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In 1953, Elizabeth Taylor made the forgettable melodrama “The Girl Who Had Everything,” which also is an apt description of her life and her career. Over her 79 years, she segued from a stunningly beautiful child star to a va-va-va-voon sex symbol to a two-time Oscar-winner to a pioneering AIDs activist. Taylor was more than a star. More than an icon. Even a dozen years after her death, cinephiles are still obsessed with the violet-eye actress.

But a new HBO/Max documentary “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” illustrates she didn’t have “everything.” In the 1960s, Taylor gave interviews to celebrity journalist Richard Meryman who died in 2015. Forty hours of their interviews were recently discovered in his archive and are the anchor for this compelling piece. (There is also an interview from the 1980s with Dominick Dunne).

Wrote the New York Times: “For the Taylor enthusiast, the film is unlikely to reveal much new information.

Elizabeth Taylor was once a Hollywood icon and movie actress noted for her unique beauty and portrayal of strong-willed characters. She started her career as a child star in the early 1940s before making her way into stardom the following decade.

Elizabeth Taylor in A Date with Judy

Apart from her acting prowess, Taylor had many shocking revelations in life that fed the tabloids. She had seven husbands, was a Judaism convert, and even contracted a serious illness.

Suggested“A pretty hard act to follow”: Elizabeth Taylor Laughed Off 1974 Oscars Controversy After Gay Rights Activist Streaked N-ked Across Stage

Elizabeth Taylor’s Dramatic Hollywood Transformation

One of the many things people noticed about Elizabeth Taylor was her appearance and personality. She was different from the rest of her co-child stars, and in her 1987 interview with Rolling Stone, the British-American star shared:

“When I was a child in England they...

Jane Powell, who starred as an angelically visaged young actress in a number of MGM musicals including “Royal Wedding” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” during the 1940s and 1950s, has died of natural causes. She was 92 years old.

The blonde, blue-eyed Powell usually played characters with a gentle mischievous streak in her musical comedies, but she would shatter the light-hearted atmosphere of her films when she sang: A surprisingly powerful coloratura would emerge from the diminutive (5-feet-1) thesp.

Her producer and mentor was MGM’s Joe Pasternak, who had earlier developed the talents of Deanna Durbin at Universal.

Auditioning for Louis B. Mayer and for David O. Selznick, she quickly drew a seven-year contract with MGM in 1943. Her first film, on loan-out, was 1944 musical “Song of the Open Road,” in which the actress played a child film star who runs away. She took her character’s name, Jane Powell,...

Jane Powell, an Old Hollywood star known for films such as “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and “Royal Wedding” with Fred Astaire, has died. She was 92.

Powell died early Thursday of natural causes in her home in Wilton, Connecticut, that she had shared with husband, actor and publicist Dickie Moore, who died in 2015. Powell’s death was confirmed to TheWrap by her longtime friend and spokesperson Susan Granger.

Powell was one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and her storied career took her into theater and television, even playing Alan Thicke’s mother on the hit 1980s series “Growing Pains.” Powell is fondly remembered for her soprano voice and spunky charm in several classic MGM musicals, and she would eventually share the screen with stars such as Astaire, Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor.

Born Suzanne Lorraine Burce, Powell won a talent competition in Los Angeles in...

Jane Powell, who made her screen debut with W.C. Fields, danced with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding, was one of seven brides for seven brothers in the classic 1954 film musical, sang “Buttons and Bows” at President Harry S. Truman’s Inaugural Ball and was a bridesmaid at the first of Elizabeth Taylor’s weddings, died of natural causes today at her home in Wilton, Connecticut. She was 92.

Susan Granger, a friend of the actress and spokesperson for her family, told Deadline that Powell died peacefully at the house she shared for many years with her husband, the actor and publicist Dick Moore, who died in 2015.

Powell, one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, continued to appear on stage well into the 21st Century, making her career among her generation’s sturdiest.

Born Suzanne Lorraine Burce in Portland, Oregon, Powell was already a locally successful singer – she...

Jane Powell, the radiant and refined singing star of such ebullient Hollywood musicals as A Date With Judy, Royal Wedding and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, died Thursday. She was 92.

