New Elizabeth Taylor Documentary Examines Her Celebrity and Treatment By the Media in Her Words

Before Princess Diana, or Michael Jackson, or Britney Spears, there was Elizabeth Taylor. The first mega star of the modern era, she was isolated, hounded and, for a time, undone by fame. In “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes,” director Nanette Burstein has reconstructed Taylor’s life through 40 hours of recently unearthed audio tapes recorded over several weeks in 1964, with “Life” magazine writer Richard Meryman. The interviews were for a memoir that is no longer in print, and probably did not achieve anything close to the brutal candor of Taylor’s own words. The audio tapes were found several years ago in the attic of Meryman’s home and then given to Taylor’s estate. Sound designer Tom Paul has done an admirable job cleaning up the recordings, which were not always in a quiet room. “Sometimes [the interviews] were in her house and the sound quality was good,” Burstein tells WWD. “Other times they were at a nightclub. At one point, they were on a houseboat, right next to the engine room. There was this horrible flonking noise in the background.” Interestingly, Roddy McDowell, whom Taylor met when they were child costars in “Lassie Come Home,” was present for some of Meryman’s interviews with

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from WWDRecent Stories https://ift.tt/dq0f2uW