My 10 Favorite Elizabeth Taylor Movies By Hal Drucker Elizabeth Taylor, who ostensibly left this mortal coil, March 23 at age 79, will always be 12 years old in my mind and heart ever since I first saw her in Lassie Come Home. The other 12 year old cut-ups in Mrs. Dold’s seventh grade at P.S. 144 , Queens, Jack Connor, Larry Press, Howard Freeman, Henry Basch, and notably Ray Kaplan (later to be the screen actor Ray Danton), identified with her. A year later we all fantasized that she would be on the receiving end of our kisses in Spin the Bottle and the Post Office, when she dazzled us with those amazing violet eyes seemingly minted for Technicolor and the genuine horsemanship she displayed in National Velvet. I’m foregoing the stuff you already know about her, the eight husbands (my favorite non-husband was her first suitor, West Point’s Mr. Outside, Glenn Davis), her illnesses, her excesses, her wonderful works on behalf of AIDS victims, and simply home in on those movies I’ll remember most about her, a couple of which are clinkers,  but most of which attest to her genuine talent. © MGM   1) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  (1958) I saw the original Broadway version of what I regard to be Tennessee Williams’s finest play, in 1955, with a scintillating cast that included Burl Ives as Big Daddy, Mildred Dunnock as Big Mama and that tempestuous married couple: Ben Gazzara as Brick and Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie (“The Cat”). But who else could possibly rival those stage performances on the big screen than Paul Newman as the alcoholic ex-football star and yes, Taylor, as his frustrated wife at her incendiary best with acting skills as formidable as her beauty.  (Ives reprises his towering presence in this film version).    © Warner Brothers  2) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Here is another instance in which I was fortunate enough to witness both the memorable original Broadway version (1962) and the powerful movie version. On stage, Edward Albee’s searing play dealt with an aging, boozy university professor and his intoxicated wife as they "amuse" a young couple (Nick and Honey) with a no-holds-barred, confrontational war of words. It showcased Arthur Hill and the fabled Uta Hagen as the dyspeptic duo George and Martha. Mike Nichols's harrowing film brilliantly captures the codependency of Richard Burton and Taylor as the mismatched couple. The young couple in the movie, George Segal and Sandy Dennis were not quite as engaging as George Grizzard and Melinda Dillon of the original. © Paramount Pictures  3) A Place in the Sun (1951) I still cannot understand why the producers did not stick to Theodore Dreiser’s famed 1925 book title: An American Tragedy,  rather than the ambiguous title they chose. Elizabeth Taylor's first adult role, that of  socialite Angela Vickers, came in this powerful George Stevens’s-directed movie, with Taylor’s life-long friend Montgomery Clift as the social climber George Eastman, who has an affair with a simple, trusting woman from his rich uncle’s assembly line, Alice Tripp (Shelly Winters). They go boating and in the process, Eastman watches passively as Tripp, carrying his child, struggles for survival. Taylor is at once beautiful and vulnerable as the elusive temptress Vickers. © MGM   4) Raintree County (1957) Based on the once popular novel by Ross Lockbridge Jr., director Edward Dmytryk's  Raintree County  was MGM's vastly unsuccessful attempt to create a lush epic picture about the Civil War that would equal or rival David O. Selznick's Gone With The Wind. Predictably, the shooting of this film didn't stand a chance against the timeless success of GWTW. Taylor as the Louisiana-born Southern belle Susanna Drake,was once again paired with Montgomery Clift as John Shawnessy, a quixotic abolitionist with hopes of becoming a great writer. To complicate matters, I’m sure most of you recall Clift’s near-fatal auto accident after leaving a party at the Beverly Hills home of Taylor and then-husband Michael Wilding.  