Art and life
Much of this is captured – right down to Alexander’s golden, now lost, sarcophagus – in the 1963 movie “Cleopatra.” Has there ever been another movie in which the story served as a metaphor for what was going on off-camera? Just as Cleo and Tony fell for each other, Liz and Dick – as the tabloids dubbed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton – fell for each other while playing Cleopatra and her Antony. Depending on whether she or he were telling the story, they either met in 1950s Hollywood at the home she then shared with her second husband, Michael Wilding (her version) or at a pool party given by Stewart Granger and his wife (and Burton’s “The Robe” co-star) Jean Simmons (his take). In either case, he was the wild Welsh-born Shakespearean on the make, in more ways than one. (Fittingly enough, one of his early roles was Alexander the Great.) She was the coolly appraising established star determined not to be another notch on the Burton belt.
But on the sultry, seemingly endless set of “Cleo” in the Eternal City, determination gave way to passion. Soon it was a paparazzi-punctuated, Vatican-denouncing tale of divorce, marriage, divorce, remarriage, globe-trotting, jewelry, box office hits, a six-pack of kids from various marriages, box-office bonanzas and more jewelry that ended with his death in 1984. (Taylor died last year.)
Brangelina is nothing compared to this duo. But then, few couples ever were. According to “Furious Love,” Sam Kashner and Nancy Shoenberger’s juicy recent rehash of the Taylor-Burton romance, Burton sequestered himself on the last day of his life in the study of his Swiss home, surrounded by the 1,000 volumes Taylor had given him, and wrote her a letter.
He later died in his sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage. So among his last thoughts were those of her.
(Editors, please note: This is a companion piece to the preceding story)
Thank God for the British royals. They allow us to enjoy all the romantic drama of monarchy while feeling smugly superior that we don’t have one:
The lioness in summer
The French-identified Plantagenets, who ruled England through the Middle Ages, were the Rolls Royce of royal families. And no one out-Plantageneted them more than the founding matriarch, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Here was a woman who had it all – beauty, brains, talent, money, land, power, influence, a memorable brood and not one but two kingly husbands. The first was Louis VII of France, whom she accompanied on a crusade to the Holy Land. This union, which produced two girls, was a bit of a dud. So faster than you can say “irreconcilable differences,” the marriage was dissolved.
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