Liz and Dick. It was, for a while at least, the romance of the century. In 1962, when Burton and Taylor dodged their respective spouses while filming Cleopatra in Rome and began their melodramatic liaison, which included a suicide attempt (Elizabeth’s) and a condemnation from the Vatican, there ensued a paparazzi feeding frenzy the likes of which would not be seen again until the death of Princess Diana thirty-five years later. Even Brangelina has nothing on Liz and Dick. Burton was devastatingly attractive and virile, and was widely acknowledged as a great actor, the natural successor to Gielgud and Olivier. Taylor was, according to popular opinion, the most beautiful woman in the world. Even as a small child, hardly able to read, I was somehow made aware of the brouhaha.
Their elopement was romantic but the long-term picture was not pretty. The Burtons turned out to be not only the most glamorous couple in the world but one of the most self-indulgent: alcohol, food, yachts, private jets, diamonds as big as the Ritz. They treated drinking as a competitive sport, and booze spawned unseemly brawls. Paparazzi shots from the later years of their partnership show a puffy, degenerate-looking couple. Their careers suffered. They divorced in 1974, then remarried a year later, but it was only a few months before the marriage’s final meltdown.
The exploits of Liz and Dick, as revealed by the tabloids, made a singularly unedifying spectacle. Richard and Elizabeth, the human beings behind
