Elizabeth Taylor

A Celebration

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by Sheridan Morley

Type

Biographies

Subject

Actress > Elizabeth Taylor

Keywords

Elizabeth Taylor, actress, star

Publishing date

2026 (March 02, 2026)

Publisher

Dean Street Press

1st publishing

1989

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 160 pages
5 x 8 inches (13 x 20 cm)

ISBN

978-1-917382-30-4

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Book Presentation:
'MGM taught me how to be a star more than forty years ago, and I have never really known how to be anything else'

Elizabeth Taylor was the last truly great star to emerge from the Hollywood studio system, and it is hard to imagine any actress ever matching her fame at the height of Cleopatra. Yet, for all the attention she has received, this was the first book to explore Taylor first and foremost as an actress rather than as a glamorous celebrity or half of a legendary couple. Sheridan Morley traces her development from child roles in the 1940s and romantic dramas of the 1950s to the astonishing creative run between 1956 and 1960, when she made Giant, Raintree County, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer and Butterfield 8, earning her long-awaited Oscar. He also examines the Cleopatra debacle, her literary collaborations with Richard Burton, including The Taming of the Shrew and Under Milk Wood, and her later success on television. While Morley addresses the turbulence of her private life, he shows how it shaped and deepened her performances. Loss and resilience defined Taylor's life, yet she always returned to the screen with renewed power and determination.

About the Author:
Sheridan Morley(1941-2007) was the third generation of a celebrated theatrical family. His father was Robert Morley, the character actor, and his grandmother was Gladys Cooper, in her youth one of the great beauties of her day and a much sought-after actor in Britain and Hollywood. Sheridan was also a cousin of the actress and presenter Joanna Lumley and brother-in-law of the actor Robert Hardy.Morley joined The Times as deputy features editor in 1973, and then Punch in 1975 as drama critic and arts editor, remaining with the magazine until 1989. In the late 1980s, he became a regular arts diarist for The Times and was its TV critic from 1989 to 1990. He worked as drama critic for the Spectator from 1990 to 2001, and after a short period at the New Statesman, he joined the Daily Express in 2004.He married his first wife, Margaret Gudejko, in 1965, and they had three children together. He married his second wife, Ruth Leon, in 1995.He authored a number of books including A Talent to Amuse: A Life of Noel Coward (1969); Gladys Cooper (1979); The Hollywood Raj (1983), The Other Side of the Moon: The Life of David Niven (1985), Odd Man Out: James Mason (1989), Robert: My Father (1993), Oscar Wilde (1976), Elizabeth Taylor: A Celebration (1988), Audrey Hepburn: A Celebration (1993) and Marilyn Monroe (1998). These are now all republished by Dean Street Press.

See the publisher website: Dean Street Press

See the complete filmography of Elizabeth Taylor on the website: IMDB ...