Elizabeth Taylor, the most beautiful woman in Hollywood history, was married eight times, detoxed three times, and won two Oscars, but what marked her life was the tragic death of her friend Rock Hudson in the 1980s due to AIDS.
In the 1980s, Elizabeth Taylor completely rebuilt her life around a mission no one wanted to take on: the fight against AIDS. The tragic experience of her friend Rock Hudson of hers made her see how the institutions turned their backs on what was then called the 'gay plague'. Together they changed everything.
Elizabeth Taylor, one of the last representatives of the golden age of Hollywood, when the stars still had glamour, mystery, and magic, has been missing from our global star system for ten years now. The truth is that Taylor (London, 1932-Los Angeles, 2011) could well have been the hinge that separated two incomparable centuries: although she was subjected to the studio system that prevailed in the mecca of cinema in the 1940s (with some leonine exclusive contracts that included how they should dress, wear their hair or behave in public), she also became the first actress to earn a million dollars per movie, she was an even more famous 'celebrity' and with more covers than Kim Kardashian and her personal life sparked as much interest as that of Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston or Gwyneth Paltrow. In fact, she was one of the first stars to turn to activism. She used her fame to make visible one of the cruelest diseases of the 20th century.
A child star in 'National Velvet' and a youthful star in 'Little Women', Elizabeth Taylor made her best films in the 1950s and 1960s: 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', 'Suddenly Last Summer', ' Cleopatra', 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'… At 34 she already had two Oscars and was starring in the most notorious scandal in Hollywood. In 1958, she was widowed from her third marriage to producer Mike Todd (she married the heir to the Hilton chain at 18 and actor Michael Wilding at 20) and embarked on a romance with singer Eddie Fisher, which left his wife, the adored actress Debbie Reynolds. Taylor was the evil husband-stealing femme fatale for years, though she eventually left Fisher for Richard Burton, Mark Antony in 'Cleopatra.' She would marry him twice, in addition to beginning her romance with luxury and excess, including alcohol and sleeping pills or being awake.
Following Richard Burton's divorce and his death in the 1970s, Elizabeth Taylor began a painful transition from an already waning stardom to a new status to be defined. She remarried in 1976, this time to the Republican politician John Warner, and from her she learned the intricacies of influence in Washington, something that would be very useful to her during her activist stage. They broke up in 1981, with Taylor permanently gripped by depression and addicted to alcohol and pills. In fact, she was one of the first stars to speak openly about detoxification and confessed to admitting her to the famous Betty Ford clinic, where in 1988 she met her seventh and last husband, Larry Fortensky, a construction worker. She sold the exclusive on this wedding to People magazine for a million dollars and used the money to create the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation, her most beloved creation and her true work of art.
Throughout the 1980s, Elizabeth Taylor knew how to transform from a star of the old cinema in decline, to an intelligent businesswoman, capable of founding a cosmetic empire around perfumes that would pay her more money than all her films combined. her. However, the deepest metamorphosis had to do with the disease that afflicted his great friend Rock Hudson, with whom he filmed 'Giant', a kind of 'Gone with the Wind' set in Texas and with James Dean, and that took thousands of people due to the passivity of the health authorities: AIDS. Throughout the decade, the mobilization to investigate treatment and a cure for the so-called 'gay plague', AIDS, was minimal. In fact, many people died due to secrecy, taboo, and shame that pushed the gay community to hide symptoms, income, and deaths.
On July 23, 1985, Elizabeth Taylor flew into a rage at a report in 'Variety' magazine that Rock Hudson was receiving treatment for AIDS. She was wrong: it was true that her great friend had hidden the disease from her and that it would end up exhausting her life a few months later. It was at that moment that she realized what was happening with AIDS. "I kept seeing the news about the new disease, but I wondered why nobody did anything," the actress told the same magazine. "When I realized that I wasn't contributing much either, I decided to help." In addition to paying her friend's medical bills, the first thing she did was start collaborating with AIDS Project Los Angeles, the organization that cared for the sick in her city.
During Rock Hudson's last admission to the UCLA Medical Center hospital, Elizabeth Taylor's visits were frequent. Her doctor at that trance and discoverer of the virus, Michael Gottlieb, recalled that the actress was worried about whether she could kiss him or not. "She asked me if she could hug him and kiss him, not because she was afraid of getting it, but because of him. She was afraid of being a danger to a tremendously immunocompromised nervous system," explained the doctor. Shortly before his death, the actor made his illness public, an announcement that caused an unusual wave of solidarity that would change everything. In fact, American activists always talk about before and after this recognition.
After the death of Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor co-founded amfAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) and her own foundation, also dedicated to raising funds for research and assistance to organizations that support patients and families. "He embarked on a tour across the country and around the world to raise funds and draw attention to the disease, something no other celebrity did," Gottlieb recalled. At that time, she was able to put into practice everything she learned during her time in Washington, where she managed to organize an amfAR gala in 1987 attended by President Ronald Reagan, who in seven years in office had never spoken about AIDS. Shortly after, she sold her impressive jewelry collection, which included the pilgrim, a necklace that belonged to Felipe II valued at $11.8 million, for nearly $120 million. They were upright in the fight against AIDS.
