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How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood Hardcover – October 21, 2009
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Elizabeth Taylor has never been short on star power, but in this unprecedented biography, the spotlight is entirely on herâa spirited beauty full of magic, professional daring, and wit.
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Acclaimed biographer William Mann follows Elizabeth Taylor publicly as she makes her ascent at MGM, falls into (and out of) marriages, wins Oscars, fights studio feuds, and combats America's conservative values with her decidedly modern love affairs. But he also shines a light on Elizabeth's rich private life, revealing a love for her craft and a loyalty to the underdog that fueled her lifelong battle against the studio system. Swathed in mink, disposing of husbands but keeping the diamondsâthis is Elizabeth Taylor as she lived and loved, breaking and making the rules in the game of supreme celebrity.
- Print length496 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHoughton Mifflin Harcourt
- Publication dateOctober 21, 2009
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100547134649
- ISBN-13978-0547134642
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In the 60s, Elizabeth Taylor's affair with the married Richard Burton knocked John Glenn's orbit of the moon off front pages nationwide. Yet, despite all the gossip, the larger-than-life personality and influence of this very human woman has never been captured. William Mann, praised by Gore Vidal, Patricia Bosworth, and Gerald Clarke for Kate, uses untapped sources and conversations to show how she ignited the sexual revolution with her on-and off-screen passions, helped kick down the studio system by taking control of her own career, and practically invented the big business of celebrity star-making. With unputdownable storytelling he tells the full truth without losing Taylor's magic, daring, or wit.
Readers will feel they are sitting next to Taylor as she rises at MGM, survives a marriage engineered for publicity, feuds with Hedda Hopper and Mr. Mayer, wins Oscars, endures tragedy, juggles Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton and her country's conservative values. But it is the private Elizabeth that will surprise--a woman of heart and loyalty, who defends underdogs, a savvy professional whose anger at the studio's treatment of her led to a lifelong battle against that very system. All the Elizabeth's are here, finally reconciled and seen against the exciting years of her greatest spirit, beauty, and influence. Swathed in mink, staring us down with her lavender eyes, disposing of husbands but keeping the diamonds, here is Elizabeth Taylor as she was meant to be, leading her epic life on her own terms, playing the game of supreme stardom at which she remains, to this day, unmatched.
A Q&A with William J. Mann, Author of How to Be a Movie Star
Q: There have been more books on Elizabeth Taylor than just about any other star in Hollywood. Why do we need another one?
A: As entertaining as some of those books have been, none has really explored how she did it--how she created the culture of celebrity that we have today. Elizabeth Taylor really invented the modern enterprise of fame. Everyone from Madonna to Britney to Miley Cyrus is taking a page from her book.
Q: How were you able to chart this phenomenon?
A: It's helpful to understand how Hollywood works. Publicists and press agents would like us to think everything is spontaneous and real. Hey, those two stars making a movie together just happened to fall in love on the set! That it also provides a publicity bonanza is completely separate. There was no coordination, no manipulation. At least that's what they'd like us to think.
Q: Was that true for Taylor then? Were her legendary romances all manufactured for how they'd play in the press?
A: Not at all. Elizabeth was and is a passionate, independent woman. She always believed in what she was doing. For example, I chronicle the frantic press coverage and feverish public interest in her first marriage, when she was just 18, to Nicky Hilton--who, incidentally, was Paris Hilton's granduncle. As a romantic teenager, Elizabeth was gung-ho about making the marriage work--no matter that MGM was stage-managing the whole thing. They pushed this innocent girl into a marriage that turned out to be abusive and traumatic for her all so they could publicize a film, Father of the Bride, which was timed to come out at the same time. So Elizabeth was a movie bride at the same time as she was a real-life bride, but real life had far more dire consequences.
Q: So that must have been an early lesson for her in star-making, albeit a very difficult one.
A: Certainly she learned early on how the game was played. But what's wonderful about Elizabeth is that she never became jaded or cynical or dishonest. In fact, I think she's one of the most authentic stars ever to come out of Hollywood. She never lied to the public the way other stars did. But previous biographies have limited their approach to simply chronicling her passionate heart--without taking into account how these romances and marriages and scandals actually benefited her career. She really did fall in love with Eddie Fisher and Richard Burton while they were married to other women. But that didn't mean she and those around her didn't understand just how advantageous the headlines could be for Elizabeth.
Q: But it's always been said that the scandals with Fisher and Burton threatened to end her career, that the studios worried the public would turn its back on such a "scarlet woman."
