ELIZABETH TAYLOR ARCHIVES: Collecting Magazines

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Collecting Magazines

Few stars have been featured on the covers and inside magazines to the degree that Elizabeth Taylor has. She holds the record for the most Life covers, and has been on more People more than any other film star. Elizabeth Taylor is truly the queen of the movie magazine.

Movie magazines began to gain popularity in the mid-1930s, and provided a way for the studios to advertise their latest theatrical releases while giving fans access into the lives of their favourite film stars. A different star was featured on the cover each month, and inside contained beautiful photographs (usually black and white) that had usually been carefully orchestrated by the studio. The articles that accompanied them weren’t much different. Many of the fan magazines of the 1940’s that supposedly featured an intimate look into the life of Elizabeth Taylor were concocted by MGM’s publicity department—they were actually as fictional as the films in which she was starring in. For instance, a spread in Photoplay magazine shows a sixteen year old Elizabeth hosting a party for her friends. What the article failed to mention was that the entire thing had been staged and paid for by MGM. Even worse was the fact that many of the magazines completely fabricated their stories—and they weren’t always so kind. It must have been tough for Elizabeth, an up-and-coming child star, to read conflicting stories about herself in these fan magazines. “I know they’re full of baloney,” Elizabeth said during this period. “They make up things about everybody, even me. Say I was out holding hands with people I’ve never met. But I still read every one I can scrape up.” These magazines were occasionally embarrassed when they printed an outdated headline, which was sometimes the case as the stories were prepared anywhere from two to four months before they hit the stands.

For many fans, the photographs that were included in the magazines were of the most importance. While the fan magazines would print stills from the star’s latest film, they would also want photos of the star out of costume, especially if they weren’t costumed in modern dress in the film. Such was the case for a period film like Raintree County. By selling these photographs to the fan magazines, the studio would not only satisfy the fans who wanted the latest photographs of Elizabeth, but would also help to create buzz for her upcoming picture. For instance, a single photograph of Elizabeth taken on the set of X, Y and Zee by Gianni Bozzacchi was splashed across the pages of over three thousand different print publications. According to Bozzacchi, these photographs offered a very real look into the life of a star like Elizabeth, something that isn’t the case with today’s celebrities. “All the networks now distort or glamorize the news in order to market and sell products via their commercials. But when I was a photographer for magazines like Look, Life, Paris Match, and many others of the same caliber, the photographer was the one who delivered the world’s news, and we let our images tell the essence of the story. We shot what we saw and allowed the general public to react to that image, without distortion or interference.”

These magazines are very popular with collectors. Prior to online auction sites such as eBay, fans looking for past issues of magazines were forced to search bins at flea markets and antique shops, and as such magazines from Europe and Asia were very difficult to find. Today the American magazines can be found online for reasonable prices, but the foreign magazines still command higher prices. For fun one can still search traditional antique shops and flea markets, but prices are often more expensive. Many sellers on eBay also offer ‘clipping packages,’ which is a grouping of clippings from magazines and newspapers devoted to one celebrity. These are an easy way to start building a collection and are fun as you never know what you’ll find!

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