Elizabeth Taylor as Martha in WHO's AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?

Elizabeth Taylor


How many 33 year old actresses today would take on a mid-forties ball-chopping drunk? Not many. Even in a Pulitzer Prize winning play. No, no, no, they'd be to concerned how it would affect future roles. Female Actors today the first thing they look for is age. 'Can't we make her a little younger?' They all wanna go younger. Can't really blame them, right? Vicious business... kept your children out. The business has changed a lot since Liz Taylor's stunning, Oscar winning role Edward Albee's / Mike Nichols film version of WHO's AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF.  I said in the beginning of writing my lil SIGNATURE ROLES Blog that I'd only write about Female Actors since 1970, but I'm making a special amendment to my rule the day of Elizabeth Taylor's death. Her performance was and is still one of the best pieces of film acting ever. Her Martha is a ruthless, fierce, a thunderbolt of rage and unacknowledged grief. She enters hard, like a wheel barrel of bricks being dumped on your front porch, and never let's up - until the last moment. Her hard thrust and power is an equal match to the amazing film-making.

Back in the day, studio boss Jack Warner was insistent on keeping the integrity of the play, (Juan val Juan - what's this ? a studio head protecting the writer - those days are long, long gone.) and the teaming of real-life husband and wife mega-stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the film was guaranteed success. The two portrayed an on-screen couple: a sharp-tongued but ineffectual professor (Burton) and his complaining wife (Taylor), in the company of a new professor (Segal) and his mousy wife (Dennis). (*The couple had originally been teamed in the mega-flop Cleopatra (1963). Robert Redford rejected the role played by George Segal.) It turned out to be roles of a lifetime for everyone involved.

The black-and-white film, masterfully directed by Mike Nichols (in his directorial screen debut), captured the greatest performance ever of Elizabeth Taylor's career (she won her second Academy Award as well as Best Actress praises from the New York Film Critics, the Nat'l Board of Review and the British Film Academy).

God, where do I start. You take every choice Elizabeth made, with the help of Mike Nichols, and write volumes on / for young actors - this performance is how it's done right. Playing a drunk, the husky-tragic voice, her laugh (howl), the physicality, her mannerisms (the way she pointed her finger / gestures with her hands - genius). She makes all the right choices and puts more choices on-top of those, it's layer after layer of brilliance. This performance is in the gut. That's where it hits you and that's where she centers her performance. Daring stuff. (Did I mention she was 33. 33 years old.) When she laughs, her whole body buckles and shakes - the head goes flying back. Scary and dangerous. Taylor is the driving force of the film  - her heartbeat is the pace of the film. From the first scene - the camera is kept close on her, prying; giving us a sense of her insides - her very breath, bad breath, held breath; tracking her face - her rhythm - her sudden withdrawals and then plugging us close again for lots of pores and bile. 

Elizabeth Taylor always talked about how instrumental Mike Nichols was for her during the preparation process - developing Martha. They had long talks about Martha's hair, her voice, her clothes, the way she moved...God, would I have loved to have heard those conversations. 

Martha is a restless spirit, perhaps a former beauty with nothing left but her wits and the only thing that will entertain  her is the dark repartee she has with the only person on the planet that understands  her - her husband. Whom she lovingly brutalizes, (sounds like most marriages I know), and treats horribly. George and Martha are platonic soul-mates, perfectly suited to one another. Emblematic of the death cult of modern society, they have descended into a folie a deux, locked in a sadomasochistic love-hate relationship, which neither of them can live without. Too, George and Martha (like the Father and Mother of Our Country) have spawned dreams which have only been dashed.

 The film is a classic largely due to Elizabeth Taylor's risky no-holds-barred relentless achievement. Those sweet, soft edges that we came to know and love were wiped away completely in her Martha. She destroyed everything is her path. Give me that second Oscar baby! Is this what Liz is really like in person? The performance was so real and so jarring for people at the time - people started to question Hollywood persona's - what the heck is going on here? We've never seen this side of you Liz... Unfortunately, we never will again. Movie Star, Life Saver ( and I mean that sincerely: Life Saver), Actress. You will be missed. There have been many Signature Roles in her lifetime but none greater than her Martha. Thank you Elizabeth Taylor - your time on earth was well spent. You kicked some serious ass.


As mother would often say when a legend past away, "They don't make em like that anyone."