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Matthew Kennedy, "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" (Oxford UP, 2024)
01:07:28
An interview with Matthew Kennedy
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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
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- [00:48]
Matthew Kennedy
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- [01:16]
Marshall Poe
Experian hello everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and You will see a link to NBN Productions, click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:25]
Dan Moran
Hello everybody. Welcome to New Books and Film, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dan Moran. Matthew Kennedy has written about the fall of the big budget Hollywood musical and three biographies of Hollywood figures, the actresses Marie Dresler and Joan Blondell and the director Edmund Goulding. His new book is part biography, part appreciation and all enthusiasm for the films of Elizabeth Taylor. And he's here today to talk about his book on Elizabeth An Opinionated guide, published in 2024 by Oxford University Press. Matthew, welcome to the show.
- [03:00]
Matthew Kennedy
Dan, thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here.
- [03:04]
Dan Moran
So let's start with something from your book before we get into the structure. You say that you first saw Elizabeth Taylor in Taming of the Shrew and that she has, and this is your words, entranced you like no other actress. Why?
- [03:19]
Matthew Kennedy
That's not a completely easy question to answer because it sort of encompasses the, the sort of ethereal quality that she has as a movie star. And part of the, the, the majesty of her and other select movie stars is that they defy easy description, that they, I just know that they affect me on a kind of primal cellular level. And that's certainly the case with her. I can sort of try to take it apart and remember that as a 10 year old kid at the Cascade Theater in my hometown of Reading when I was watching Taming of the Shrew, which I have a vivid memory, huge single screen right in the old days before, before theaters were subdivided. And that first shot of her in Taming of the Shrew is of one of her eyes peering through a slightly open door. And I've just never forgotten it. It's, first of all, she had magnificent eyes that were referred to as violet by many people. Plus just beyond that, within the show, she, within that film, she had a kind of energy and a kind of charisma. Again, as a 10 year old budding cineast that I found completely enthralling and that she's one of those people who even on a screen as big as the one I saw as a kid, she, she filled it and then some. And, and many people on a big screen get kind of lost for me because they're simply not charismatic enough. And that's when I realized many years later that what I was seeing was true and genuine movie star power. And perhaps she was the first that affected me that way. And I've just never really let go of that, that feeling for her in all the films of her, hers I've seen since. So, yeah, it's, it's. But it does, it does come down to something that's really hard to define in terms of. Yeah. And that's what keeps me coming back, you know. And again, other, other stars for me have that quality. But she, for me was the first. And I think arguably nobody in maybe in the history of movies has ever epitomized or personified the notion of the movie star more than Elizabeth Taylor. That might be somewhat forgotten today, but history and a look back at film history I think might support that idea. So. But that's. That being said, the book is not just an examination of that elusive magical quality known as movie star. The thing that we say, I know it when I see it, even if I can't, you know, really clearly articulate what it is. But the book is also maybe even more so dedicated to really trying to study her as an actress. And the point being that, you know, we think of her as this great movie star and certainly this amazing celebrity and later on in her life of philanthropist, but she was also an artist and she was making artistic decisions as the camera was rolling and she had a very long career and she was extremely knowledgeable about film technique. And all of that seems to be somewhat neglected in her legacy. And that's what I decided to focus on in the book.
- [06:53]
Dan Moran
Yeah, you make so many good points there. Because that's one thing that occurred to me when I read it was that the difference between some people are great movie stars, but they might not be a great actor or vice versa. Right. And that we always took it for granted that she was just always around. She was that, you know, she was. Who was she? Elizabeth Taylor? She's this bigger than life person. And you reminded me just now in your answer about in Sunset Boulevard when Gloria Swanson says, you know, they had faces then and that there's no one like Elizabeth Taylor now because, you know, the world is full of beautiful people. But she had this thing like you said, when you first see her eye tailing of the shrew. That's, that's a, that's a big, big moment where you, Even as a 10 year old, your brain is trying to figure out, well, what makes this person different.
- [07:34]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, yeah.
- [07:35]
Dan Moran
So.
- [07:36]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, yeah, it went straight into my, whatever the cerebral term is for deep memory.
- [07:43]
Dan Moran
That's great. So let's talk about Camille Pavlia. She calls her the mythic female. And you call her. And I Just love this. This is page two of the book. You say she was always fun. She was always fun. And I thought to myself as I read that, that's a great adjective for her. So can you talk about that, your word choice? There's.
- [08:02]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, Dan, thank you for lighting on such a basic word and getting a lot out of it. What I read repeatedly and what I think comes across on the screen, at least in select performances, is that she was someone who simply wanted to enjoy life and that also meant the life of a film set. So repeatedly, from directors and co stars and crews, I heard that she was very kind, very self deprecating, very generous, and that she had an ability to diffuse tense situations. And what I thought about in terms of that is that if you're a working actor, which she also was, right? As well as a movie star, she set her alarm and she got up and she went to work for years and years and years is that this is gig employment, right? I mean, especially after the studio system. And that must cause a great deal of stress among crew, among cast. Like, I don't know if I'm gonna get it. I don't know if this is my last job, right. I mean, something may go wrong and this is it. And that's gonna cause some, some tension on the set. And Elizabeth, I think, was, again, according to accounts I've written read, is very, very good at minimizing that stress and allowing people to have a good time in the moment, which of course meant that they're going to work better. And it was probably for her own, her benefit as well. And also because the size of her celebrity, especially later, well, maybe throughout her career, she knew that she had a power over people. She knew that she had an intimidation that people were gushing or tongue tied in her presence regularly. And she didn't necessarily like that. She was a very down to earth person. And so she, I think, created techniques and approaches on the set that made people at ease despite, you know, again, the blinding magnitude of her celebrity.
