Elizabeth Taylor

July 1, 2022

Author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Residence, Brower interviewed more than 250 of Elizabeth Taylor's closest friends and family for this authorized biography and had access to the family and estate's archives. Some secret spilling here, including the contents of a sealed letter marked "ET PERSONAL--DO NOT OPEN"; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2022
A celebrity life marked by booze, men, and incomparable fame. Journalist Brower draws on the capacious archives of actor and philanthropist Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)--7,358 letters, diary entries, articles, and personal notes and 10,271 photographs--as well as interviews with her friends and family, to produce an appreciative biography of the iconic celebrity. "Elizabeth," Brower writes, "led the most glamorous and colorful life of any movie star in the world," appearing in 56 films and 10 TV movies. After a small part in Lassie Come Home, in 1943, she was cast as the star of National Velvet, leading to a long-term contract with MGM. Taylor chafed under an exploitative, controlling studio system as well as her controlling mother, who was "singularly obsessed with making her daughter a star." She escaped her family by getting married, at 18, to Nicky Hilton, son of Conrad, who turned out to be an abusive drunk. The marriage lasted less than a year. Although Brower portrays Taylor as an intelligent, feisty woman with a dry wit and photographic memory, she was also hard-drinking and shockingly foulmouthed. She made disastrous choices in husbands and seemed to thrive on volatility--but coveted the jewels men gave her, a massive collection that included a 69-carat diamond ring. She showered motherly attention on tormented men like Montgomery Clift and Michael Jackson but not on her own children, relegated to nannies and boarding schools. Brower chronicles Taylor's career, illnesses, marriages, affairs, and notoriously lavish lifestyle: "In 1992, for her sixtieth birthday, Disneyland closed for the night and a thousand of her friends were invited to celebrate." By the 1980s, her dependency on tranquilizers, sleeping pills, painkillers, street drugs, and alcohol led to two stays at the Betty Ford Center. Brower sees the "single most defining chapter" of Taylor's life as her decadeslong work as an AIDS activist and fundraiser. A well-researched, gossipy portrait of a star.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2022
From childhood, Elizabeth Taylor's face was her fortune. Beginning with Lassie Come Home and National Velvet, the camera devoured Taylor's classic youthful beauty and amplified it as she morphed from teen innocence to sultry womanhood. In this first authorized biography of the last of the great Hollywood studio-system stars, Brower mines previously unpublished interviews, personal letters, and diary entries as well as input from hundreds of friends and family to offer a comprehensive and intimate biography of a true icon. Taylor, she contends, was both a dame and a broad, as notorious for her boulder-sized bling as for her longshoreman-like language. As her tabloid-enriching romantic life revealed, Taylor was a strong woman attracted to even stronger men yet repeatedly fell prey to physical maladies and emotional insecurities. From her Oscar-winning movies to her numerous marriages, devastating addictions, and pioneering AIDS activism, Taylor's tumultuous life unfolds in Brower's portrait like one of her own epic screen adventures. A must-read for Taylor's legions of fans and all who savor well-told and well-documented tales of Old Hollywood.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 21, 2022
Journalist Brower (Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump) captures in this glowing portrait the larger-than-life story of British American actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932–2011), who “defined twentieth-century Hollywood for a global audience.” Taylor shot to stardom at age 12 with her role as Velvet Brown in the 1944 film National Velvet, and she really came into her own with her portrayal of Angela Vickers in the 1951 melodrama A Place in the Sun. “I was bitten, and I loved the possibility of acting,” Taylor said in an unpublished interview at the time. Brower meticulously details Taylor’s stormy romantic relationships, from marrying hotel heir Nicky Hilton as a “means of escape”from her parents to her tumultuous two marriages to actor Richard Burton, who called their relationship “Le Scandale.” In her later years, Taylor became an AIDS activist and humanitarian. Brower convincingly depicts Taylor as a complex woman whose glamour, even today, is “intoxicating.” The result is a mesmerizing appreciation of a legendary star. Agent: Howard Yoon, Ross Yoon Agency.

Starred review from December 1, 2022

Brower (Team of Five) provides a 29-page introduction that gives the basics of Elizabeth Taylor's life (1932-2011) and accomplishments: 56 films, 10 TV movies, the first actor to negotiate a million-dollar contract (1963's Cleopatra), over 70 years in show business, and the first to use her fame for AIDS activism. However, her personal life often overshadowed her accomplishments: eight marriages to seven different men, by 26 she had been divorced twice and widowed once, and she struggled with addictions to pills and alcohol. Brower uses Taylor's unpublished letters, diary entries, off-the-record interview transcripts, and interviews with 250 of her friends and family to go beyond the basics to the nitty gritty of Taylor's life. The book shares never-before-published details that capture her many sides. This well-researched biography gets as close to telling Taylor's story in her own words as readers will ever get. VERDICT There have been countless biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, but this one offers fascinating insight and may stand as the definitive one about the legendary actress.--Rosellen "Rosy" Brewer

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.