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How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood
Elizabeth Taylor has never been short on star power, but in this unprecedented biography, the spotlight is entirely on herthis is Elizabeth Taylor as she lived and loved, breaking and making the rules in the game of supreme celebrity.
Hardcover, 496 pages
Published
October 21st 2009
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Looks at Taylor's career in terms of how she was promoted during the studio era, and how she made the transition into the celebrity culture we recognise today. Interesting material on Hedda Hopper, her shifting relationship with Taylor and her impact on public opinion during the more scandalous moments in the star's many marriages. I liked how the author focussed on the highlights (and lowlights) of Taylor's very public life, though I was a bit disappointed that he stopped at The Little Foxes. A...more
Mann's writing style when it comes to biographies could be seen as manipulative and even fictional at times; I certainly understand the negative reviews on Amazon saying as much about this book and his Katharine Hepburn bio, which I'm also currently reading. But leaving aside his tendency to re-enact conversations he could not possibly have witnessed, Mann paints a thorough and excellently-documented picture of his subjects. He doesn't make up any facts. The theme examined in this portrait of El...more
Relax. This is not some sappy tale about the inner Elizabeth Taylor and her feelings on her life and loves. With the exception of the end, where Elizabeth really isn't performing anymore, its a fascinating study of how Hollywood operated back in the day. Elizabeth might be at the center but what you're really seeing is the people around her. I'd compare it to pulling back the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. Where Elizabeth, who had every advantage even before she became a child star, comes in is...more
This book offered an interesting take on the story of Elizabeth Taylor. The author focused on the business of Hollywood and the way that Taylor seemed to blaze the path from the tightly controlled studio system of press manipulation to modern media saturation and the art of spin so ubiquitous today. Frankly, I got the impression that Ms. Taylor was not much of a spin master, but the people around her truly worked the system to her advantage. So I'm not sure how much of a trailblazer she was in t...more
This is not a how-to book. Rather, it is a fascinating business-oriented (but still, deliciously entertaining) look at Elizabeth Taylor's life.
SPOILERS:
My favorite part was the author's account of Debbie Reynold's reaction to Eddie Fischer leaving her for Liz. Apparently, Debbie called Eddie from Los Angeles (he was in New York City) and he told her that yes, he was in love with Liz and he wouldn't be returning to LA the next day as he had planned. In a master move, Debb...more
SPOILERS:
My favorite part was the author's account of Debbie Reynold's reaction to Eddie Fischer leaving her for Liz. Apparently, Debbie called Eddie from Los Angeles (he was in New York City) and he told her that yes, he was in love with Liz and he wouldn't be returning to LA the next day as he had planned. In a master move, Debb...more
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I actually agree with this author's thesis: that the studio system, the actress's own proclivities, and the public created the star we know as Elizabeth Taylor. I just found it difficult to wade through the gossip to get there.
Normally I would never pick up a book like this because of all its dish, but my book club foisted it on me. (Don't kill me, TS!) I wasn't all that interested in it for the same reason I'm not all that interested in Us Weekly. A...more
I actually agree with this author's thesis: that the studio system, the actress's own proclivities, and the public created the star we know as Elizabeth Taylor. I just found it difficult to wade through the gossip to get there.
Normally I would never pick up a book like this because of all its dish, but my book club foisted it on me. (Don't kill me, TS!) I wasn't all that interested in it for the same reason I'm not all that interested in Us Weekly. A...more
This book is mostly a rehashing of information about Liz Taylor previously written up in the movie magazines of yesterday, which I read as a very young teeenager thanks to a friend's older sister who passed her old magazines on to me. I grew up reading celebrity news that was 5 years old by the time I read it. It gave me a head start on understanding some of the issues discussed in this book. Living so close to the Canadian border , I was also able to read more detailed accounts of the lives of ...more
Check out what I wrote in my spanish blog: http://lunairereadings.blogspot.com/2012... I liked the way the author tried to give every aspect of Elizabeth's life a new sense of goal: everything she did since the moment she woke up to the moment she went to sleep was intended to perfect her status as a movie star. It is just fantasy and theory, but it is very interesting to see how an exercise like this gives a total new sense to everything she did in her life. She had a goal, she had a busine...more
In light of her recent passing, I picked this up because is there a more glamorous, actual true real movie star? The book basically goes through her movie career so it is not an actual biography. I was a little disappointed because it did not go into much detail with the Richard Burton marriages, which to me are the most interesting...but, it provides ample information on the other marriages, which lasted longer, I guess. Fascinating glimpse also, of how she defied the studios frequently and got...more
As a Liz Taylor fan I found this an interesting read. Neither a dish-the-dirt read ala Kitty Kelly nor an adoring fan tribute it shows Ms Taylor as a resilient strong woman. Insights and background about her many marriages and romances (ends with Burton) and how they were influenced by and influenced her career. Liz to her credit is no self pitying victim, despite being a child star of the old Hollywood system. No modern actress has ever achieved her glamour and beauty. Sorry Angelie et al, you ...more
How to Be a Movie Star by William J. Mann
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009
406 pages
Biography
3/5 stars
Summary: Not a traditional biography, How to Be a Movie Star examines Elizabeth's life in the star system taking particular interest in how she became a movie star while also touching on her infamous love affairs.
Thoughts: I just reviewed Furious Love about Elizabeth and Richard but I wanted to read this too because I've always been fascinated by her....more
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009
406 pages
Biography
3/5 stars
Summary: Not a traditional biography, How to Be a Movie Star examines Elizabeth's life in the star system taking particular interest in how she became a movie star while also touching on her infamous love affairs.