- [10:16]
Dan Moran
Right. Because you can imagine how daunting it was to, you know, to show up and walk on the set and be with Elizabeth Taylor.
- [10:22]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, exactly. I mean, time and again, you know, you're walking onto a set and like, that's a. I'm gonna, I'm gonna share a scene with Elizabeth Taylor. Are you kidding? You know, and she knew it was in everybody's best interest to just be, you know, one of the gang.
- [10:36]
Dan Moran
Right.
- [10:37]
Matthew Kennedy
And I just, I read that over and over again about her.
- [10:40]
Dan Moran
That's great. So let's talk about, let's get into some of her films. So she made 56 films, 10 TV movies. She was in two stage productions, did 12 guest spots on TV, including, of course, Maggie Simpson's voice. That's a great thing. I got to explain to my kids, you know, who Maggie. And you know, the kids are like, well, who's Elizabeth Tay? And you're like, oh. But you point out that that level of, and we mentioned this before, almost like that saturation level of celebrity is. Is gone. And you make the point where. Because when I read this, I'm like, well, what about Taylor Swift? What about people now? But you say this, and I want to get your reaction to this. You say, well, no one will ever have such star machinery behind her again. And that film stars don't simply have the central place in society that they used to. So what was she the last of? Can you talk about that? Like, why isn't she coming back?
- [11:31]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, she was the last of the a great and mighty studio invented star. So what's remarkable about her is that she came in, you know, she was a child in the 1940s and that was at the height of the studio system when you had older stars who were. Were deeply attached to that, that form of filmmaking and so forth. She comes in as a child but then survives the, the breakup of the studios into the era of independent production. And so she had this association with classic filmmaking and yet was younger than a lot of the, the, you know, certainly younger than the Gables and the Garbos and so forth by a long shot. But the marketing that went into creating her stardom was enormous and actually rather centrally located, if you will, because it came from MGM. She was there for 18 years and they invented her essentially as a star and as an actress. They told her who to date, they told her what movies to make, they told her how to dress and how to carry herself and so on and so forth. She eventually rebelled against that. But also, I think what's changed and why that level of celebrity will never come back, or at least it's hard to imagine, is because popular culture has been splintered in so many directions today. So in the old days, in the days of Elizabeth Taylor, you went to the movies, you didn't see them on tv, you certainly didn't see them on your phone. You went to a big theater and you saw them and there's this larger than life mythic creature up there. And then you enjoyed it. And so you saw the night next one and the next one and the next one. And maybe you saw films on tv, but you knew that that was a, an inferior experience because they'd be chopped up with advertisements and so forth, and they might show up three years after they were first run, maybe five years, maybe not at all. So going to the movies was this great ritual and centering our lives around, if you love movies, around movie stars and being able to discuss them Monday morning at work was simply, I think, a more pervasive communal experience in the old days, in the Elizabeth Taylor days, than it possibly could be today. Taylor Swift is a major, major celebrity. I don't know that she engages as broad a cross section of modern life as Elizabeth Taylor did. Right. I don't know that anybody ever will again.
- [14:22]
Dan Moran
Yeah, well, to go back to put, to, you know, push a point, it's again, like Sunset Boulevard, like, she was big. It's the pictures that got smaller.
- [14:30]
Matthew Kennedy
Right, right, right. Well, in her case, her pictures got smaller, but that's, that's another story. But her celebrity didn't. Her celebrity.
- [14:41]
Dan Moran
That's true.
- [14:42]
Matthew Kennedy
Never did. Yeah.
- [14:44]
Dan Moran
What you point out too, is so true, is like, like today the film going experience is so fragmented where everyone is now, you can, you can watch whatever you want as much as you want. You don't have to talk to anyone else about it. I'm on third season of this or, you know, I've seen this one, so it's so hard to find that communal kind of.
- [15:03]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, that's. You bring up another good point, which is that maybe we're sharing things, but we're not necessarily necessarily sharing them at the same time. A movie opens in the 1950s, like Giant, for example, and you go see Giant right about it. And you're just not with the program. If you have, if you wait a month, you are going to wait in the long line that in the first two weeks, otherwise it's going to go by and you don't know if you'll ever see it again. And it's this huge phenomenon and you know that again, that creates a wonderful cohesive popular culture that we don't have. Like, oh, I'll see that. I'll see that when it, when I can stream it. You know, why go to a theater? That. So, yeah, that's. I think that's.
- [15:49]
Dan Moran
So let's talk about her films and let's talk about what I think is a wonderful, wonderful structure of your book. I mentioned before that the subtitle, it's called On Elizabeth Taylor, but I love this part. An Opinionated Guide. So you are certainly not the first person to say, I'm gonna write a book about Elizabeth Taylor. You probably won't be the. But I think your book does something that's wonderful and I think it's engaging and it's a lot of fun. And I'd like you to tell the listeners about what is the Matthew Kennedy approach to Elizabeth.
