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Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir by Elizabeth Taylor

For her second time as a published author, Elizabeth received $250,000 from publisher Harper & Row for brief account of her life so far in a book called Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir. Elizabeth prefaced the book by saying: “This book is probably best described not as an autobiography—that’s much too pretentious—but as a long, slightly overcozy conversation with a garrulous broad named Betty Burton. I have no doubt that a lot of it will seem rather like a bad novelette. I’m afraid much of my life has been a cliche—except that at the time the feelings were tremendously deep.”

“Everything that I have done in my life that is a mistake I will admit is a mistake and answer for it. But I am not going to answer for an image created by hundreds of people who do not know what’s true or false. That would take me from here to doomsday,” Elizabeth wrote. In fact, the book is dedicated to “the lady from Pismo Beach,” Elizabeth’s name for the individual “who reads that made-up stuff and believes it, wants to believe it and is going to believe it regardless of what she reads.” On that subject Elizabeth wrote, “I’m not even too sure what image the lady from Pismo Beach has of me—except probably she thinks I’m rather scandalous, unstable, a wicked witch with very little feeling—ruthless, fairly lame-brained, determined. Somebody who snaps a finger and gets what she wants.”

The small book is illustrated with fifty-six photographs from Elizabeth’s own collection; many lovingly taken by longtime friend and fellow actor Roddy McDowall, also a noted photographer who immortalized the likes of Judy Garland and Louise Brooks.

A couple years before An Informal Memoir was published, Elizabeth and friend Max Lerner had planned to publish a book called, Elizabeth Taylor: Between Life and Death. Although the two conducted tape recorded interviews, the book never materialized. According to Lerner, “It didn’t work out. Other things intervened in both our lives, and we agreed to tear up the contract we had made for the collaboration.”

Excerpts from An Informal Memoir appeared in the December 18, 1964 issue of Life magazine.

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