Taylor charmed Atlantans on ‘87 visit
Her eyes really were violet. I was close enough to see.
Elizabeth Taylor was in town to promote her first perfume, Passion, and she was staging a news conference at the downtown Macy’s.
This was 1987, a time when Taylor had survived one of her many near-death episodes to come back with a vengeance. She was 55, fit, and delighted to be in front of an audience of 3,000 cheering fans.
After her short speech from the purple-bedecked podium beneath the glittering chandeliers hanging over Macy’s atrium, she retired to a smaller event, a tea party with 150 admirers who had paid $200 for a special, signed, one-ounce bottle of the perfume.
We sat together. I watched as she utterly charmed the group and demonstrated a mastery of being Elizabeth Taylor. She took time with everyone in the room, chatting like a new neighbor and at the same time dropping names of the rich and famous to provide just the entertainment she knew her audience craved.
Speaking of a party given by her friend, Baron Guy de Rothschild, she showed her own wonder at the jewelery on display by the women in attendance, and then mentioned casually, "I had on five million dollars worth myself."
On her hand at the tea party was the famous 33.19-carat Krupp diamond given to her by Richard Burton. The Krupp was hardly the biggest diamond that the actor offered as a testament to his love. It was only half the size of the rock he acquired from Harry Winston that became known as the Taylor-Burton diamond. But it was large.
What those at the tea party enjoyed, what I enjoyed, was how Taylor got a kick out of things, including the diamonds on her own hands.
She was deeply of this world, while being bigger than any of its average citizens. She could relate to the Joe Six-Packs of the land -- and even married one once -- but also could feel at ease among the gods.
“She was in her own category” Atlanta theater-owner George LeFont said. “Her life was bigger than the movies themselves.”
At 16 she was welcomed onto the campus at Harvard College to accept an award from the school’s literary magazine, The Advocate, as “Lady of the Year.” My father was the the Advocate editor that year. A photo from the visit shows him and Taylor walking arm-in-arm in front of Eliot House. It’s a photo that has become part of family lore.
Forty years later I sat next to her and held her hand. Small world.
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