SHIRLEY MacLAINE on ELIZABETH TAYLOR — Diva on Diva

[Applause] ladies and gentlemen Shirley MacLaine [Music] [Applause] [Music] I have known Elizabeth through 42 birthdays in this town you can work out that mess she has always been very very clear that above all hours is an industry of show business and with that clarity she has played the game better than any of the rest of them she has come up with the biggest sweet smell of success in the fragrance world this is as important to Elizabeth as everything that's gone before and for very good reason Elizabeth's fragrance line is the only successful celebrity franchise in the history of sweet smells so as one who has watched my friend operate with shrewdness and this incredible clarity i say with undying admiration thank you for your star shine which inspires all of our hopes toward our own longevity and thank you for proving that capitalism does not have to be cutthroat if it has a person who is at the head of the profit-making who is loving fair and more than decent many many many happy returns for another thousand lifetimes it will be such fun I know [Applause] I think her emotional intelligence is is really high and I think she somehow knew underneath okay it's time to put aside childish things and become first a teenage actress and then a an adult actress first of all you know you're perfectly safe on a movie set you know the crew is there to take care of you you know the lights will be fixed to camouflage the defects you know that the director if you trust him and they were usually good directors that you worked with will protect you from being a real and you know that her then you know if you're an actor that's in that kind of a list Escalon that if you really surrender and and get out of your own way particularly in a close-up that the audience will see your soul and she knew that some level I think she had a really exquisite sense of compassion for people who thought they were misfits that didn't mean they were but if she thought they felt it she would be there for them now where that came from I don't know because I don't know if she felt like a misfit being so beautiful it's possible to be so beautiful and so talented and feel like I missed it she had fallen in love with Richard and I was asking her about it and she was sitting at a table drinking champagne and I think she thought that I disapproved of her going from one man to the other and she lifted the glass of champagne and she looked straight into my eyes and they all they got they welled up her eyes welled up with tears and she said Richard has taught me how and the tears spilled over and she put the glass here so that the tear would fall into the champagne how to love listen she loves this man whatever I've heard about him she had it so poetically described to me so that I would have proof in the roadside cafe the dancing with the big boobs and the hips and she was just ready to do it to make him jealous [Music] carry on I want you don't encourage us he want you her dramatic ability we always know but that scene in the Roadhouse with the booze and the in defiance of her own beauty she really let herself be ugly and trampy and bloated and drunk I want to see Elizabeth Taylor knowing as we all do this this extraordinary arc of her life and her suffering and her overcoming of suffering and her and her humor and her beauty and her children and her jewels and her men and her paintings and her food I would like to see anything that Elizabeth would do we have a great script it's called these old broads the Carrie Fisher wrote for me for Debby for Betty Bacall of Julie Andrews and Elizabeth it is the greatest part she'll ever play as she's plays it in bed so she doesn't have to get up early she can stay there and she doesn't have to stay long there's a true you're the one that introduced Michael Todd to Elizabeth Taylor well she was coming over a lot to my place in Malibu and I think Elizabeth came on the set or something like that and a couple of the extras wanted me to get them raises and told me in the middle of the scene that if I didn't go to my Todd and get them raises they're gonna drop me in the river the back lot so I saw Todd up against a tree against which was draped Marlena Dietrich if you remember he was having an affair with her at the time I went up to Mike and it might have been then that I saw Elizabeth whom I'd known before and I think I introduced him there because there are other scenes that are wrapping through my mind where I was in Mike Todd's office and he's calling her on the phone and she's asking for a diamond pin before she'll talk to him something like that and then one day and she came to me and she calls me squirrely she said screwing this Mike Todd I had lunch with him today in the cafeteria at the commissary of Metro and he says I'm gonna marry him and she said I felt like he was the snake and I was the Mongoose or is it the other way around uh-huh one of them was a snake in among us and she says I believe him I think it's gonna happen I said well what are you gonna do is well I'm going to do Raintree County then I don't know any followed her to Raintree County to the location there and they got married now that really was a match made in heaven because wow they could oh they were so funny together and it's so dramatic she's the most long-lasting star in the firmament and of course I know about that cosmic stuff was an amazing capacity she had she was so lovely so interesting so compassionate as though each man that she talked to was the only person on the planet a very down to earth really if ever the term mother earth should apply to anyone it would be to her strange because she is so glamorous and on the other side of the polarity a kind of caretaking housewife she wouldn't get all dressed up she likes to just slob around [Music] he walked up to her and said I'm in love with you I'm gonna marry you