Powell, who projected an image of the innocent girl next door throughout her movie career, which began as a teenager, died of natural causes at her home in Wilton, Connecticut, film critic and longtime friend Susan Granger told The Hollywood Reporter.

With her soprano operatic voice, Powell also was a recording star and a popular stage performer, playing in road productions of such musicals as The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady and Carousel, and she reteamed with ...

Jane Powell, the radiant and refined singing star of such ebullient Hollywood musicals as A Date With Judy, Royal Wedding and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, died Thursday. She was 92.

Powell, who projected an image of the innocent girl next door throughout her movie career, which began as a teenager, died of natural causes at her home in Wilton, Connecticut, film critic and longtime friend Susan Granger told The Hollywood Reporter.

With her soprano operatic voice, Powell also was a recording star and a popular stage performer, playing in road productions of such musicals as The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady and Carousel, and she reteamed with ...

Stanley Donen, the director of such stylish and exuberant films as “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Funny Face” and “Two for the Road” and the last surviving helmer of note from Hollywood’s golden age, has died at 94.

The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips tweeted that one of his sons had confirmed the news to him.

Confirmed by one of his sons this morning: Director Stanley Donen has died at 94. With Gene Kelly he brought On The Town and Singin’ In The Rain into the world; on his own, 7 Brides, Charade and Two For The Road. A huge, often neglected talent. #StanleyDonen

— Michael Phillips (@phillipstribune) February 23, 2019

Though he was never Oscar-nominated for any of the many films he directed, Donen received a lifetime achievement Oscar at the 1998 Academy Awards “in appreciation of a body of work marked by grace, elegance, wit and visual innovation.”

His films were known for their brisk pace,...

Child actor Dickie Moore: 'Our Gang' member. Former child actor Dickie Moore dead at 89: Film career ranged from 'Our Gang' shorts to features opposite Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper 1930s child actor Dickie Moore, whose 100+ movie career ranged from Our Gang shorts to playing opposite the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, and Gary Cooper, died in Connecticut on Sept. 7, '15 – five days before his 90th birthday. So far, news reports haven't specified the cause of death. According to a 2013 Boston Phoenix article about Moore's wife, MGM musical star Jane Powell, he had been “suffering from arthritis and bouts of dementia.” Dickie Moore movies At the behest of a persistent family friend, combined with the fact that his father was out of a job, Dickie Moore (born on Sept. 12, 1925, in Los Angeles) made his film debut as an infant in Alan Crosland's 1927 costume drama The Beloved Rogue,...

Wallace Beery from Pancho Villa to Long John Silver: TCM schedule (Pt) on August 17, 2013 (photo: Fay Wray, Wallace Beery as Pancho Villa in ‘Viva Villa!’) See previous post: “Wallace Beery: Best Actor Oscar Winner — and Runner-Up.” 3:00 Am The Last Of The Mohicans (1920). Director: Maurice Tourneur. Cast: Barbara Bedford, Albert Roscoe, Wallace Beery, Lillian Hall, Henry Woodward, James Gordon, George Hackathorne, Nelson McDowell, Harry Lorraine, Theodore Lorch, Jack McDonald, Sydney Deane, Boris Karloff. Bw-76 mins. 4:30 Am The Big House (1930). Director: George W. Hill. Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams, George F. Marion, J.C. Nugent, DeWitt Jennings, Matthew Betz, Claire McDowell, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Tom Wilson, Eddie Foyer, Roscoe Ates, Fletcher Norton, Noah Beery Jr, Chris-Pin Martin, Eddie Lambert, Harry Wilson. Bw-87 mins. 6:00 Am Bad Man Of Brimstone (1937). Director: J. Walter Ruben. Cast: Wallace Beery, Virginia Bruce, Dennis O’Keefe. Bw-89 mins.

Wallace Beery: Best Actor Academy Award winner and Best Actor Academy Award runner-up in the same year (photo: Jackie Cooper and Wallace Beery in ‘The Champ’) (See previous post: “Wallace Beery Movies: Anomalous Hollywood Star.”) In the Academy’s 1931-32 season, Wallace Beery took home the Best Actor Academy Award — I mean, one of them. In the King Vidor-directed melodrama The Champ (1931), Beery plays a down-on-his-luck boxer and caring Dad to tearduct-challenged Jackie Cooper, while veteran Irene Rich is Beery’s cool former wife and Cooper’s mother. Will daddy and son remain together forever and ever? Audiences the world over were drowned in tears — theirs and Jackie Cooper’s. Now, regarding Wallace Beery’s Best Actor Academy Award, he was actually a runner-up: Fredric March, initially announced as the sole winner for his performance in Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, turned out to have...

