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Dear Gossips,

I am late to start today after losing an hour of my morning to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, their epic love affair the featured story in the new issue of Vanity Fair based on a new book about their relationship called Furious Love, in which Ms Taylor, for the first time ever, shares the letters Burton wrote to her over the years, save one. The final one. I won’t spoil it for you except to say that if you love Celebrity, if Hollywood is your guilty pleasure, you can’t not read this article. It’s delicious. THEY were delicious.

I used to roll my eyes too when I’d hear bitches reflect longingly about the glamour of the Movie Star back then, and how most of the twats running around now are not even worthy of being called Imitation. That’s because I was a dumbass. Because once you appreciate how they lived, in a way that blew sh-t up all over the place, today pales in comparison.

Burton once outbid Aristotle Onassis for a diamond to gift to Elizabeth. They’d be in Rome and order room service from their favourite restaurant ... in Beverly Hills. They would throw things at each other, slap each other on set, in front of the crew, and then literally melt into each other, also with an audience, after making up, requiring an hour long break to clear the studio until they were finished with their, um, resolution. Until the next day when it would begin all over again. At one point, Burton was supporting 42 family members. In style.

And the best part – they documented their own legacy with photographs, yes, via the paps, yes, but also through correspondence, good old fashioned long winded, hyperbolic correspondence. Here’s what Burton wrote about the first time he saw Elizabeth:

There were quite a lot of people in and around the pool, all suntanned and all drinking the Sunday morning liveners. I was enjoying this small social triumph, but then a girl sitting on the other side of the pool lowered her book, took off her sunglasses and looked at me. She was so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud. She was unquestionably gorgeous … She was lavish. She was a dark unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much, and not only that, she was totally ignoring me.

Please.

It’s intoxicating.

It was the ultimate scandal. These two could not f-cking help themselves. And the drama that ensued... was amazing:

Kashner and Schoenberger also report that the unpublished first draft of Taylor’s memoir reveals that she remembered waking up one night in the villa she shared with then husband Eddie Fisher, after news of her affair with Burton broke. A friend of Fisher’s had given him a gun and Taylor said she woke to find him watching her, pointing the gun at her head. ?Don’t worry, Elizabeth, she claims she heard him say. I’m not going to kill you. You’re too beautiful.? That’s when she fled, gathering up her children and taking them to the rented villa of her confidant and personal secretary, Dick Hanley. (When asked about Elizabeth’s account of the incident, the 81-year-old Fisher simply laughed and said, The past is one son of a bitch.)

And this, Elizabeth’s personal statement to announce their divorce which she wrote herself, without a publicist cockblocking the message. Can you imagine if they sent out press releases like this now?

I am convinced it would be a good and constructive idea if Richard and I separated for a while. Maybe we loved each other too much. I never believed such a thing was possible. But we have been in each other’s pockets constantly, never being apart but for matters of life and death, and I believe it has caused a temporary breakdown of communication. I believe with all my heart that the separation will ultimately
bring us back to where we should be—and that’s together_ Wish us well during this difficult time. Pray for us.

Pray for us!

Obviously I’m obsessed. I need this book. To go along with the other book I’m reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, even more poignant now with the death of Dennis Hopper.

Click here for a teaser re: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the new issue of Vanity Fair. Furious Love will be released in July.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

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