Elizabeth Taylor is, for the first time, revealing personal love letters she received from Richard Burton during their turbulent relationship.And she has handed them over to Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, for a new book Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century (HarperCollins, 2010).
"Richard was magnificent in every sense of the word," she tells Kashner and Schoenberger, "... we were always madly and powerfully in love."
In Burton's numerous letters to Taylor, describes his infatuation, love, and need for her. Some highlights:
"If you leave me I shall have to kill myself. There is no life without you," he writes in one letter.
In another, he praises Taylor's acting gifts: "You are probably the best actress in the world, which, combined with your extraordinary beauty, makes you unique.
In another: "You must know, of course, how much I love you. You must know, of course, how badly I treat you. But the fundamental and most vicious, swinish, murderous, and unchangeable fact is that we totally misunderstand each other … we operate on alien wavelengths. You are as distant as Venus—planet, I mean—and I am tone-deaf to the music of the spheres. But how-so-be-it nevertheless. (A cliché among Welsh politicians.) I love you and I always will. Come back to me as soon as you can … "
One letter she considers too personal to share with the world was written by Burton just days before his death, and she still keeps it in her bedside drawer. In it, Burton tells Taylor he wants to come home. Mailed on August 2, 1984, it arrived in Bel Air, Calif., a few days after Burton's Aug. 5 death and was waiting for Taylor when she returned from London after attending his memorial service.
The July issue of Vanity Fair will be available on newsstands in New York and L.A. on June 2, and nationally on June 8.
See photos of: Elizabeth Taylor
No comments:
Post a Comment