As a little girl I loved going to the Studio Drive In in Culver City where we lived.

My older sister and I would get into our pajamas, my little baby brother would be in the car seat for babies in the front seat between the driver and the passenger. We brought out own fried chicken ot eat for dinner. We'd go get popcorn or bonbons or a Holloway sucker (the best!) at the concessions stand ahead of the movies or at the intermission if we were still awake and we'd watch a double bill – usually a western and or a comedy.

When we got older and at the age of 16, we all got cars of our own. Mine was a 53 Ford convertible repainted royal blue. Groups of us would go to the Olympic Drive In and would sneak others in in the trunk.

When I was really little my father and mother would take my sister and me to the movies. I was always making my father take me to the bathroom. That started my habit of sitting on the aisle. As a film buyer it was known as the acquisitions seat, but to my mind, the quick getaway was to the Ladies Room. And as a three or four year old, I was always asking my mother and sister, "is this real?" I was so literal minded as a child I could never figure out why the song said “Let Freedom Ring”. How could Freedom Ring? A ring was jewelry. Ring like a bell…but Freedom is not a bell. Moving on…

We saw this Bob Hope film. He was a gambler. And he put a gun into his mouth. Instead of shooting his brains out, he took a bite and it was chocolate. That really threw my literal mind into a loop. What was real? How did that happen? The movie was called Sorrowful Jones. The joke was something I had a hard time understanding. The same with the silents which we saw at the Silent Movie Theater. Laurel and Hardy were always hitting each other and falling; Charlie Chase was always in trouble as was Charlie Chaplin. I never understood what was funny about all the accidents, falling down, hitting each other and would have terrible anxiety attacks at the silent movies. I liked movies like Francis the Talking Mule. That was funny to my childish mind.

For those wonderful Disney cartoons like Cinderella or Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood or Peter Pan, my father would take us to Beverly Hills and we would stand in line for the Fine Arts Theater. At the corner was a shoe store which only sold sample sizes (4 ½). I would admire their high heeled shoes and couldn’t wait for the time that I would be older and could wear them. Fortunately, when my foot hit the 4 ½ size, I was in high school and so I could buy the shoes for all the formal dances we attended.

Fine Arts Theater

Every Saturday my sister and I, and later my brother would go to the ten-cent Saturday afternoon matinee at the Meralta with a newsreel, previews, cartoon, and a main feature. The Meralta introduced me to The Dream of Wild Horses.[1]"Meralta" was derived from owners' Pearl Merrill and Laura Peralta's surnames. They lived above the new plush theater. But the movies there were mostly horror and genre. My brother always went there for the latest horror film.

Meralta Theater, Culver City

If we didn’t go to the Meralta, we’d go to the Culver. When we were looking to meet other kids from other schools, we'd go to the much fancier Culver Theater.

The Culver had great films, like Little Women, Gone with the Wind, Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, How to Marry a Millionaire, River of No Return, There’s No Business Like Show Business, Easter Parade, A Date with Judy (My sister’s name!), The Three Musketeers, Words and Music, Force of Evil, Neptune’s Daughter, Adam’s Rib, Showboat, An American in Paris, Lili, Giant, Rebel Without a Cause. Looking at this list, except for the Marilyn Monroe movies which 20th Century Fox owned and the two James Dean films which Warner Bros. owned, all of the films were MGM films. That makes perfect sense because Culver City was a company town.