that's all there is to it she was mesmerized by Todd if she fell in love with him - he was so flamboyant and his humor would match hers very body very bombastic very funny I considered them an ideal pair because they were equal in force of nature I remember sitting in his office he was courting her on the telephone she was on the other end and I could hear her demanding cajoling seducing that if she if he wanted her it would take a diamond and emerald pin I watched him melt I watched him basically in his mind make out the check [Music] it into the mountains over New Mexico his remains were burned beyond recognition I heard it on the radio and went right over it and she was in bed disbelieving upset with God she was destroyed couldn't couldn't move couldn't get out of bed you [Music] the envelopes' Elizabeth Taylor and in 1961 the film earned the actress her first Academy Award for a movie she loathed I don't really know how to express my gratitude I think she said she got it for her tracheotomy hated the movie hated her part said so piece of crap movie but thank you he had the temerity to humiliate the most beautiful woman in the world just as Mike did and her sense of humor sometimes got so buddy that she thought that was funny her good friend Rock Hudson was dying of a mysterious illness called AIDS Taylor was furious that little was being done to stop a disease that some were calling God's punishment of the gay community AIDS knows no prejudice it strikes men women children and we must strike back and with your help we will and we will win thank you his death activated her into some kind of movement which then became a cause playing a show business manager Elizabeth camped it up alongside Joan Collins Shirley MacLaine and even Debbie Reynolds Taylor's oldrover the heart of Eddie Fisher they both knew that everybody was interested in who they were and what it was gonna be like so they were performing a little bit this isn't about the costume it's about Freddy it's not Freddy hunter oh please I haven't thought about him in ages because if it is I wanted to remind you it all happens so long ago when we were so young well let's just drop it okay I forgave you years ago so let's move on okay great good grand grab a she and Debbie had talks about the past about what went on when women get together and are honest and open about their feelings it leaves the men in the dust all have lived our lives through her every time she got a divorce we thought about the divorce we were engaged in every time she fell in love we felt the same way you've had so many wonderful people as part of your life Elizabeth Taylor being one of them you write that you're over funerals but you did lose her this year or just a month ago what did her life and her passing mean to you personally sure well she was my oldest friend we met each other I was 20 she was 22 and we hung out together and I introduced her to Todd my Katya and I because we were doing around the world in a day so I watched the negotiations for dinner that the Mike would make with Elizabeth all right we'll have dinner and here's one diamond no it's been a custom they were a wonderful funny couple understood they were outrageous she had a wonderful sense of humor and of course he was the master of Barnum of all the people who played a role in your life who do you miss the most probably Elizabeth do I miss her Charlie we were very good friends from the time we were she was 23 and I was 21 we were good buddies mm-hmm a really wonderful genuine very very talented and and it made fun of herself that was the quality I loved about her the most Elizabeth Taylor's recent death provoked many accolades and remembrances what are your personal and professional memories of her she wasn't my oldest friend yeah I met her I introduced her to Todd you know we were on 80 days together I was playing that ridiculous Hindu princess and and I used to watch this is so great I used to watch the the negotiations going on between will he get her to go to dinner tonight without a diamond and yet at the same time she would come out and visit me in Malibu when I had a little one-room place out there and I had a dog then - who was not housebroken and we would go to dinner and of course every man and the restaurant would fall in love with her because that was one of her intentions in life was to make men fall in love with her which she was very successful at I remember she came home this one night and my little dog had pooped on the floor because he wasn't housebroken and she squirrely give me the paper towels so I can clean it up just to call me squirrely she was right even then and she and she took the paper towel and she got down on her hands and knees just scooped up Washington he said I just want to be a housewife I just write I just want a simple life okay now she had this but but she's not alone Isabella Rossellini talks about how her mother also really liked doing housework maybe there's something about no she was she was fabulous at dramatizing her reality you appeared in a TV film together talk about a small world it was directed by Carrie Fisher of course we know where that right with her she wrote oh she wrote it what that was of course her father later wind up with Liz and Debbie Reynolds was in that too right and you've you played a woman who was a no no but I just you

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Keywords: elizabeth taylor, shirley maclaine, shirley maclaine elizabeth taylor, elizabeth taylor shirley maclaine, liz taylor, liz taylor shirley maclaine, interview, talks about, discuss, diva, divas, diva on diva, legend, legends, actresses, Hollywood, these old broads, who's afraid of virginia woolf, butterfield 8, mike todd, elizabeth taylor mike todd, liz taylor mike todd, shirley maclaine interview, elizabeth taylor memories

Id: 30YCp8dvYHs

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2018