A: That's just the spin. That's what they had to say. It was the old conventional wisdom. But Elizabeth is actually a very important figure in terms of celebrity culture. More than anyone else, she bridges the divide between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood. Old Hollywood, represented by the studios and conservative columnists like Hedda Hopper, expected the scandals to destroy Elizabeth. Indeed, they did their best to make sure she was penalized. But Elizabeth, who was being advised by a new breed of canny publicists and agents, knew that in this emerging Hollywood, there really was no such thing anymore as bad publicity.
Q: She was pretty damn famous, wasn't she? Far more famous than anything we have today, like Britney and Paris and the rest?
A: Absolutely. Especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when everything she did made headlines. Husbands, romances, movies, health crises, diamonds. John Glenn was making his historic orbit of the Earth but many newspapers still went with the Taylor-Burton scandal in Rome as their top story.
Q: And this then became the norm for celebrity culture? It changed the concept of "news."
A: Exactly. In the past, serious publications wouldn't lower themselves to cover movie stars. But suddenly there were editorials about Elizabeth Taylor all across the country. She was an enormous cultural influence. She showed that one could still be famous outside of the old studio structure by engaging her own team of personal managers and press agents. As a child and teenaged star, she learned all those valuable lessons at MGM. Then she took what she had learned and made it work for her on her own. And turned out to be an even bigger star outside the studio than she was before.
Q: Was she a better actress or a better movie star?
A: I think Elizabeth would acknowledge that she excelled more often as "movie star" than she did as "actress." But she could really be damn good at times. Here's something that sets her apart from these modern-day stars who, whether they know it or not, are following her playbook. Elizabeth understood that fame is an exchange with the public. For every headline there needed to be a good movie. You had to give something back. She never simply coasted on her fame. Instead, she turned in some truly outstanding performances in A Place in the Sun, Giant, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf--there are others, but those are her four best, in my opinion.
Q: She's known for so many health crises. There was the time she almost died in London and the whole world watched and waited for news. How true was all that?
A: Everything's true with Elizabeth. Whether or not she was as critical as she and those around her claimed, there's no doubting the sincerity of the experience for her. But even still, that shouldn't discount just how brilliant she and her publicists were in using that experience to her advantage. A year before, in the wake of the Fisher scandal, she had been tarred as Hollywood's home-wrecker. Now she was hailed as Lazarus back from the grave. In the book, I document the fascinating process of how this particular episode played out in the press and then climaxed with her winning her first Academy Award. It's a perfect illustration of the book's title:How to Be a Movie Star.
Q: So you're saying that Elizabeth Taylor was far more shrewd than we've been led to believe.
A: Absolutely. Far, far more shrewd. You know, "smart" has never been the first word that comes to mind when we think of Elizabeth Taylor. Glamorous, beautiful, alluring, sure. But in fact she was perhaps the smartest of all the old stars in knowing how to both maintain her fame and preserve a real private life as well. She didn't sacrifice personal happiness on the altar of fame, as so many others did. She had both.
Q: Would modern-day Hollywood exist without Elizabeth Taylor?
A: Well, it sure would look a heck of lot different. Elizabeth was the first female star to demand a million dollars a picture and a percent of the grosses. The deals she struck in the early 1960s really changed the financial structure of Hollywood. When she heard not long ago that Julia Roberts was getting something like twenty million a picture, she just smiled and said, "I started it." I think it's a perfect irony that a woman who so loathed the old studio system helped create the business model that replaced it.
Q: What else do you reveal about Elizabeth that we never knew before?
A: There's considerable new information on her mother, a fascinating woman in her own right, as well about as Mike Todd, Elizabeth's third husband who really set her on the road to the kind of extraordinary fame she eventually enjoyed. There are some important re-considerations on how she met and married Todd, and the same with Eddie Fisher, and then Richard Burton. It's so important to understand these people's lives in context with everyone else that was happening around them, and I attempt to do that here with Elizabeth, to not have her life read like pages from some old Photoplay magazine.
Q: But to do that, you need fresh sources. Did you find new sources writing the book?
A: I was fortunate to get many people close to Elizabeth to speak with me, both on and off the record. I was also able to get my hands on important documents that had never been used before or severely under-utilized. A journal kept by the producer of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf allowed me to get an inside, up-close view of the making of that picture. George Stevens' personal papers recreated the intimate day-to-day production of Giant and A Place in the Sun. Then there were Hedda Hopper's private letters and Mike Todd's FBI files and records from the MGM legal department and depositions Elizabeth gave in the lawsuit Fox brought against her. You really have dig out this new stuff or else you end up relying on old newspaper clippings, which are recycled by every biographer.
