Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN TLUMACKI/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES T he ultimate media circus rolled into Boston when Liz Taylor and her ex-ex-husband Richard Burton starred in a six-week run of Noel Coward's play Private Lives at the Shubert Theatre in the spring of 1983. The city went bananas, with throngs of fans swarming their every public appearance, hoping for a glimpse of Liz Taylor drip- ping in diamonds and rocking a Hollywood haute-couture style rarely seen in sensible Boston. No matter that Liz and Dick were no longer married (the fact that they were playing a divorced couple who reunited while on honeymoon with their new significant others made it all the more juicy), or that their best days as actors were behind them. Everyone was still enraptured by the impossible glamour of Liz and Dick when they fell in love on the set of Cleopatra in the early 1960s (while married to other people) and became Hollywood's most fascinating couple. They went on to dazzle the critics and titillate their fans in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966, when they played a bitterly feuding husband and wife. The lure of gossip—how much of that on-screen battle was happening behind closed doors in their marriage?—just upped their ranking as superstars. When they premiered Private Lives almost two decades later, fanatical admirers came out in droves to watch them claw and kiss once again onstage. The Boston Globe eviscerated the play in a famously catty review, describing Taylor as "a caricature of Coward's heroine inside a caricature of an actress inside a caricature of Elizabeth Taylor." But bad press didn't hurt the show a bit: It was a sold-out run in Boston. The legend of Liz and Dick was more important to their delirious devotees than anything they might do in the present. In today's era of gossip mania, we're surrounded by people who are "famous for being famous"—a term that was practically invented for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Maybe Mayor Kevin White knew what was in store when he presented them with silver bowls in the lobby of the Met Center on opening night, then declared, "Now we can relax, enjoy, and stare at our celebrities." BC Public Couple, Private Lives WHEN ELIZABETH TAYLOR AND RICHARD BURTON ARRIVED IN BOSTON TO STAR IN PRIVATE LIVES, THEY BROUGHT THE CITY TO ITS CELEBRITYWORSHIPPING KNEES. BY JENNIFER DEMERITT Paparazzi swarm Elizabeth Taylor at the premiere of Private Lives on April 13, 1983. 8 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM F ront Runners 008_BC_FOB_FR_Spring14.indd 8 2/6/14 5:10 PM