The Culver also had “loges”. These were fancier red velvet seats with ashtrays above the large aisle you would find on entering the theater and choosing your seat – below unless you went up to the loge. There teenagers would "make out" and bad girls and guys would smoke (Excuse my racism, but as a Jew growing up in a working class wasp neighborhood, I learned these kids were either Pachucos or white trash.) Not that we were such good Jewish kids...there weren’t any Jewish kids that I knew of who went to the movies. My friends were my school friends, and they were all white working class kids. If people weren’t working for Hughes Aircraft, they were in the crafts at MGM. We had one bit actor living down the street named Cameron Mitchell. And it was a pretty racist neighborhood…anti-Semitism was learned at home and in Sunday Schools where kids invited me (called a Christ Killer) to learn about bringing Jesus into my heart and there were no blacks that I ever saw. The Pachucos lived in another neighborhood and we’d see them in the movies, shopping or at the middle and high school next to my elementary school. Asians? There might have been a Chinese restaurant, but I don’t recall seeing Asians in school or at the theater or shopping.

Jewish kids made up my group of friends when I got to junior high and we had moved to Beverlywood from Culver City; 90% of the school was Jewish. Our parents would still drop us at the movies and we would go to Saturday matinees at the Picfair on Pico and Fairfax which eventually burned down around the time of the Watts Riots, or to the Lido on Pico.

The Picfair Theater burned down in 1965.

We’d see Academy Award winning films at the Pickfair. We'd cry at Carousel, Oklahoma, Midnight Lace, Peyton Place, Imitation of Life. Great films! Or we'd sometimes go to the other theater in Pico called Lido. It was just so boring. Maybe they showed Marty there or Country Girl and I wasn't up for slow drama.

For really fancy movies which held premieres, like Around the World in 80 Days, we would go to the Carthay Circle Theater. Of course I’d go in the days after the premiere itself. Rarely – though sometimes we’d go to the Hollywood palaces, Grauman’s Chinese, The Egyptian or Pantages Theaters on Hollywood Boulevard. The best thing about Grauman’s Chinese was the ladies room with a room filled with mirrors and little alcoves to sit and put on lipstick. They even had lipstick blotters, white heavy weight paper shaped like your lips to blot the lipstick.

In 1959 The Fine Arts Theatre 8556 Wilshire Boulevardin Beverly Hills showed Room at the Top, (‘The Most Daring Film in a Decade’), and it played there for over six months. I was in the 10th grade and went to see it. I liked it but am not sure how much I understood.

In high school we discovered Le Chein Andalou and the Coronet and Baronet theater where Charles Laughton had played in Brecht's premiere play Galileo produced by John Houseman. Sometimes they didn't have enough foreign films (like one about a woman who turned into a panther at night) and they'd show psychological teaching films like "Folie a Deux" when madness is shared by two, in this 20 minute short it was a mother and daughter. They'd show films on Schizophrenia, etc. and it made me want to study psychology. We saw all of Bergman, Renoir and saw La Strada and La Dolce Vida. When I moved back east and went to Brandeis then movie going got great! Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds. After that I saw every Wajda film and even knew how to pronounce his name. But after Man of Marble or Man of Steel I started to get disinterested. I have no idea what theaters we went to in Cambridge or New York except for the Bleecker Street Theater where we’d often go for the weekend.

For dates we’d go up the street (Beverwil) to Beverly Hills to the Beverly Theater or the Beverly Canon. There they had programs printed for the movies (The Young Lions). Afterward we’d go to Blum’s[2] for their crunchy cake or Wil Wrights Ice Cream Parlor for ice cream sundaes.

And a theater we would always forget except when some exceptional foreign film was showing there, was the Vagabond, way down on Wilshire Blvd. toward downtown.

[1]Wikipedia: The 1953 children's film Crin-Blanc, English title White Mane, portrayed the horses and the region. A short black-and-white film directed by Albert Lamorisse, director of Le ballon rouge (1956), Crin-blanc won the 1953 Prix Jean Vigo and the short film Grand Prix at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, as well as awards at Warsaw and Rome.[10] In 1960 Denys Colomb Daunant, writer and actor for Crin-blanc, made the documentary Le Songe des Chevaux Sauvages, "Dream of the Wild Horses". It featured Camargue horses and slow motion photography, and won the Small Golden Berlin Bear at the 1960 Berlin International Film Festival.[11]

[2]Blum's was a pink spun sugar fantasy come to life. It had a gift shop. It had shocking pink banquettes. It had surly waitresses. And it had cake. Not those plastic looking, multi colored and tasteless layered cakes offered in cafes around Union Square. No. They had Blum's Famous Coffee Crunch cake. (This legendary cake is so memorable that Nancy Silverton has included a recipe for it in her latest cookbook.)

