Elizabeth Taylor

The first volume to examine the iconic Elizabeth Taylor in this light <i>Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption</i> paints Taylor as the seminal representation of celebrity. A figure of enormous charisma and cultural sway she intrigued a global audience with her marriages and extra-marital improprieties as well as her extravagant jewelry her never-ending illnesses her dependency on alcohol and her perplexing friendship with Michael Jackson. Despite her continued world-renown however most people would be hard-pressed to name even three of her films though she made over seventy. <br/> <br/>Ellis Cashmore traces our modern hyperactive celebrity culture back to a single instant in Taylor's life: the publicizing of her scandalous affair with Richard Burton by photographer Marcelo Geppetti in 1962 which announced the arrival of a new generation of predatory photojournalists and along with them a strange conflation between the public and private lives of celebrities. Taylor's life and public reception Cashmore reveals epitomizes the modern phenomenon of celebrity.