To the editor:
Elizabeth Taylor visited Houlton many times, in the Temple and Houlton theatres, on the screen more real than in life for her viewers — and for herself. She once said, “Everything makes me nervous — except making films.” Life in Houlton was a far cry from life in Hollywood and Dame Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Warner Fortensky, was like no one else anywhere. But women could empathize with her, could soar with her or fall flat with her. She was “falling in love with love again.” or acting as if “Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.”
The summer of 1967 I lived in a Los Angeles apartment, a block from Hollywood and Vine while attending a course in learning disabilities downtown. The Hollywood of the 1940s was no more, but I could recall reading movie magazines and writing postcards to request autographed photos. Address on each: North Hollywood, Calif. Most stars sent a 5×7 black-and-white glossy.
That summer in L.A. I bought fabric at the Beverly Hills Silks and Woolens, a fabulous place, with rolls of material stacked in big bins along all the walls. The clerk, an older man, took my requests, quickly reached up and brought bolts for approval, solid colors and small prints. “Avoid big prints,” he advised. “You’re too small for them.” Then he explained how they supplied the studios with fabric for entire movie wardrobes.
In the 1970s in Paris, I read an interview with Richard Burton; he told how Elizabeth had urged him to return and allow her to nurse him back to health after back surgery. He marveled that his good, sweet former wife, with her own health problems, wanted to help him. But no …
Recently an Iranian photographer was interviewed on the radio about his current exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “Elizabeth Taylor in Iran.” In 1976, she responded to a request from the U.S. Ambassador to Iran, saying she would go if a young Iranian photographer she had met would go along. He had lived in the U.S. since he was 9 and was ambivalent about returning, but agreed. He took beautiful compelling photos of Elizabeth in Persepolis, Shiraz and Isfahan.
The year before her visit, I had been in Tehran, Iran’s capital, for four days. One day, as the president of the Rochester Ikebana, Japanese floral arranging chapter. I was the guest of the president of Tehran’s chapter and her husband. Beautiful home, special food and Iranian hospitality.
I never bought a chador, the full-body covering worn there, as Elizabeth Taylor would during her visit. (See the exhibit photos online.) I did wear long skirts and covered up to avoid the sun. No photographer took photos of me.
If only Elizabeth Taylor had actually visited Houlton, she would have felt less “nervous,” at least for that moment in time.
Byrna Porter Weir
Rochester, N,Y.