Blum's was partly a restaurant for the ladies who didn't work and spent their days going downtown to shop, meet friends and get home before the children came home from school. (http://www.culinarymuse.com/2005/10/blums_where_are.html)...

Before he even knew what a crush was, Mike Kaplan had one on 1940s Hollywood star Jane Powell. Decades later, he got a chance to meet her

I'm not sure: either Jane Powell made me fall in love with the movies, or I fell in love with Jane Powell and the movies followed. In either case, I was six and she was my first crush before I knew what a crush was.

The year was 1948, the movie was Luxury Liner. Powell was 19, and played a spunky adolescent stowaway on a cruise ship. Her father, George Brent, is the captain, and when he discovers her aboard, she's made to scrub decks, peel potatoes and then play cupid to the various shipboard romances. She was cute, vivacious and captivating. The luxury liner might never have left the soundstages, but Powell convinced you that you were sailing across the ocean, because she sparkled with sincerity and intelligence.

For some, age defines you. You are either young or old. For others, age is a number and you remain your youthful, exuberant self. Then there are the ageless wonders, among them actress Janet Waldo. Generations of people have grown up with Janet’s work even though her name may not be a familiar one. The 87 year old actress sounds as vibrant as she did when she first wowed audiences on radio with Meet Corliss Archer.

Today, she is best known as Judy Jetson or Penelope Pitstop, but she has portrayed countless characters of all ages in a rich career that includes stage, screen, television and tons of animation. After high school in Seattle, Waldo, a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was performing in local theater when she won an award presented to her by fellow alum Bing Crosby, who was accompanied by a latent scout. She left for...

Joan Collins and Elizabeth Taylor competed over who could have the most husbands. The 77-year-old actress, who was a close friend of the screen legend, who died at Cedars-Sinai hospital aged 79 on Wednesday, March 23, has revealed her divorce from Peter Holm in 1987 prompted Elizabeth, who was married eight times to seven different men, to write a letter boasting about her own conquests.

She joked, "The last time I got a divorce, she sent me a note and she said, 'I'm still ahead by three.' I sent one back saying, 'Don't worry Liz, I'm going to catch up.' I actually didn't call her Liz. I always called her Elizabeth because she didn't like being called Liz. But I think people have a huge amount of respect for her. And the thing that was so amazing about her is that most women really liked her."

Joan, who is now married...

February 2009 began on a sad note for many vampire lovers and horror fans with the death of iconic genre legend Robert Quarry. If there was one actor capable of equalling Christopher Lee’s immortal performance as Dracula it was Quarry as the evil Count Yorga. A veteran of stage and TV, Quarry was set to become a major horror star of the seventies, but his film career faded rapidly, a situation not helped by a terrible run of bad luck that nearly cost him his life. Despite never achieving the movie stardom he deserved, his enigmatic turn as the sardonic vampire lord has given him cult immortality.

The son of a doctor, Robert Walter Quarry was born in Fresno, California on 3 November 1925. He spent his early years in Santa Rosa, Northern California, where he excelled in most high school sports, especially swimming. Quarry, who had an Iq of 168, became interested in acting through his grandmother,...

Walter Pidgeon, Greer Garson in William Wyler‘s Mrs. Miniver I mentioned dignified, gentlemanly, and usually a little dull Walter Pidgeon the other day, wishing he had been cast as Jane Powell‘s grandfather in A Date with Judy (1948) so he could (more or less) have dated Carmen Miranda on-screen. Had that happened, you could forget Greer Garson — and Tracy-Hepburn, Ladd-Lake, Loy-Powell, Flynn-de Havilland, Garbo-Gilbert, and Abbott-Costello. Pidgeon-Miranda would have been the movie couple for all time. No such luck, unfortunately. But Walter Pidgeon fans, nonfans, and those who don’t know Pidgeon from Adam can check him out on Thursday on Turner Classic Movies. Thirteen Pidgeon films will be presented as part of TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” series, though nothing "new," like, say, A Most Immoral Lady (in case it still exists), Big Brown Eyes, or Sextette. [Walter Pidgeon schedule.] But there’ll always be Greer Garson, with whom Pidgeon...