Frank McLynn

Much Ado About Nothing

How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood

By

Faber & Faber 484pp £20 order from our bookshop

I ought to declare a prejudice straightaway, for Elizabeth Taylor has always left me cold, and that celluloid image so many raved about seemed to me merely a portrait of sullen, boorish, peevish arrogance. In the 1950s she was the apotheosis of Hollywood as glamour, a fitting star for MGM and its high production values, but not a scrapper like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck. She played the studio game, colluded with its press agents and publicity machine, virtually invented the paparazzi, and either initiated or perfected many of the tricks of the image-shaping game that are common currency today.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    • 'We read from left to right and from start to finish. Or do we?' Stuart Hannabus considers the merits of reading i… ,
    • Domestic scandal, sexual abuse and serial killers are on the menu in April's crime round-up. revie… ,
    Follow Us