With it all, Taylor is convincing as a deeply troubled lady whose past is marred by hereditary trauma. It did however, earn her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, although she lost out to Joanne Woodward. © Columbia Pictures  5) The Taming of the Shrew  (1967) My favorite of all classical comedies, I  like to refer to it as Shakespeare’s non-musical version of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate. This was one of 11 films Taylor did with Richard Burton, and I can certainly appreciate her apprehension at tackling   the Bard on film, opposite such an imposing presence as her husband, he of the sonorous voice.  As  Petruchio who comes to wive it wealthily in Padua, opposite Taylor as Katherine, they are first rate, especially in the great wooing scene that begins with “Good Morrow Kate, for that’s your name I hear.” And she responds, “Well have you heard but something hard of hearing, they call me Katherine that do talk of me.” © Warner Brothers  6) Giant (1956) Though an exceedingly hyped “epic” film based on Edna Ferber’s novel about two generations of Texans, Taylor in one of her best roles, as Leslie Benedict, was among a gaggle of marquee names that included, Rock Hudson, Carroll Baker, Dennis Hopper, Rod Taylor, Sal Mineo, Earl Holliman, (would you believe?  Jane Withers) and that greatest of all soap opera radio voices Mercedes McCambridge.  It was also James Dean's last movie (in the character of Jett Rink).  It earned George Stevens an Oscar for Best Direction. © Columbia Pictures  7) Suddenly, Last Summer  (1959) Entrepreneur Warner LeRoy was instrumental in acquainting New York theater-goers with Tennessee Williams by bringing the playwright’s brace of one act plays under the title of Garden District to LeRoy’s York Theater. One of the two Williams plays, Suddenly Last Summer moved to Broadway and later to London where Patricia Neal played Catherine Holly. Published accounts informed that Neal was in a state of shock,when she learned that Elizabeth Taylor was tapped for that meaty role in the film version in which Holly witnesses the death of her cousin Sebastian on vacation and goes to pieces. Enter Katharine Hepburn as her imperious Aunt Violet who determines to have Catherine lobotomized to cover up the fact that Sebastian was gay, a real no-no for Hollywood at the time. Other names in the movie, in addition to Hepburn, were Montgomery Clift and Mercedes McCambridge. Gore Vidal did the adaptation to the screen while Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed. © MGM   8) Father of the Bride  (1950) At  17, Taylor had already grown into a world-class beauty. Though the movie understandably had the imprimatur of Spencer Tracy in the title role, Elizabeth plays off the veteran actor beautifully as Daddy’s divine little girl. © MGM   9) Lassie Come Home (1943) According to Hollywood lore, Elizabeth Taylor replaced the actress Maria Flynn,  who was frozen with fear by the beautiful intelligent male collie impersonating the bitch who the impoverished family is forced to sell.  After viewing the “rushes,” production was summarily halted.  The producer, doing his nightly patrol as an air raid warden bumped into his fellow warden, Francis Taylor. Knowing he and his wife Sara wanted to get their daughter into the movies, he asked him to bring Elizabeth to the studio. The rest is – as they say – history. There she was introduced to Lassie and the production resumed, with Lassie undertaking that famous torturous journey to find her way back home from the Scottish Highlands. The movie  fetured a who’s who of the Brits of Hollywood: led by child star Roddy McDowell with whom Elizabeth shared a life-long friendship, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty, Edmund Gwenn, Nigel Bruce and Elsa Lanchester. (The dean of Hollywood Brits, C. Aubrey Smith curiously missed the cut). © MGM  10) National Velvet  (1944) As Velvet Brown, Taylor had her first major breakthrough at 12. She is ably supported by 24 year-old Mickey Rooney who played the former jockey Mi  Taylor who helps Elizabeth Taylor train her horse Pie, a wild stallion destined for the soap factory, to run in England's Grand National Steeplechase.   When she discovers that the jockey hired to ride Pie doesn't believe he can win, she disguises herself as a male jockey and rides the horse to victory. A young and beautiful Angela Lansbury appears in a small role as Velvet’s love-struck older sister. Hal Drucker (hdrucker@aol.com), is a voting member of New York’s Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle.