‘Get off your asses for these old broads!’: Elizabeth Taylor, ageing and the television comeback movie

Abstract

The global response to the news of the death of Elizabeth Taylor underlined this actress's status as a remarkably enduring example of female celebrity whose prominence in the media spotlight lasted without interruption from childhood through to old age. Given the cultural investment in Taylor's younger, glamorous image, however, her later celebrity has at times suffered by comparison, with certain sections of the media wont to resort to reductive, demeaning caricatures of the actress or to privilege the potency of her younger image in ways that deny the realities of her ageing altogether. This article maintains that such approaches overlook a complex fluidity to her on-screen presence (noticeable from her childhood career onwards) and her significance as a highly compelling example of ageing female celebrity who managed to articulate an ongoing, still evolving sense of personhood. It moves on to address the neglected role that television played in negotiating the actress's transition from Hollywood movie star to older female celebrity, examining how her performing/star identity is developed through a trio of television movies that are explicitly concerned with the notion of the ageing female star making a comeback and the issues to do with selfhood and identity arising from this.

Keywords:

• Elizabeth Taylor
• ageing
• television
• comeback

Notes

1. See, for example, Wansel (n.d.) or for a more celebratory account; see Lampert (2010).

2. See, for example, Associated Press, 2008. The following comment by Taylor is also widely quoted on the Internet: ‘There's still so much more to do. … I can't sit back and be complacent, and none of us should be. I get around now in a wheelchair, but I get around’, 2005. See, for example, ‘Elizabeth Taylor's Legacy: AIDS’ First Famous Advocate’, abcNEWS/Entertainment, 2011 [online]. Available from: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/elizabeth-taylors-legacy-aids-famous-advocate/story?id=13206564&page=2 [Accessed 28 June 2011].

3. The American Foundation for AIDS research (amfAR) ‘is dedicated to ending the global AIDS epidemic through innovative research.‘ It was formed through the unification of AMF [‘the AIDS Medical Foundation … founded in April 1983’] with the like-minded National AIDS Research Foundation, which had been incorporated in California in August 1985. To reflect the increasingly international scope of its programs, in 2005 amfAR became simply The Foundation for AIDS Research, amfAR.org website [online] (References taken from: http://www.amfar.org/amfar/history/ and http://www.amfar.org/page.aspx?id=4616 [Accessed 3 August 2011]). In 1993, Taylor founded ‘The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF)’, which was ‘created to provide critically needed support services for people with HIV/AIDS and prevention education for populations most in need.’ She enabled ETAF to operate ‘at zero overhead cost’ due to personal underwriting of ‘all expenses for raising and administering the Foundation's funds’ [online]. Available from: http://www.elizabethtayloraidsfoundation.org/ [Accessed 3 August 2011].