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New biography paints an inspiring picture of Taylor
American
celebrity biographer Ellis Amburn has never interviewed 
Elizabeth
Taylor, but he figures he understands the actress better than most. Amburn
never met Richard Burton either, yet he claims the hell-raising actor,
whose tempestuous love affair with Taylor spanned two marriages and two
divorces, was secretly gay. His assertion that Burton, an alcoholic who
died in 1984, after a life chasing pretty women, had a clandestine affair
with leading British actor Sir Laurence Olivier, is the most astounding
claim in his book, The Most Beautiful Woman In The World (Harper Collins).
Like much of the material in the latest unauthorised biography of Taylor,
Amburn’s conclusions about Burton result from snippets from other
biographies, memoirs and interviews Amburn conducted with minor Hollywood
players. “I put together things, including Burton’s own statements
that had been previously written off as having no significance,”
Amburn said, rejecting suggestions that his evidence was flimsy.
Burton’s brother Graham Jenkins has called Amburn’s claims “rubbish,”
telling British media “If Richard was a homosexual, then I’m
a nun. If you had ever met my brother, you wouldn’t have a moment’s
doubt — he loved women and was heterosexual through and through.”
He added, “I just wish Elizabeth Taylor would make a public comment
about this, but I know she won’t,” Jenkins added.
The 68-year-old screen diva, who has survived eight marriages, a brain
tumour, and treatment for drug and alcohol addiction to emerge as a champion
of AIDS awareness, has chosen to remain silent on that claim and others
in the book.
Amburn’s requests for an interview with Taylor while writing his
book also went unanswered, but he said he never wanted to write an official
biography about Taylor anyway. “I like my freedom. I wanted to go
get the real story, rather than some self-serving version,” he told
Reuters.
Amburn, whose previous books include biographies of Buddy Holly and Jack
Kerouac (whom he also portrays as a homosexual in denial), believes he
has come up with some fresh insights into Taylor’s emotional life,
which he describes as “the most misunderstood erotic voyage of the
20th century.” Taylor’s romance with Burton (she has called
him one of only two real loves in her life) was doomed, not because they
were both heavy drinkers with quick tempers, and broken marriages already
behind them, but mainly because Burton was “not entirely heterosexual,”
asserts Amburn. “His alcoholism and homosexuality fed into each other,
and drove him to seek out women and then abuse them,” he writes,
“Richard, like Elizabeth’s father, exploited her even as he
resented her, insanely jealous because her notoriety and income exceeded
his own.”
What also makes his book different from some other accounts of the controversial
star is that Amburn insists he likes Taylor, whom he first saw in Las
Vegas in 1960, when he was in his 20s, and she was at her most beautiful.
“It took my breath away, seeing her up close,” he recalled.
Thirty-five years and more plot twists than a soap opera later, Amburn
started work on his bid to draw a psychological portrait of the screen
idol who beat the odds and survived. “I felt I understood her love
life. She is one of the most interesting women of our times,” he
said, “All the previous books about her didn’t seem to like
her, and thought of her as selfish and manipulative. I hope this book
will help people to see her differently, to admire her as someone who
had the guts to make the transition, from the indulgences of youth through
the crises of middle age, and emerge as an inspiring figure in her senior
years.”
Amburn’s thesis is that Taylor’s childhood with an alcoholic
father, who she says, “batted me around a bit,” affected her
so deeply, it endangered every love relationship of her adult life. Amburn
groups her eight marriages and 17 romances into two distinct groups: sexual
but lacking in love such as her marriages to Eddie Fisher and Larry Fortensky;
and asexual but loving with men of ambiguous sexuality such as Montgomery
Clift, James Dean and Malcolm Forbes.
Seemingly drawing on almost every comment, account or interview by anyone
who ever met Taylor or those close to her, he paints a picture of a woman
more sinned against than sinning, whose efforts in later life to stay
sober, lose weight and spearhead a celebrity campaign for AIDS care and
research represent a stunning turnaround. “To many she remains the
most beautiful woman in the world, not so much because of her physical
appearance, though she’s striking enough, but because of what she
has become inside,” writes Amburn.
He said his next project is a biography (unauthorised of course) of actor
Warren Beatty. “Here is a man who knows how to manipulate power and
money and women. And people are fascinated with that.”