And after 100-plus minutes, feeling exhausted by this extremely wordy proximity…this lavishly written deep dive into the madness of excess — ferocious, insatiable and particularly owned by Elizabeth Taylor.…good God in heaven. Surface-skimming wasn’t the half of it.
I’m not letting partner-in-crime Richard Burton off the hook, but at least his difficult Welsh upbringing and actor-of-great-promise burden (his glory years began in ‘49 and pretty much ended with Cleopatra) left him occasionally guilt-stricken.
I’ll always love the title, however, and to think it came from a condemning 1962 editorial in L’Osservatore della Domenica, the Vatican newspaper.
Three guesses who doesn’t have clue #1 about the Burton-Taylor legend, and the first two don’t count.