- [16:16]
Matthew Kennedy
Dan, thank you. Thank you for that question and that approach from you. Actually, the Opinionated Guide comes from a series, a kind of informal series that's happening at the publisher of the book, Oxford University Press, where they are asking various writers to do career assessments of major artists. The first one was Stephen Sondheim by Ethan Morton, and then he did one on Barbra Streisand and there haven't been many yet. So I was approached to do this on Elizabeth Taylor or on a movie star. And I thought it was my idea to do Elizabeth Taylor. But the format of the book, it was indeed so much fun to write because I simply took all of her films and wrote individual essays on each one of them. So I was freed from the burden as a, as a somebody who's done biography of a book length flow between chapters. It was more like here, you know, she did. The last time I saw Paris, she did National Velvet. If they're separate essays, if you read them one after the other chronologically, there will be a flow of sorts. But it's a professional flow, right? It's. It's. She went from this movie to that movie to that movie. You can, you can get a sense of her progression and maturity as an actress. But it was. So the opinionated guide part was that it is not simply a reference book that talks about, you know, she worked with this director and it made this amount of money and the reviews were this and so forth. It's actually what do I think her performance brings to the film? Where do I. How does this performance impact the. The arc of her career? What perhaps was going on in her private life at the time that impacts what we see on screen? So the focus is really, with each film is actually even not the film itself, but what she brings to the film. There were times as a writer where I was so tempted to deviate into, you know, well, the director was having a nervous breakdown or, you know, the studio was running out of money or whatever. And I said I had to keep myself on track and say, matt, it's about Elizabeth, it's about her performance, it is about what she brings to the screen. Everything else is secondary. And that, I hope, brings a Somewhat fresh perspective to her and her films. Given that as you alluded to, Dan, there are already quite a few books on Elizabeth Taylor. Right. So the challenge at the onset was how do I make this different? How can I approach her very larger than life legacy in a, in a, in a fresh way?
- [19:22]
Dan Moran
Yeah. Well, before you said that she was fun in your book. The fun of your book is of course, is that the, this is how I imagine every human is going to read this book. You go to your favorite movies by her. Okay, let's see what he said about this movie. Okay, let's. Oh yeah, that's the. And then you see other ones, you're like, oh, I forgot she was in that. And then you see other movies where you're like, I didn't even know about this movie. Like, you know, so that's what the fun is. It's like the flipping around part makes it fun to go through.
- [19:46]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, I certainly hope that's the effect. I mean, you know that, that anybody who loves her, maybe even loves classic Hollywood will have it on their shelf and say, oh, that's an Elizabeth Taylor movie. Yeah, exactly. What is, what does Kennedy have to say? And also I kind of expect that there's going to be a, kind of a conversation going on because the fact that it's an opinionated guide makes it singular. It's like I fully expect that people are going to read this and go, he really, he, he liked that performance or he liked that movie or oh wow, I thought that was a great movie and he's just kind of lukewarm or, or. I do try to make a distinction, of course between the film and her in it. And often there is a disjuncture there between, you know, I'm thinking she's bringing a lot to a movie that doesn't have. That isn't really supporting her very well is, you know, it is also very often the case. So I tried to make that distinction, but I fully expect that and I even welcome it. I mean that's the point. We all have opinions, right. I just have this amazing, had this amazing privilege to be able to publish mine.
- [21:03]
Dan Moran
That's great. That's great. Dream job of the 10 year old who saw Taming of the Shrew is watch all these movies and just scout off on them and give your opinions.
- [21:12]
Matthew Kennedy
Exactly. Well, I sometimes pinch myself and say, I can't believe my 10, my 10 year old self can't believe I'm, can hardly believe I've actually done this. Right.
- [21:21]
Dan Moran
Like, yeah. So before we get into some of the actual movies. I just want to ask you another overall question before we dive in a little more deeply was you said before, you know, that she wanted to set people at ease. She knew what it was like. You had to be on the set with Elizabeth Taylor. You do talk in many of your entries about, you know, the directors you worked with and her co stars and things. And one question I just want to get from you was of all the directors with whom she worked, like, who do you think she enjoyed working with the most? Or who do you think she respected the most?
- [21:50]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, I would say there were. There were directors she enjoyed and there were directors she respected and they didn't necessarily intersect. I think in many cases they did, but in, in others they didn't. What, what. Who immediately comes to mind in terms of directors she respected but didn't necessarily like George Stevens, who directed her in A Place in the sun and Giant and later on a film called the Only Game in Town. But he was by her account, rather tyrannical on the set, especially of Giant, less so with A Place in the Sun. And it sounds like she was often somewhat traumatized in the age when directors, patriarchal directors, could do that as a way of. Without being called out, as a way of getting the performances they wanted. And so she did speak very well of him as a director in the ensuing years. And the evidence of his effectiveness is right there in both of those films in her performances. But he doesn't sound like he's a very nice guy, let's put it that way. Especially on Giant. He did stuff that sounds downright mean. And then there were directors that were just so creative for her and so enlivening and that they just clicked so well that they had both a great time and the results were great. And the ultimate example of that, I would say, is with Mike Nichols on who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That was the only time the two of them worked together. And what's miraculous is there's so many points of that film that are simply miraculous in terms of how well it turned out. And one of them, one of the key ones is that it was Nichols film debut as a director. He had great achievement as a stage director. But as there are other examples in her career where we can say stage directing and film directing are really very different. And if you have an affinity for one, it does not necessarily mean you have an affinity for the other. But she took a huge risk in insisting that, and she was powerful enough at that point to insist that Nichols be The director of that film. And they absolutely got along so well. I mean, there was a lot of. In the descriptions of the set. It sounds tremendously creative. And that Nichols would bring all sorts of inventive things to the set to help all of the. The four actors create these characters and embody them and live them thoroughly, which is, again, the results we see on the screen.
- [24:45]
Dan Moran
Yeah, you talk about the set direct decoration of who's Afraid of Virginia, but what George and Martha's house look like and all the bric a brac and all the things that Mike Nichols put on there to let them inhabit this world.
