced to grow up very quickly. “I wasn’t prepared to be an adult; I had been overprotected,” she recalls in the new film. “And the consequence of that is that I made terrible mistakes.” By the age of 18, she had already gone through her first divorce, followed by a string of romances, failed marriages, and scandals during which she repeatedly lost and regained the favor of both the public and the media; she attributes these fluctuations to the Oscar she won for BUtterfield 8 (1960), a movie she detested: “I won because I had just had a tracheotomy,” she states, referring to the near-pneumonia that had nearly cost her life during the filming of Cleopatra.
Tragedy, in fact, is a recurring theme in The Lost Tapes, which addresses the deaths of both Taylor’s friends like James Dean – who died in 1955 from a car accident – and Rock Hudson – who died from AIDS-related complications in 1985 – as well as that of her third husband, Mike Todd, who lost his life in 1958 due to a plane crash. The devastation she suffered as a result is essential to explain why she immediately married Eddie Fisher, a friend of Todd’s and at the time husband of actress Debbie Reynolds. “I don’t remember too much about my marriage to him, except that it was a huge and terrible mistake,” Taylor tells Meryman when asked about Fisher. At another point, she recounts how her first husband, Nicky Hilton, kicked her in the stomach causing her to have a miscarriage just months after they married. “I don’t think I ever tried to be alone,” she admits, referring to her unfortunate partner choices.
“Would you like a drink, dear? Shall we turn off the little machine now?” the actress asks Meryman once their conversation ends. Alcohol was a constant, and often excessive, presence in her life. The Lost Tapes concludes with a series of excerpts from an interview the actress had in 1985 with journalist Dominick Dunne, after having spent some time detoxifying at the Betty Ford Center. During those final moments, Burstein also attempts to advocate for the efforts made by the actress in the fight against AIDS, which contrast more strikingly with all the footage that precedes it, exposing her attempts to complete her portrait with especially flattering strokes. That detail, in any case, in no way diminishes the film’s value. For decades, Elizabeth Taylor’s life was a narrative constructed by men: the lovers who passed through her life, the directors who turned her into an object of desire, the journalists who flattered her one day and humiliated her the next. Now, at last, we hear her tell it in her own words.