Photographs from How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood
(Click on Images to Enlarge)
1939: Elizabeth with her mother Sara, and brother Howard 1941: Elizabeth's first publicity photo, Universal Studios 1945: Elizabeth posing with Roddy McDowall Early 1950s: Publicity photo (photo not included in the book)
From Publishers Weekly
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Review
—Peter Richmond, author of Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee
"Was Elizabeth Taylor the greatest product of the Hollywood star machine or its greatest victim? Or was she, perhaps, its inventor? At a time when celebrity culture seems to be spiraling out of control, William J. Mann's smart, engaging, clear-eyed case study of Taylor's unique life in the spotlight locates the 'real' person somewhere between her private life and her public image. It's a fresh, unique and wholly successful approach to a fascinating story."
—Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood
"A dazzling and sagacious red-carpet Technicolor guide book to the lost art of Stardom . . . essential reading for aspiring love goddesses and mere mortals alike."
—Lee Server, author of the bestselling Ava Gardener: "Love is Nothing"
"When I saw Elizabeth Taylor in person, I suddenly found myself screaming like a teen at a Beatles concert. Mann deftly describes how, with great self-assurance, Taylor shrewdly and methodically orchestrated that reaction on a global scale. This is a smart book about a surprisingly savvy superstar. It's one of the best Hollywood biographies I've ever read."
--Ed Sikov, author of Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis
"William J. Mann's portrait is meticulous and delicious, capturing the essence of a great movie star, a woman who epitomized the old Hollywood glamour even as she was bucking the system--every system! Through shrewd and intriguing detail, this lively book brings fresh insight into why and how Elizabeth Taylor mesmerized the world she was helping to change."
--Julie Salamon, author of The Devil's Candy and Hospital
"This is a juicy telling of a screen idol who always did things her own way." --San Luis Obispo Tribune
"...a richly enjoyable biography..." --The Sunday Times (UK)
"William Mann has picked the perfect title for a biography of Taylor. She was, truly, the last great movie star." --The Oregonian
"...she knew by instinct, generations before today's crop of starlets, how to interface her personal and professional lives with the public, who adored her for it. Taylor lived out loud, and the world sang along to her tune." --EDGE New York
"...the sorts of details a reader craves...all are rendered with a verve and fluidity that keep the book moving along in a fleet fashion. [Mann] has clearly done his research and just as clearly adores his subject [...] Taylor was at the furious center of it all, and provides as handy and captivating a guide through [the era] as any star of the 20th century could." --The New York Times Book Review
"Mann's eminently yummy entry is pretty much everything you'd want in a Hollywood biography... What does make How to Be a Movie Star distinctive is its focus on the changing nature of personal fame as embodied by a woman whose life has consisted of one superlative after another." --Salon.com
"William J. Mann's ridiculously entertaining biography of Elizabeth Taylor in her Hollywood heyday is yummier than digging into a hot-fudge sundae and a stack of Us Weeklys." --USA Today
"William J. Mann dissects the crafty machinations of her stardom..." --Bookpage
"...wickedly entertaining biography..." --The Times (UK)
"Mann shows what all the fuss was about." --The New York Post
"Mann is carving out a niche for himself as a writer and historian capable of presenting fresh information about oft-covered subjects." --The Washington Blade
"This is an entertaining work, revealing much of the machinery behind star-building and star-maintaining back in the day. The trajectory of gossip queen Hedda Hopper's relationship with Elizabeth--from adoration to loathing--is deliciously conveyed. [...] Mr. Mann does an excellent job capturing the media/public frenzy of her greatest years..." --Liz Smith, for wowOwow.com
"...brilliant combination of history, criticism, and biography...Mann has found the perfect figure for an exploration of the seismic changes that took place in Hollywood--and in American pop culture--between the 1940s and the 1960s. It's a terrific read." --Connecticut News
"Mann's book underscores the fact that Elizabeth Taylor is--above all else--a survivor...Perhaps that is why she is so relevant and remains, even more than half a century later, one of the country's most fascinating celebrities." --Lincoln Tribune
"Reading this life is like gorging on a chocolate sundae." (Publishers Weekly 2009-08-31)
"This is a juicy telling of a screen idol who always did things her own way." (San Luis Obisbo Tribune 2009-09-30)
"...a richly enjoyable biography..." (The Sunday Times (UK) 2009-10-04)
"William Mann has picked the perfect title for a biography of Taylor. She was, truly, the last great movie star." (The Oregonian 2009-09-29)
"...she knew by instinct, generations before today’s crop of starlets, how to interface her personal and professional lives with the public, who adored her for it. Taylor lived out loud, and the world sang along to her tune." (EDGE New York 2009-10-15)
"...the sorts of details a reader craves...all are rendered with a verve and fluidity that keep the book moving along in a fleet fashion... [Mann] has clearly done his research and just as clearly adores his subject."