- [24:57]
Matthew Kennedy
Yes. And it's, you know, it's. It's such an atypical set in that, you know, oftentimes art direction is. It seems kind of elementary. It's like it's signaling something like, oh, they're middle class or they're rich or they're struggling or, you know, whatever. With Virginia Woolf, it's like, well, they're intellectual and they're pack rats and they're everything. I believe every, you know, practically every piece. Piece of ephemera in that house has some meaning to them in the history of their marriage. I mean, that's. That now, that's really an art direction. And it also had the effect of exciting the actors and helping them create an interior life for the characters.
- [25:47]
Dan Moran
Yeah, that's the. I just rewatched on the. On the front of your book. I rewatched Father the Bride. And, you know, when you see. You talk about the art direction, when Spencer Tracy goes in his house for the first time, you like. Got it, got it. I understand.
- [25:59]
Matthew Kennedy
Exactly.
- [26:00]
Dan Moran
Everything is there, but who's afraid of so different?
- [26:03]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [26:06]
Dan Moran
So let's. Let's dive into some of the films and let's get. Let's get the Matt Kennedy hot. Take the opinion on some of these films, and I'll just say the title, and you, You, You. You give the listeners, you know, what you want them to think about that title. So let's start with Cat on a Hutton Roof.
- [26:20]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, okay. My opinionated guide. And please, I'm not. I don't. I don't want to be followed like, you know, like gospel. It's my second favorite Elizabeth Taylor performance after Virginia Woolf. And what they have in common, I think, is her phenomenal commitment to the role and the embodiment of the character she's playing. So that it comes down to my. How believable I. How believable she is as that person. Am I drawn into the world of Maggie the Cat largely by the power of that performance. Obviously, there's a lot of interesting, great stuff going on around her, but she has a huge. She has a lot of heavy lifting in that film because of the censorship around it, specifically in the character that Paul Newman plays, who is her, her husband in the film. But what I love about that performance is her physicality. So she just in the act of walking across the screen, walking across the set. I'm saying, now, there goes a movie star. I mean, there. But there also goes Maggie the Cat. So you have that wonderful combination of that's Elizabeth Taylor and that's the, that's the character she's playing. She's. She's in service to the character and the drama and she's fulfilling the obligations of her, her character beautifully. And she's still Elizabeth Taylor. And the physicality of the role is such, you know, that she is a woman who is deeply frustrated at the lack of interest that her husband has developed for her sexually. And in a kind of method actor approach, which. And she wasn't a method actor. She's thinking, you know, the character Maggie the Cat has a motivation, right. That's often key to many, to many method performances. I'm motivated to want to achieve this in this scene. How do I go about doing it with Maggie the Cat? What makes her motivation so delicious is that it's sex. She. She really, really wants to have an erotic life with her husband again. And how Taylor does that with her body, with her voice, with her face is so mesmerizing to me and so convincing. And she is aided. I mentioned this in the essay. She has three costumes in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And each one has a different relationship to her physicality. One is more restrictive and what you wear in public. Another one is her slip that she's only going to show in the presence of her husband. And then another is this chiffon flowing gown for the finish of the film when her character actually experiences a kind of liberation and a kind of triumph. So that, Yeah, I simply love that performance. And in fact, I've seen other Maggies and I, I, I don't think they compare. I always see Elizabeth Taylor when I watch somebody else do Maggie the Cat. And that's actually quite a thing to say given that, again, that version of the, of the story of the play by Tennessee Williams was heavily censored and modified to fit a puritanical notion of sexuality in American film in the 1950s. Right. She overcomes.
- [30:05]
Dan Moran
Yeah, she sure does.
- [30:06]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah.
- [30:07]
Dan Moran
Absolutely. Let's move on to Giant. Now, you begin the entry on Giant with this, with this question, how many ways do I love Giant? So what do you love about Giant?
- [30:17]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, you know, in that line, I realized I'm really delighted at the things you tease out of the book. Like, I thought that line and I thought, do I even want to keep that line? It sounds like such a little fanboy. And then I, I just decided I'm gonna, I just, just keep it. Just, it's just fine. And I, I do feel very strongly about that, that film and that performance. And what I was sort of effusing about was that that film is lovable to me in many, many ways. If I go straight to her performance, what I can say about it is that to me it is probably the. No, it is the performance over all others, that. In which I feel I'm getting the closest glimpse of, of Elizabeth Taylor off camera at her best. And I say that because of the character she plays, Leslie Benedict. She's complex and she has blind spots and flaws, but she's ultimately a highly virtuous, moral person who has no patience and no tolerance for intolerance, for racism, for sexism, for classism. And her subtle and yet powerful way that character alters this huge, rich, influential Texas family, and by extension, all of Texas and maybe even all of America. She is the voice of reason and compassion and love for fellow humans throughout the entire film. And what's also miraculous about it is that she does this in a way that never feels preachy, it never feels self serving or self righteous. It's simply who this character is. She is one of the most compelling, good people in film I've ever seen. You know, we often think, oh, you know, it's the villains that are fun to watch and fun to play and so on and so forth. It's like Leslie Benedict is just, you know, what, what I, you know, I wish the world was full of Leslie Benedicts. And I don't find her cloying or overly sentimental or anything else. She's just a fabulous human being.
- [32:57]
Dan Moran
Yeah, that's the kind of movie in our age of reboots and remakes. I mean, there's no bottom in Hollywood. There's nothing that a producer won't try to remake. But even the Giant, they just know you can't make. You can't. There's certain movies we're not going to do again and you can't do Giant again.
- [33:13]
Matthew Kennedy
I sure I've never heard anybody even whisper the idea. It is pretty Hard to imagine. Yeah.
