Elizabeth Taylor

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In 1969, Hunter S. Thompson published  “It Ain’t Hardly That Way No More,” an account of gentrification washing over the bohemian California enclave of Big Sur, where he had lived at the beginning of his journalism career. The article’s opening:

“Will Liz Taylor change Big Sur?”

That was the question the San Francisco Examiner‘s society columnist asked the world recently, after she had scrambled, along with other minions of the West Coast press, to report the doings of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in California’s most famous “Bohemia,” a mountainous and sparsely populated stretch of coastline some 150 miles below San Francisco.

The occasion was the filming of a few scenes for a movie called The Sandpiper, starring Liz as a lady painter with a yen for rocky beaches and Dick as an offbeat beachcomber with a yen for lady painters. The scenes were shot here because Big Sur has some of the most spectacular scenery in America: booming surf, rocky beaches, and pine-topped mountains slanting straight to the sea.

In the years after World War II this rugged South Coast, as the oldtimers call it, got a valid reputation as a hideaway for artists, writers, and other creative types. Local history abounds with famous names. Henry Miller, author of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, lived here for 19 years. The late Robinson Jeffers was Big Sur’s original poet laureate, and folk singer Joan Baez is still considered a local, although she recently moved to Carmel Highlands, a few miles north. Other famous residents have been Dennis Murphy, author of a best seller called The Sergeant, prize-winning poet Eric Barker, sculptor Benjamin Bufano, and photographer Wynn Bullock. Unfortunately, that era is just about ended. Big Sur is no longer a peaceful haven for serious talent, but a neurotic and dollar-conscious resort area.•

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That happily married (and remarried) couple, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, profiled on 60 Minutes, 1970.

Their greatest joint film effort, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as performed by fast-talking commercial pitchmen (and women), SCTV, 1980:

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“Well, the reception that was accorded you makes me feel that your face is reasonably familiar to the public.”

Four years before this TV appearance, Elizabeth Taylor, who was essentially raised as a ward of MGM, graduated with the senior class at Hollywood’s University High School: From a 1950 Life magazine: “Between movie scenes for the last eight years Elizabeth Taylor has adjourned to the schoolroom on the M-G-M lot to keep up with her schoolwork. Last week, after a final year of studying (civics, English literature, ceramics and Senior problems), Elizabeth joined the senior class of Hollywood’s University High School to get her diploma. The 17-year-old actress (18, Feb. 27) finished with a B-plus average and her teacher rated her ‘a good student, very good in art, with a flair for writing.'”

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