There can be a dark side to love, an obsessive, selfish, destructive impulse that–no matter how deeply passions run–can’t help but fire slings and arrows at the object of one’s affection and doom what might have been. And in Hollywood, nobody played out the roles of star-crossed, ill-fated lovers on a grander scale than Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
Elizabeth Taylor was a raven-haired, violet-eyed girl who was already making memorable appearances in 1940s films like Lassie Come Home and National Velvet before blossoming into one of the most beautiful women in the world and sidestepping obvious ingénue parts in favor of challenging, Oscar-worthy dramatic roles. Meanwhile, Richard Burton was a Welsh miner’s son whose crisp delivery and emotional intensity marked him early on as one of Britain’s finest actors, despite a shadowy propensity for drink that threatened to eclipse his on-screen accomplishments.
Both stars were already controversial figures (she lured fourth husband Eddie Fisher out of his marriage to her friend Debbie Reynolds; he was arrogant, outspoken and frequently inebriated) when they finally united in 1963 to film the bloated so-called epic Cleopatra. The movie became more famous for their off-screen affair than for anything else. Even before they’d broken the news to their respective jilted spouses, a frenzy of international headlines proclaimed “Liz and Dick’s” rendezvous to the world, prompting widespread criticism. “You’d think we were out to destroy Western civilization or something,” Burton observed after the furor died down.
Attracted by each other’s beauty, a shared love of excess and a delight in verbally skewering each other (“Well, I suppose I must don a breastplate once more to play opposite Miss Tits,” Burton once jousted), they swiftly tied the knot. The actor would later purchase a dazzling 69-carat pear-shaped diamond, one of the largest in the world, for his bride. The gigantic gem was permanently dubbed the Burton-Taylor diamond and later sold for $3 million in 1979 to an anonymous Saudi.
And despite the public’s supposed disdain for the Burton-Taylor dalliance, moviegoers turned out in droves for the couple’s films, including The V.I.P.s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedians, Dr. Faustus, Boom! and Hammersmith Is Out. The film that seemed to hew closest to the inner dynamics of the Burton-Taylor relationship, however, was 1966’s scathing-but-brilliant Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which they play a married couple whose romance has curdled into a caustic, brutal battle of wills fueled by alcohol and insecurity. Watching it, one can see painful glimpses of the demons that plagued their stormy union, most specifically the effects of the third party in the marriage: booze.
Like the movie, their relationship proved exhausting, yet addictive (the couple divorced in 1974, remarried a year later and split permanently the year after that). “It was probably the most chaotic time of my life,” said Taylor of their run. “It was fun, and it was dark–oceans of tears, but there were some good times, too.” And fortunately for movie lovers, some of those times–good and bad–are captured on film forever.