- [33:20]
Dan Moran
So let's move on to. You mentioned this before, and I want to ask your opinion of who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Because for me, that was the movie. So I was younger, it was public television. I remember being a kid I had never heard of. I mean, I'd heard of her, but like, who's this Elizabeth Taylor person? And I'm like, wasn't she married to this guy, Richard Burton, or more than one? And I was too young to understand the movie, but I watched it and I was like, wow. Like, this is no wonder. I didn't understand the whole thing about the fake kid or any of the disillusion of their marriage. But I knew that I was watching, you know, top shelf people. So what is it about her in that film that you keep coming back to?
- [33:54]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, Dan, I have to ask. So you're saying that that was the first Elizabeth Taylor performance you saw? Wow, now there's an introduction.
- [34:02]
Marshall Poe
All right.
- [34:02]
Dan Moran
There's the. Yeah, really?
- [34:03]
Matthew Kennedy
Talk about being told you went right to the summit. Well, I have seen Virginia Woolf many, many times and found it endlessly entertaining as this fantastic tour de force. The most brilliant writing, the most brilliant acting, directing, cinematography, art direction. As we talked about the score, the editing, I mean, everything about that film is just magnificent. And writing about it was actually a whole different thing because I could just, you know, in the times I'd seen it before, I could just wallow in its wonderfulness with other friends who have a similar high affection for it. And then so to, to actually write about it was something of a challenge because I realized, like, oh, you know, here I am gushing about its, its many virtues, but really it's a very, very disturbing story. Right? I mean, it's a. This marriage is on the surface at least, incredibly destructive and corrosive and so forth. And I'm just like bubbling along about, oh, isn't this a great movie? And I need to realize that its impact could be very different for people who are, you know, seeing it for the first time. But in terms of Taylor, Nichols seemed to give her permission to basically be, for the first time in her career, I would say, a character actress. You know, she was aged, she was 32 in the 33 when the film was first being made. She played somebody probably in her mid-50s, alcoholic, deeply embittered, in a long term marriage, which Taylor had not experienced at that point in her life. And she was only, she'd only been married to Burton for about a year when they made that film. And Nichols, through Again, the brilliance of the script and the direction and her co stars, she lowered her voice, she wore this unflattering outfits, she changed her walk, she lowered her center of gravity. And she writes about her, the. The sort of creative liberation that she experienced with Virginia Woolf and how she didn't feel that she was Martha, but that as a. She didn't draw necessarily on a lot from herself to be Martha, but that she somehow found this character through all of these, These means and, and lived it. So to watch her in this film is to watch her transform into something else maybe more spectacularly than she ever did before since. And the other thing about Virginia Woolf is, it is how funny it is and how much humor she brings to it. It's, it's humor within with a. With pain to it, with enormous pain. But. And the other thing is that the layers in that film and that she brings out, they, you know, George and Martha appear to absolutely loathe each other and that the best thing they could possibly do is to. Is to end this marriage and go their separate ways. But again, through the brilliance of the writing and the playing, we learn that it's, It's a strange and twisted way of actually demonstrating that they can't live. Live without each other, that this is a deep and abiding love that they share. But my goodness, what a strange way to express it. You know, and the. Again, the brilliance of it is that it, you know, at its drawing back as far as we can, I'm saying is, is this a statement on marriage in general? Is it that broad that we can say George and Martha have achieved something extremely rare that we might even want to emulate on some level? Or is it just an exercise in marital sadomasochism? I, you know, it's such a, it's such a piece to ponder.
- [38:27]
Dan Moran
Yeah. You know, it's such a train wreck, but you can't stop looking at it. I mean.
- [38:31]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:32]
Dan Moran
And yeah, so let's, let's go to another. Another train wreck. Not a film, but so to speak. But I have to ask that. This was the first entry I read in your book. So when I got the book, I said, I looked at the introduction and I said, let me start going through these movies. And the first one I read was Cleopatra. And I wanted to read that one because I'm a great admirer of Joe Megawitz. I've read about him a lot. And your essay on Cleopatra mirrored my experience exactly. And I know this interview is about you, but I watch it. I kept waiting for it to get unbelievably terrible. Because all I had heard my whole life was that, you know, Herman Makeowitz wrote the greatest movie ever made, Citizen Kane, and that Joe Mankiewicz made the worst movie ever made, his little brother with Cleopatra. And I love your line, here's another line I loved in your book. You say it's more about Hollywood than Egypt. So talk about Cleopatra, because like you, I do not find this movie to be a disaster at all.
- [39:26]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, Dan, I think, I hope that you and, you and I are kind of on the, the cutting edge. That's, that's being flattering of a reassessment of this film because there are others, we're not the only ones, there are others who have discovered that, hey, wait a minute, you know, it's, it's now a 60 year old film, but that it's, what's, what's all the fuss about how terrible this film was, right? What, what a train, train wreck. What a disaster. The script, by A Mankiewicz, no less, is very witty, very. Has a kind of old Hollywood zing to it and, and, and also brings out the drama and the psychology of the three main characters, Mark Antony, Caesar and Cleopatra. But I think the film was so scandalous and so noteworthy in its day in terms of the, the budget out of, out of hand, the affair that Taylor and Burton had on the set and how that went public in a, in a very gaudy way, the fact that it was the most expensive film ever made. I mean, all of this seemed to eclipse any kind of reasonable critical judgment of the film. So when it came out, there were some positive reviews, but most, most were, many were quite negative. They said it's too long, it's, you know, overstuffed, way overproduced. I mean, these sets just go on forever and ever. But I think this is one case, maybe the most significant in the entire book. One case where the passing of time allows us to reassess this film without all of that noise, right? Without all of the surrounding hoo ha that engulfed it at the point that it was released in 1963. And now we can just curl up with it and watch it as a movie, right? And what do we see? We see a four hour epic that is unbelievably opulent to the eyes. Incredibly impressive because that's all done in camera. We're, you know, way before the age of cgi and you go, did anyone ever really build a set that big? Is that, are those really elephants?