"Taylor was at the furious center of it all, and provides as handy and captivating a guide through [the era] as any star of the 20th century could."
(Frank Bruni New York Times Book Review 2009-10-25)"Mann's eminently yummy entry is pretty much everything you'd want in a Hollywood biography... What does make How to Be a Movie Star distinctive is its focus on the changing nature of personal fame as embodied by a woman whose life has consisted of one superlative after another." (Salon.com 2009-10-19)
"William J. Mann's ridiculously entertaining biography of Elizabeth Taylor in her Hollywood heyday is yummier than digging into a hot-fudge sundae and a stack of Us Weeklys." (USA Today 2009-10-20)
About the Author
WILLIAM J. MANN is the author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, which was named a New York Times Notable Book, as well as several other acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. He divides his time between Provincetown, Massachusetts, and New York City.
Product details
- Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (October 21, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0547134649
- ISBN-13 : 978-0547134642
- Item Weight : 1.72 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,814,741 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,472 in Rich & Famous Biographies
- #14,010 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies
- #18,378 in Women's Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
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I live in two of the most beautiful places on the planet ' Provincetown, Massachusetts, with its exquisite light and ever-shifting dunes in the summer and the fall, and Palm Springs, California, with its majestic mountains and invigorating desert air in the winter and the spring. I am indeed blessed.
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1. She gave up her US citizenship to avoid income taxes and kept her British citizenship. That meant she was not actually a US citizen when she was married to Senator Warner. She lost some of my respect there and so did he. Of course it was obvious he just used her to get elected.
2. The public hysteria was not spontaneous, it was hype generated by Taylor's personal publicists. I did not know that before I read this book.
3. She did not actually raise her several children herself, hired nannies did it and she just visited with the kids for a little while in the evenings. On the one hand, I think she would have been a better, more grounded person if she had been a more involved, hands-on mother, but on the other hand, it might have been hard on the kids. So who knows.
4. Mann tries to make the case that Taylor was single-handedly responsible for changing the times sociologically. I disagree. Times change, yes, but there are many factors involved. Taylor was just acting out the "me first want it all now no matter what" excesses that were normal for her. Typical of an addict, indulging her addictions was what her life revolved around, and so she could not understand the effect her behavior was having on other people.
5. Taylor never really succeeded in making the transition from film star to actress because she had no interest in doing that. She had no interest in acting. She just wanted to be a rich famous celebrity because of the lifestyle it afforded her, and wanted to marry a rich man to keep her. She was tired of working for a living and had the idea a woman is nothing without a man. So I guess she was a product of the thinking of that era. I think that is at the bottom of her many marriages, antiquated thinking.
6. Taylor's last major film was 1966 which is why I didn't know much about her before I read this book. It was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
7. Taylor managed to turn in a real acting performance with movies she made with Burton after the Cleopatra disaster, because she had his coaching and she wanted to please him. She never did anything noteworthy regarding acting after they split and her acting never ranked with the likes of Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, or Sandy Dennis for example because she coasted on her looks. Her attempt at stage acting when she was married to Warner was because she was bored and trying to find something to do to get her out of town since she didn't fit in with the other Washington wives.
All in all, a very interesting book.
The Elizabeth Taylor we discover within these delicious pages---stunningly well lit by millions of paparazzi through the decades---is a talented actress with a voracious appetite. An appetite for fame, for men, for diamonds, for food, for booze, for privacy, for motherhood and finally for more men. What Elizabeth seems to have little appetite for is what first made her famous: her acting.
Reading Mann's gorgeous book I got an inkling of why Elizabeth became such devoted friends with Michael Jackson. Both were thrust into the limelight against their will by bullying parents (her mother/his father) at an impossibly early age. Both tasted fame at that early age but then began to lose their fame as they aged. Both then became even more monstrously famous. In different decades, but very similarly, Elizabeth and Michael each were the most talked about person on planet earth.
Ms. Taylor's lack of true love for acting and her insatiable need for baubles, bust-ups and booze caused her to make some truly, truly dreadful late-in-her-career films. But her fans must be thankful that she never followed other screen divas down the horror movie path. (Paging Trog!) And we fans can be truly thankful for the many good movies Ms. Taylor did grace the screen in. And Elizabeth's late-in-life AIDS philanthropy (not really dealt with in this book) in many ways outshines even her greatest screen performances.
Thank you, William Mann, for hitting another home run out of the park. I can't wait to read your next beautifully-researched and delicious bio. Could I interest you in a book about 60's British Female Stars? I believe Vanessa, Glenda and Julie are awaiting your discerning eye and pen. Bravo!
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Worth a read though.


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