Elizabeth Taylor’s Greatest Legacy

Elizabeth Taylor’s passing is one of the last links to Hollywood’s bygone glory years.  Whether you are from my grandparent’s generation, or a 10-year-old,  it is easy to  appreciate her movies:  her characters savaged Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; seethed with rage at Richard Burton during Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and made us cringe with horror in Suddenly, Last Summer.  She arguably was the greatest actress who ever lived--a compelling twist of glamour and guts.

Forget the marriages, the jewels, the tabloid foibles, the health issues.  Despite the fact that she lived a life about which many of us fantasize, but would want to trade in after 10 minutes of such a frenzied pace, she had a magnanimous personality that did not always show in a National Enquirer photo shoot or a Harry Winston display window.  Who could forget her regal yet humble appearance on The Tonight Show when she paid a visit to Johnny Carson a few weeks before he retired--he made a comment about how he made fun of his marriages, and immediately she dead-panned, “And mine, too!”--showing that all the flack she had received over the years was water off of a duck’s back.

Behind the violet eyes, however, was a deep sense of compassion, integrity, and moral rectitude.  She finally came into her own not when she won an Oscar after a tracheotomy, but when she took an unpopular stand in the 1980s:  to fight for AIDS research and to de-stigmatize the disease.

Already in her fifties, Ms. Taylor could have rested on her laurels and continue to travel the world, from Montenegro to Montserrat.  She instead took on a society, a president, and a hypocritical entertainment industry head-on.  Our President, Ronald Reagan, would not even say the word “AIDS”; other giant celebrities like Frank Sinatra would not support her nor lend a hand; and a country recoiled with fear, ignorance, and sick jokes at the mention of Ryan White or Rock Hudson.  She leveraged her celebrity to raise millions of dollars for HIV/AIDS research and to bring awareness about this horrible disease.  Because of Elizabeth Taylor and the doctors whose work she supported, we have long been unafraid and have compassion for AIDS sufferers.  While she peddled her perfumes, she took time, under the radar, to meet with, hug, and listen to AIDS patients.  The millions raised for AIDS research, the foundation of which was because of Taylor’s exhausting perseverance, has now given those afflicted with the HIV virus a second chance at a fulfilling life.

Time took its toll on Elizabeth Taylor, and 79 years was way too short a time for a woman who made an enormous impact, in a very enriching way, on our society.  Her greatest legacy was teaching us how to treat people who suffered the indignities of both disease and rejection.  And while we are sad at her passing, we will always have her movies to comfort us.