- [41:53]
Dan Moran
Yeah, right.
- [41:55]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, I think I, you know, they're the size of a football field. Are those really 5,000 extras that I'm seeing or are they, you know, dummies? And the answer is yes, it's all real. It all really happened. They really did put together a film that magnificent. And as for Elizabeth, she has, she got generally quite bad reviews. So the film was praised in many ways, but very few people came out and said, actually she does a pretty good job. What I see when I look at her in Cleopatra is I see someone assuming a very regal, appropriately a very regal stance as Cleopatra. I see that she brings a lot of stillness to this performance. That is not the case with her recent performances prior to that and that she finds a kind of stature in Cleopatra through, through stillness physically. And I, I do think her voice in the, in the film is sometimes problematic. There's a little bit of a rasp to it or it's maybe hits the wrong chord or something. But then I lighten up and say, well, you know, I try to be as generous as possible and I say, well, it's, it's, she's speaking English and it's depicting ancient Egypt and people aren't gonna, you know, everybody doesn't have to sound like Rex Harrison and Richard Burton who were these, you know, mellifluous stage trained actors that are surrounding her. So it's another case, I mean. Well, actually the ultimate case, I think, where if you want to see what a, what a movie star looks like, watch Elizabeth Taylor and Cleopatra.
- [43:54]
Dan Moran
Yeah.
- [43:54]
Matthew Kennedy
And I would also tell people, don't be afraid of watching this movie. No, it's, it's not, it's, it's, it's not a, a, it's worthwhile that it.
- [44:06]
Dan Moran
Actually, it did make money. Like it went. It did not.
- [44:09]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, that's, See now that's what I say. You know, we're on the, we're on the cutting edge, I think, of trying to, to put to rest the notion that it's either a bad movie and that it also lost money. It actually made money. It just took a very long time to make money because it was so darn expensive. But adjusted for inflation, it is currently the 46th highest box office in, in film history, which maybe doesn't sound very impressive, but if you think about how many films are out there in the world, 46 is actually extremely impressive.
- [44:46]
Dan Moran
Pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah. So before we get to her later career, last individual movie I want to ask you about, and this is kind of timely, I just happened to read in the New York Times. A week ago, David Mamet, the screenwriter and director, he was asked, he has a new book about Hollywood and they asked him, what is the great American movies? And he said, the great American movie is A Place in the Sun. It's kind of funny he said that. And then I'm like, oh, I knew I was going to talk to you, so let's talk about that. A Place in the Sun.
- [45:11]
Matthew Kennedy
Yes. A Place in the sun that was directed by George Stevens. It was their first collaboration, the second being Giant and the Thing, again, I've always refracting this through. Through her, right. The thing. One of the things that I would start with, with A Place in the sun that is so astonishing is that when she made that film, she was 17. Now, if you see that film and didn't know that, I mean, when I saw it again, I've seen it many times before writing about it, I would have guessed maybe 23 in the way she conducts herself, but also the way she. Also the demands of the character. And so it's based on an American tragedy by Theodore Dreiser and is essentially a love triangle. And Taylor plays a rich, pampered socialite who falls in love with a somewhat mysterious drifter played by Montgomery Clift, who's also the nephew of a man who. A very wealthy man who owns the. The Eastman is it. I think it's swimwear company. But what she brings to the film is an absolute ardor for the Montgomery Clift character that is deeply moving and deeply convincing. And the significance, again, of this film is that she was being very definitely groomed for adult roles at mgm, but they were not very good properties. I mean, things like the Last Hangover and Conspirator and other films that she made immediately before A Place in the sun, she was called upon to. To be. To be. To play grown up emotions, but again, not very good. Not very good stuff. With A Place in the sun, she has this fantastic screenplay, she has this fantastic director. Montgomery Clift was a brilliant stage actor who had made a major impression on screen by the time they came together. And so I give a lot of credit to Clift and to Stevens for helping pull out of Elizabeth what she was capable of. And I don't want to give them so much credit that, you know, to say that it's a Pygmalion type of relationship where they made her, they sculpted her into this great screen presence. I. All the work in the world on their part wouldn't have done a thing if she couldn't have done it herself. But it is, it's a, it's a, a very significant film in her career that, that helped people stand up and take notice and say this beautiful, this unearthly beautiful screen actress or screen star personality is it. She's gonna go the distance. She's, she's a, she's a major star and we now have the proof and she's on to an indefinite adult career. It's a beautiful film. And in that the. Again, it's like Virginia Woolf. So many departments that go into making a film were at the top of their game.
- [48:34]
Dan Moran
All the planets aligned when that film.
- [48:36]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, exactly. All the planets aligned, absolutely.
- [48:38]
Dan Moran
So those, those film feel better ones that anybody would look, you know, anybody that comes. This book is going to look up a place in the sun and can roof. But I want to ask you, like, so you had to be a completist to do this, right? What's, what's a film that you watched for the sake of the book or just to say that I've seen them all. That kind of surprised you? And you're like, well, I, I never thought that would be as good or as bad or as interesting.
