Sad News for the Entertainment world today. Elizabeth Taylor

Status
Not open for further replies.
As far as I know, she never professed Christ, but you never know. Hopefully, she did, in the end.

One of the things I admired about her was her continually upbeat attitude in the face of her many illnesses. One obit said that she had suffered from as many as 70 different diseases and conditions during her lifetime. In an interview once, she herself said that she had nearly died four times during her lifetime. Her physical resilience was remarkable. It was congestive heart failure that got her at the last.

---------- Post added at 10:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:57 PM ----------

If I had to pick her five best films (of the ones I've seen), I'd have to pick: Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). There are a lot of also-rans, but I think these rate pretty high.

She made 54 films in 52 years (1942-1994). Her last feature film is The Flintstones (1994), in which she played Fred Flintstone's loudmouthed mother-in-law.
 
UPDATE: Taylor was buried today (3/24), the day after her death, at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California (a few miles to the north and west of Los Angeles). She is buried in the "Great Mausoleum," the same place where actors Jean Harlow (1911-1937) and Clark Gable (1901-1960) and singer Michael Jackson (1958-2009) are buried. She was a friend of Jackson's and attended his funeral in that same mausoleum in September, 2009.

The reason she was buried so quickly: when she married singer Eddie Fisher, in the late 1950s, she converted to Judaism. And, according to whatever flavor of Judaism she belonged to, the tradition is to make sure that the body of the deceased is buried within 48 hours of death. Hence, the quick burial.

Personally, I would not have been surprised at all to learn that her body had been flown to Switzerland to be buried beside that of Richard Burton (1925-1984). But, that was not the plan.

Also, at the time of her death, she had been hospitalized for six weeks with the congestive heart failure that killed her.
 
Forest Lawn Cemetery is HUGE and the southern edge of the cemetery is right next to the Los Angeles RPCNA. Today I left the study at 3:20 and there were a number of helicopters flying overhead that were covering the funeral from the air. I was going to drive up to FL to see all of the cars, but chose not to. When I got home (5 minutes tops from the church), I saw on LA Times that the family was arriving at 3:20 for the burial.

A number of our church members have been buried there, and I have conducted 2 funerals right by the Great Mausoleum where she was buried.

On another side note: Ronald Reagan's first marriage was at Wee Kirk O the Heather which is a chapel in Forest Lawn. Some have also called the cemetery "the Disneyland of the Dead." Adventures in Grave Hunting by Lisa Burks: Disneyland of the Dead
 
UPDATE II: Taylor built a practical joke (on herself) into her funeral service. Apparently, she was notorious for being late everywhere she went. So, she left instructions that the funeral be scheduled for 2:00, but that the family (and the hearse) arrive late. That way, she could be - you guessed it: "late for her own funeral." She provided a laugh at her own expense at her own funeral. Pretty classy.
 
UPDATE III - Preliminary reports indicate that Taylor may have been worth as much as $600,000,000 when she died, and reportedly has left the bulk of her estate (after making sure her four children are well taken care of, presumably) to AIDS research.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top