Siren Centerfold: Elizabeth Taylor (2/27/32 - 3/23/11)

I heard about Elizabeth Taylor’s passing today along with the rest of the world, and I immediately knew the tributes to this Hollywood icon would be instant and endless. Because it wasn’t just the death of an actress - it was the end of an era. And while I’m aware my own personal tribute will get lost in the sea of all the rest, it’s simply an On the Marquee necessity to commemorate such a beautiful, talented, tragic figure.

Taylor was many things to many people. The truth is, some knew her as Liz “White Diamonds” Taylor, others knew her as a perpetual husband-trader (9 in all), some knew her as a fervent AIDS activist and still others may have only recognized her as being one part of Michael Jackson’s eccentric entourage. But to most she was the gorgeous girl with the violet eyes who dominated Hollywood with her roles in films like A Place in the Sun, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Giant, Cleopatra and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

To honor her, I bring you an old On the Marquee standard - the Siren Centerfold.

Strikingly beautiful from a young age, Taylor made her first movie appearance in 1942's There's One Born Every Minute, at the age of ten. Two years later, National Velvet turned her into a bonafide child star.

Taylor was the epitome of Hollywood royalty. She was the first actress to earn $1 million for a movie role (Cleopatra) and she's also owned some serious bling, including the 33-carat Krupp Diamond. Not to mention she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999.

Though she may not always have been loyal to her husbands, Taylor was a loyal friend. When her bestie, actor Montgomery Clift, was in a nasty car accident after leaving a party at her house one night, Liz was the first one on the scene and saved him from choking on his own broken tooth.

"If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down," she once said.

We'll miss you, Liz!

Hollywood's Cheating Hearts

Cheaters. They’re saturating the news so much right now, it’s just plain unavoidable. The most recent example being Jesse James, the Monster Garage scumbag who dared cheat on America’s sweetheart and recent Best Actress Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock. Granted, she married a tattooed, motorcycle riding bad boy with a porn star ex, so she basically got what she paid for – but that doesn’t make the situation suck any less. Who cheats on Miss Congeniality?! Jesse better watch his back – we hear Sandy’s got Betty White on her side.

Jesse James isn’t first (and he certainly won’t be the last) celeb to give in to his roving eye and amped up libido. In Old Hollywood, illicit affairs were rampant. Let’s look at some of the most infamous philanderers from back then, shall we?

Spencer Tracy

The number one spot has to go to Spencer Tracy. He was one-half of one of Hollywood’s most famous couples – the other half of course being Katharine Hepburn. But there was actually one other fraction to that equation that a lot of people might forget – Tracy’s wife. He stayed married all throughout his 25-year relationship with Hepburn. His Catholic faith prevented him from seeking a divorce, but not from breaking the commandment about adultery, obviously.

Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor

Well I guess if you’re gonna cheat, you do it with one of the most gorgeous women in Hollywood - Elizabeth Taylor. It’d be like someone having an affair with Angelina Jolie - you just don’t pass that up (methinks Brad Pitt knows what I mean). Burton was married with kids when he and Taylor first hooked up on the set of Cleopatra. But let’s not forget about Taylor, who wasn't exactly a saint. She was married at the time too, to Eddie Fischer (who had left his wife, Debbie Reynolds, for Taylor!) Oh what a tangled web…

Clark Gable

Ooh this is a juicy one. Good ole Clarkie was married to a woman named Maria Franklin Printiss while he had an on-set affair with Loretta Young in 1935. Their affair produced a love child, but Young hid this fact from the world, pretending her daughter Judy was adopted. Judy herself believed this lie throughout most of her life and she met Gable only once, as a teenager, with no idea that he was her real father. She didn’t find out this fact until 20 years later. Pretty messed up, huh?

Ingrid Bergman & Roberto Rossellini

Talk about a scandal! Bergman and Rossellini were both married when they began their affair in 1949. In 1950, Bergman gave birth to Rossellini’s son – sparking outrage. (You have to admit, it was pretty brazen for such a huge star.) The affair almost ruined the actress’ image completely, and she was exiled for the U.S. for a time because of it.

The Terrible Tweets

If you haven’t heard of it, Twitter is the newest fad of Young Hollywood. It’s a social networking tool used for shameless self-promotion by anyone seeking attention from younger fans. Users include us and Demi Moore’s 12-year-old husband (but definitely not Kanye West). With the fad skewing so young, you can imagine my surprise when I heard that legendary screen actress Elizabeth Taylor tweeted her release from the hospital.

Taylor is 77-years-old. Have you ever seen someone at that age try to work a computer? Cable TV is still a source of confusion for most of those people. My mother is 59-years-old and has trouble finding her email, for crying out loud.

The point I’m trying to make is this: there’s no way that Taylor is the one doing the tweeting. Which newly-hired inter, then, thinks that Taylor has enough computer-savvy fans to warrant a Twitter page in the first place.