- [48:59]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, I think that the biggest surprise for me was a film called and this is. I hope that for people who love Elizabeth Taylor, this will be part of the fun of the book. As you, as you pointed out that apart from the classics there, she did a lot of obscure stuff. And it's maybe obscure for a reason, like it's not very good or whatever, but there's a lot of worthwhile stuff to explore that's lesser known in her career. And the film that really shocked me the most upon re examination was it's called the Driver's Seat, and it comes out from 1974. I had seen the Driver's Seat. I saw it a couple of times on an old videotape at a friend's house. And it's. That is no way to see that movie. I'm here to tell you. It was, you know, sort of washed out. And, and we, you know, the effect was, was blunted in that respect. And we were laughing at it. We saw. This is the craziest, weirdest movie. Can you believe Taylor, you know, put herself in this? She's writhing around on the bed. She's like grabbing her breasts. She's making these unbelievably weird dialogue and like, what is it? It's Italian with like stilted and like. What is going on? Well, okay, that's what, that's how I came to the Driver's seat when I knew I had to look at it again. On Canopy, which is a streaming service that is available out there, there is a fresh print of the Driver's Seat. And the cinematographer on the driver's seat is Vittorio Storaro, who was a brilliant cinematographer who did the Conversate, the Conformist and later on did Reds. And I worked with Bernardo Bertolucci quite a bit. Well, to see a fresh remastered print of the Driver's Seat was to see a new movie. And it was watching it all by myself alone. It was really, really unsettling. It's a very disturbing, dark psychological thriller in which Taylor's character is. Is on a rendezvous with death, you might say. And she plays this character in a fairly understated way. So the character she plays is by conventional standards, insane. She's totally gone. But she doesn't play it in any kind of stock way. She's not like bugging her eyes and pulling her hair out or doing any kind of stock indication that of. Of actorly actors playing insane. She's understated.
- [52:00]
Dan Moran
She.
- [52:01]
Matthew Kennedy
She takes the, the character and the dialogue and kind of works it in a subtle way, in an underhanded way. So that we're saying. Did she just say that? In a kind of. Of deadpan, monotonous way. But what she said was just outrageous. I mean, it's just. It's just maybe she's talking about getting. She wants somebody to shoot her. She wants. She talks about sex pretty openly.
- [52:32]
Marshall Poe
She.
- [52:34]
Matthew Kennedy
That combined with the cinematography and the use of color and the use of shadows in that film. If you sort of surrender to it and watch it late at night, I guarantee it will have a disturbing effect. It will have an old movie, movie quality that will linger with you. I'm not here to say it's a great movie because there are other things in it that aren't quite. Maybe don't quite work. But the combination of Vittorio Storaro and Elizabeth Taylor really putting herself out there with an interesting character and a vanity free character is a sight to behold.
- [53:15]
Dan Moran
That's a great endorsement.
- [53:17]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah. Well, and it's. And it comes, it came out in 1974, which is, you know, usually referred to as this, this absolute, this desert in her career of, you know, one unfortunate movie after another that, that brought her down as a, as an actress.
- [53:35]
Dan Moran
When you talk in your intro, you say that you're fascinated by her, what you call her career decline in her later films. This as a quote of you, you say quote virtually all of her later films were deleterious in one way or another. So why do you think that was the case?
- [53:51]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, you know, I think there were a lot of factors going on and one was somewhere within her control perhaps, and some weren't in, in her post Virginia Wolf career, which is really half her career. I mean, if you look at the, her actual output and yet very often accounts of her career end with Virginia Woolf. It's like, oh, we won't talk about, you know, Hammersmith is out. We won't talk about, you know, the Bluebird. But again, in terms of output, she, she was very, she had, she was far from being done. But there were all these different factors. One I think is that her marriage to Richard Burton was becoming more and more destructive. There was a lot of alcohol involved and so they as a screen team seem to work less and less well as their partnership went on in their marriage. There's also, I think, a kind of downward spiral that happens with major stars where, you know, you have one box office failure with bad reviews and then that means that the next film is going to maybe not have quite the same budget that the previous one did and maybe the people involved aren't going to be quite as on top of their game. And then that one also, that does even worse than the previous one, you know, and you've got this downward spiral. And I think that definitely happened with her. And also she was, by Hollywood standards getting, she was veering toward middle age and in the old days and I'm happy to say this has really changed in Hollywood. An actress might be done with major stardom with leading roles by the time she's 40 and Taylor turned 40 in 1972, which is right when her career was struggling. That really has changed and for the better. I mean people have, women in particular have viable careers way past that. What Taylor did was choose to maintain her leading role, leading lady status as, as a star. But that meant that, as opposed to so. Well, that meant that the films themselves got lower in, in budget and quality and, and, and ambition. But another option for her that she didn't take was I'm going to start playing people's mothers in high budget films. Right. She chose to remain a star while, as you know, to quote Norma Desmond, the pictures got small. I mean that really was the case for her and. But I found tremendous riches in seeing some of these later films where clearly the material to her surrounding her wasn't so wonderful. But I can see her doing what she could with it and bringing her magnetism to it and, and walking away looking pretty good if the rest of the film didn't.
- [57:03]
Dan Moran
Let's put it out. Like in your essay about Night Watch, I think it is you say like, you know, she never phoned it in. She always delivered.
- [57:10]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, yeah. Night Watch. Night Watch is, I'd say, kind of a mediocre thriller horror movie. It does pick up toward the end, but she, she brings home a nice, meaty, you know, satisfying, old fashioned movie star performance. Yeah.
- [57:28]
Dan Moran
So you talk about also at the end of the book, in addition to the 56 films, you talk about, you know, some, some theatrical performances she did. I love the, the stage reading with her and Richard Burton. I had no idea that existed. Right. That was really cool. But you know, what were some of the interesting, you know, post film, if you will, like, appearances or things that you discover that you, that you would tell people to try to try to find a recording of if there is one, or read about.
