Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Stewart Granger

The first time for Elizabrth Taylor to appear on the set of CLEOPATRA to play the title role of the film was in Rome in late 1961 when she entered in full costume and make-up, then turning to the main actors Rex Harrison (Julius Caesar) and Richard Burton (Antony) and the director Joseph Mankiewicz, and, stretching her arm with the palm downwards, she said, "I am your Queen." Mankiewicz rushed and kissed her hand, saying, " Your Majesty." After shooting the first scene, Liz was sipping Irish-coffee and Burton surprised her from behind her back by sniffing her shoulders and when she turned to him totally flabbergasted, Burton rushed to say, "Eh, short but with a beautiful face." To make Burton understand a mute message, Liz rushed to sit on knees of her husband Eddie Fisher to let Burton understand, "No, thank you, I've got a husband."

Liz first met Richard Burton at the home of Stewart Granger in Los Angeles when Granger and wife Jean Simmons hosted what was phrased as a "Sunday cocktail brunch". She barely paid attention to him, instead she sat in a deck chair by the pool reading a book while every now and then, Burton reciting Shakespeare, his big booming voice travelled into her ears. Next time they met again by chance at a cocktail party hosted by Tyrone Power at his Manhattan penthouse. The strengest of all meetings was at a luncheon thrown by 20th Century-Fox executives in honour of Niknita Khrushchev where in the end, Burton, outraged by Khrushchev, flayed him and communism

While making CLEOPATRA in 1962 in Egypt, playing Antony and Cleopatra, Dick and Liz were both bitten by the bug of love of the characters they were enacting, and to their situation apply very accurately Donne's lines in his poem "The Good Morrow": I wonder by my troth what thou and I did till we met? ....Were we slumbering in the seven sleepers' den?.... But now good morrow to our waking souls who watch not each other in fear, etc .. Dear Ib, in your e-mail message where you say: "Pray, do go on," you remided me of Jacquez in AS YOU LIKE IT, admiring Amiens' singing, tells Amiens the page to go on singing



Stewart Granger's original name was James Stewart, but when he came to Hollywood in 1950 there was already a well established actor called James Stewart, so Stewart Grangers made his name Stewert Granger, but friends kept calling him Jim. Circa 1982, in my regular haunt in Exeter, the Edgerton Park Hotel in whose upper bar called the Tudor Lounge I drank and socialised, and with whose propritetor Roy Paultier I developed a relationship that sometimes authorised me to go behind bar and serve customers, I one day met a Tom who had been an M-G-M agent in London. When Tom gathered I was a film buff and particularly a Stewart Granger fan, he told me that Jim (Stewart Granger) kept a villa in Spain where he welcomed friends and guests to eat, drink and even stay, and many were the times when Tom enjoyed Jim's hospitality
Come and read the Liz Tayalor interview whose fun reconciles you to life. She is crippled and confined to a wheel chair, sipping alcohol-free beer, also known by the name Islamic beer. She protests to some remour that her daddy was gay. On the other hand, she says that the three great gays in Hollywood, Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift and James Dean were her most intimate personal friends, and when Rock told her he was diagnosed with AIDS, she was shocked as if the thing had happened to a member of her nuclear family. She talks about the many times she invited Monty to bed for sex but he refused. Asked about her views of sex now she is at the age of seventy, she burst saying, "Wow, I still enjoy it as I did when I was in my twenties."

Viewing the rushes of her film BUTTERFIELD 8, Liz Taylor took off her show and threw it at herself on the screen. Few weeks later, she got her first Oscar for her acting in this film