Thoughts: I just reviewed Furious Love about Elizabeth and Richard but I wanted to read this too because I've always been fascinated by her....more
William J. Mann's book is less a biography, more a study of Taylor's public image over the decades. As such, he chooses to focus on key moments in her career and has space to devote to the workings of the publicity machine which made her a star.
MGM trained Taylor from childhood to play a sanitised, glamorised version of herself. Mann describes her first wedding to hotel heir Nicky Hilton as "more like an extended photo opportunity for a picture that needed to be promoted." Th...more
MGM trained Taylor from childhood to play a sanitised, glamorised version of herself. Mann describes her first wedding to hotel heir Nicky Hilton as "more like an extended photo opportunity for a picture that needed to be promoted." Th...more
this book taught me hedda hopper is a stone cold ugly chapeaux'd bitch!
my mom surprised me on xmas with this book. surprisingly i knew nothing about it even though it combines many of my interests - namely, knowing the correct order of all elizabeth taylor's husbands, bombshell behavior, and feminism through the lens of the hollywood star machine. this book has plenty of gossip antectdotes, but the truly phenomenal part of this book is that it doesn't presume to be a full biography...more
my mom surprised me on xmas with this book. surprisingly i knew nothing about it even though it combines many of my interests - namely, knowing the correct order of all elizabeth taylor's husbands, bombshell behavior, and feminism through the lens of the hollywood star machine. this book has plenty of gossip antectdotes, but the truly phenomenal part of this book is that it doesn't presume to be a full biography...more
Hmph, I read this "new" book on Liz to find out about her later life, since the one I read before was written 20 years before this.... oh well. Seems like the author did not find her later life more than worthy of a mention, and if her friendship with Michael Jackson was "embarrasing" to him -well, it isn't that to me and no doubt it wasn't embarrasing to Liz. Let alone her charity work, especially to cure HIV/AIDS. Disappointed. 2,5 stars...
Mink, diamonds and ridiculous drama created the phenomenon that was Elizabeth Taylor. In Mann's biography, 'How to be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood," the book reads like a novel. Elizabeth's strange lifestyle - sometimes glamourous, sometimes outrageous or shocking - is a captivating read, regardless of whether or not you're a fan. A really interesting read. It will leave you off feeling terribly happy that you're not a movie star, too.
This author really approached Liz Taylor as something apart from the tabloid story and instead focused on what made her a star and a maverick of her time (or any time really). While I still don't fully understand what it must have been like to live your daily life at such an accelerated pace, no one can deny that she lived her life completely on her own terms from start to finish.
A peek inside a ridiculously glamorous life. This isn't really biography, it says here, but rather a study of how Elizabeth Taylor expertly navigated Hollywood -- a clever premise that allows the author to skip the boring parts and jump right to the juicy stuff. I approve. I do think he gives ET a smidge too much credit, making it sound as if her emergency tracheotomy was essentially a canny career move that just happened to have life-saving side-effects. Overall, though, a super fun read.
I love reading a well written biography. I have always been interested in "movie stars". Real Movie Stars from "back in the day": Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and like. I had never read a book about Elizabeth Taylor. But Mr. Mann did a great job of telling her story. I hope that he has written other books so that I can read more of his work.
Mann is a little too worshipful of his subject and gives her credit for breaking, perhaps, a little more ground than she actually did (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as THE movie that brought down the motion picture production code... really?). Still, it's absolutely fascinating, and La Liz is a magnificent beast.
I read this book to better understand the relationship between her and Michael jackson. I learned so much even though he was not even mentioned once the whole book. Her life mirrored michaels in so many ways I totally get why they were such good friends. She went through the same constant media attacks as he did and both were child stars and both were extremely lonely and looking o be loved.
Susan
added it
The book did what a movie-star movie does---it took me away, in this case, into the life of a woman who could snap her fingers and have whatever she wanted. Fascinating. And a good read, considering I mainly bought it for the cover, which is so classic movie-star!
This was a pretty good book, because it wasn't a typical biography. It organized the chapters around what film Elizabeth Taylor was working on during a certain period in time. It got a bit tedious at the end, but it's a somewhat fawning love letter to La Liz.
What a terrific, juicy read! Not a humdrum bio, but a living, breathing testament to a terrific "dame". This spans the time between Taylor's start in Hollywood and essentially ends with her 2nd marriage to Burton. Loved it.
If you like to watch Turner Classic Movies you'll like this one. Some good insight into how the movie business used to be and some fun background on Elizabeth and her many husbands and other characters.
This was an entertaining dishy bio. I found myself feeling a bit disapproving and also bored with her antics by the end of the book, perhaps because the author so aggressivly adores her. Great summer read.
I enjoyed the pace of this book and the back-stage details of so many of my favorite movies. This is the second of Mann's books I've read (Kate) and thoroughly enjoyed both. I appreciate Mann's mention of sexuality and his way of weaving other star's details into the stories.
I enjoyed the exploration of Elizabeth Taylor as a star who moved our culture into the celebrity drenched culture of the present moment. It is an interesting thesis that Elizabeth Taylor moved us from a sense of stars as not being like us to way too much information about star's lives. Ms. Taylor's long and positive association with gay men is also interesting. What is missing is much information about her relationship to her children and what they have become in the limelight of their mothe...more
Pretty standard for a movie star biography- with a couple extra husbands maybe. Left me a little curious about what became of her in later years, post-60s, although the Richard Burton era was definitely the most interesting part. Which means I'll be adding Furious Love to my to-reads and maybe watching Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf four more times.
I'd give it a 3.5 or so. i read this a year before Elizabeth Taylor died so I'm hoping a more complete autobiography will come out
An interesting enough book, but doesn't really tell you anything more about Elizabeth Taylor that you don't already know.
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