Hell, I don’t even use Twitter because I’m sick of new technology. I capped out at Facebook. Andrea handles the tweets (as well as any advancement in the Internet social networking world here on out). If I’m too old for this crap, there’s no way it’s worth the time for Taylor to have one.


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Newsflash: Debbie Knows Best!

When veteran actresses speak out about stars of today, it’s not always pretty. (See: Fay Dunaway and Hilary Duff.) But instead of being catty, Debbie Reynolds is trying to encourage peace in Hollywood. Specifically, peace between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. (Brad Pitt left Aniston for Jolie four years ago, but you’d think it was yesterday the way Aniston yammers on in the press.)

Debbie decided to speak out over the weekend, ‘cause she knows a thing or two about Hollywood marriage scandals. She’s insisting that the Jolie-Pitt-Aniston “love triangle” mirrors her own romantic drama in 1959, when her husband Eddie Fisher left her for Elizabeth Taylor. "(The split with Fisher) reminds me of what happened with Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Except we were a generation earlier,” the 76-year-old Singin’ In the Rain star said. Fifty years later, Reynolds and Taylor have mended their rift and become close friends—and Reynolds believes Aniston and Jolie can do the same. And it also kind of sounds like she’s subtly telling Aniston to, well, get over it! "I mean, what can you do? When the man wants to leave he wants to leave,” Reynolds said.

Stay tuned for Us Weekly’s cover story in 2059—“ANGIE & JEN: THE NEW BFFs!”

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Quick Quips for February 27th

"If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down." - Elizabeth Taylor

And They Lived Happily Ever After

Have you ever noticed how Hollywood rarely does movies about the “happily ever after” part of a relationship? The story always seems to end when the relationship begins. That’s probably because most people in Hollywood have never experienced the “happily ever after.” Hell, they’ve never even experienced the “ever after,” happily or not.

In Hollywood, marriage is the new dating. It always has been, and that’s why there are so many celebrity divorces. But a recent article in Page Six about designer Mary McFadden and her ELEVEN husbands. Well that just got my little mind churning: who in Hollywood has been married the most? Since actors love nothing more than to award themselves, I'm giving them the shiny, new Hollywood Walk of Fame Shame [Think: "The Razzies" for relationships].

Since I’ve decreed that four marriages is blasé [because it's my award, that's why], to be eligible for contention the celebrity in question must have been married at least five times. That in mind, I present to you the Shame's Inaugural class:

1. Joan Collins: 5 husbands
2. Geena Davis: 5 husbands (how that happened, I haven’t the faintest)
3. Billy Bob Thornton: 5 wives
4. Cary Grant: 5 wives (bonus points: possibly gay during each one of them)
5. Jerry Lee Lewis: 6 wives
6. Robert Evans: 7 wives
7. Lana Turner: 8 husbands
8. Elizabeth Taylor: 8 marriages to 7 husbands, but she’s graded higher than Turner because of her everlasting notoriety
9. Mickey Rooney: 8 marriages, but he's graded higher than both because being able to drug eight different women into marriage without getting caught is worth extra points. (Or maybe it was his portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's that won them over)

And finally, the President of the Inaugural Class of the Hollywood Walk of Fame Shame is … [drum roll, please]

Zsa Zsa Gabor. The woman has had nine husbands – most likely in part because, as Andrea once pointed out to me, she was considered the Paris Hilton of her day.

Honorary mention does go to McFadden for her diligent work to further this cause, but because of her minimal celebrity status she failed to garner enough votes [read: mine].

To nominate members of next year's class, please email us.

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Hollywood Headlines

We’re constantly hearing from celebs today about how the tabloids are out of control. As if this is something new. Check out this Photoplay magazine from April 1964 (personally scanned by yours truly). It’s the same gossip and speculation that goes on today. Except instead of Brad and Angelina they had Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. (Alas, one thing they didn’t have was a cool mashed-up moniker like “Brangelina.” Let’s make one up now. How about Richliz? Lizard? Hmm...I’ll keep working on it.)

Ah, headlines back then. So blunt. So pointed. So...totally asking for a libel suit.

Click on each of the scans to read insider "evidence" of Liz and Dick's pattern of self-destruction. My favorite excerpt: "Richard Burton confronted by Liz after he's been out drinking in Puerto Vallarta with writer Budd Shulberg, snaps at her, "If you don't watch out, I'll marry him."

On the next page, Liz gets him back with this zinger: "I've been sitting here for half an hour just waiting for you to say hello to me once, you boozed-up burned-out Welshman." If this was today, there'd be many reports of Burton in and out of rehab, I'm sure.

And just for fun, here's an advertisement from the mag. Gee, how come we don't paint our shoes anymore? And why doesn't she seem to be worried about her nice, white rug?

Quick Quips for January 28th

"I’ve only slept with the men I’ve been married to. How many women can make that claim?" - Elizabeth Taylor