Taylor: Remembering her greatest role
March 24, 2011
Elizabeth Taylor’s most important moment had nothing to do with acting, marriages, weight loss, or perfume. Today, it’s hard to remember the catalogue of misperceptions surrounding the AIDS epidemic in the early ’80s. A shocked America confronted for the first time this frightening disease, but also its own gay community that was pushed into public view by the epidemic. So when figures such as North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms suggested placing all AIDS patients in quarantine, and many people began shunning them, it wasn’t immediately seen as an over-reaction, or even as an act of prejudice.
The death of Taylor’s friend and leading man, Rock Hudson, spurred her into action. She, a straight woman, quickly became the face of the AIDS movement, and its most potent fundraiser. With the singular power of her vast celebrity, she convinced people that casual contact with AIDS patients wasn’t dangerous in the least, and that awareness of the disease must be coupled with compassion.
It was her greatest role. Having worked closely with gay men in Hollywood, she had long since seen past the taboos that most Americans were only just confronting. No doubt there was something in her own sometimes-lonely life as a child star and much-divorced adult that made her sympathize with those outside society’s mainstream sympathies. Her efforts advanced both the treatment of HIV and the position of gays in America. Taylor, who died yesterday at 79, was that rarest of humanitarians — one who took on her own society, and changed it for the better.
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.