- [57:53]
Matthew Kennedy
Well, she had, I hesitate to even call it a theatrical career, but she did do stage appearances sporadically. Yeah. And so the biggie would be the Little Foxes in 1981. Her, her film career was pretty much like grinding to a halt at that point. And she was, you know, antsy and wanted to do some acting. And she appeared in this Broadway production of the Little Foxes and did very well. Reviews were strong. She had a wonderful cast, including Maureen Stapleton and others that, you know, brought to life this really rich Lillian Hellman melodrama. And she loved that experience. Apparently there I was able to see it thanks to a bootleg video that a collector had. It's not available commercially. And I saw a performance that I don't know what, what the date was, but it was during the New York run and she was absolutely terrific. There's a moment when she enters where it's, there's that kind of gasp of oh my God, that's Elizabeth Taylor in a, in a Broadway drama. And then she just absorbs into the ensemble. And I think that comes back to the idea of she was fun. Right. She made sure that she did not turn this into a vanity project where they're all supporting her, that she very much came to, that ultimately came to it as best as she could. As we're an ensemble and we're, you know, we have a common goal here.
- [59:36]
Dan Moran
Yeah.
- [59:37]
Matthew Kennedy
And it's not necessarily to make me the star. I mean, that's, that's the feeling that I get in that performance. And there are moments in the Little Foxes where, you know, she has the kind of Command that I would say goes all the way back to Maggie the Cat in Canada, Tin Roof. The other. Her other stage appearances I was not able to see, and I don't know that they exist in terms of, you know, ever being recorded. Private Lives by Noel Coward is something that she and Burton did after she did the Little Foxes. And that is all the reviews of that and the accounts of it are extremely negative, and that it was actually kind of a sad spectacle to watch the two of them way after they divorced twice and were sort of carting out their. Their public images and, and playing on the. The double meanings of the dialogue and, you know, not really being very disciplined actors at that point.
- [60:42]
Dan Moran
Because it's gimmicky, right?
- [60:44]
Matthew Kennedy
Yeah, gimmicky, exactly. Sort of stunt casting. And two of them in that. In that show, in that play. And a friend of mine actually saw it and he said, he was pretty kind. He said, you know, they, yeah, it was fluffy, but they looked like they were having a good time. And, you know, he. He actually had a fond memory of it as opposed to. That was just painful to watch. Burton was near. Near his death. He was in late stage alcoholism at that point. So, yeah, it was. Emotionally, I think it was difficult for her. The other things that she did on. On stage were short term, a single night, the. The staged reading from 1964, which I would have given anything to have, you know, I sure wish we had a record of that. But she also did a stage reading of Love Letters at the very, very end of her career. The last. Her last professional appearance in 2007 with James Earl Jones. And by all accounts, she was fantastic. And it wasn't just because you're Elizabeth Taylor, right?
- [61:55]
Dan Moran
Yeah, yeah, I know. It's like everything is recorded now, and you're like, nobody hit. Nobody hit record on this. Nobody thought this was a good idea.
- [62:01]
Matthew Kennedy
Maybe, you know, but maybe my book will bring out some other bootleg copies. I. I sure hope so.
- [62:08]
Dan Moran
So, last question, Garrett. You know, you have a timeline at the beginning of the book, which is really useful because you go back and see what was going on in Taylor's life, you know, parallel to her artistic life. And you point out that, you know, she died in 2011. She was survived by her brother, four children, 10 grandchildren, four great grandchildren. And I was just curious, and I don't know the answer to this. Have any of these people done anything to like, preserve her legacy? Like, do they do anything to kind of, like, maintain this and kind of keep her. Her films alive?
- [62:38]
Matthew Kennedy
Absolutely. The. The in her lifetime, she founded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS foundation and. Which is most people probably know of. And she co founded foundation for AIDS Research, AKA amfar, with the goal of raising money for people with AIDS in service to research and serve, education, care, et cetera. And she was a fierce advocate for people with AIDS, especially in the 1980s when public attitudes were horrific in terms of care and compassion for people with aids. That lives on in the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. And I sound like a promotion, but I'm not, I'm not trying to be. And her children and grandchildren are in various ways involved and are continuing to do advocacy on behalf of, of the AIDS Foundation. And if you visit what's called the House of Taylor, which is a sort of umbrella term for her, both her, her line of fragrances as well as jewelry, which she also developed as a businesswoman beginning in the 1980s, that, in which that money went into AIDS work. If you visit the House of Taylor, you will see that there, her legacy via her family and via the staff and the, the board there is very strong. And so she's not simply being remembered as an actress and a celebrity, but also as a great philanthropist. And what she believed in and what she devoted herself to philanthropically is, is still very much, very much alive.
- [64:32]
Dan Moran
Yeah. Great. On Elizabeth Taylor, an opinionated guide. It's available everywhere. And if you love the films of Elizabeth Taylor or like we said, classic Hollywood, you do not want to miss this. It's published by Oxford University Press. You can get it wherever you find books. There's a link to it on our new Books Network website. Matthew Kennedy, thank you so much for being on the show.
- [64:51]
Matthew Kennedy
Dan, thank you. This has been great fun. I will tell you just in if I may, as a, as a part in parting. This is the, the book is actually, we're speaking in January of 2024. The book is due out in April, but it's available to pre order now. And this is my very first interview about the book. So I want to thank you for I hope, starting, starting the ball rolling.
- [65:21]
Dan Moran
Sure, sure. Your enthusiasm comes through in the interview, but also for all the listeners out there, it really comes through on the page. I mean, this is a movie that you, you, you, you, you drink coffee as you read it and you laugh at certain lines and then you're like, what's he gonna say about the next thing? It was. That's what I mean. It was kind of like, like it was like listening to a, a fan, but not a fanboy, go on about somebody who he's admired for a long time, so well done.
- [65:46]
Matthew Kennedy
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that feedback very.