In 1946, Elizabeth Taylor -- then fourteen and a major star at MGM -- published a book about her pet chipmunk, Nibbles. With wit, charm, and remarkable skill, she related the adventures and mishaps of her high-spirited friend. She and Nibbles were virtually inseparable during the shooting of National Velvet and other films; in fact the chipmunk almost got to appear in Courage of Lassie -- but he was so well behaved that he didn't look real, and his scene was cut! Recounted here are such stories as the happiest birthday of her life, when she was given King Charles, the horse who was called The Pi in National Velvet, because only Elizabeth could ride him.

At 1.28 a.m. on Wednesday, 23 March 2011, just three weeks after celebrating her 79th birthday, the biggest star Hollywood has ever known died. The tributes and eulogies to Elizabeth Taylor were legion. A weeping Elton John said, 'We have just lost a Hollywood giant. More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being.' In Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend, 1932-2011, acclaimed biographer David Bret has written the revealing, incisive and definitive life story of the most controversial cinematic icon since Mae West. While never yielding in his admiration and respect, Bret has stripped away the veneer to portray the star as she really was: sometimes arrogant, attention-seeking, avaricious, reckless, monstrous towards her peers, generous, even foolish at times but, above all, through the tumultuous relationships and the personal mayhem, a survivor. Elizabeth Taylor was the very last of the Hollywood greats. As David Bret writes, 'Most of her contemporaries - Garbo, Streisand and Dietrich excepted - were compelled to walk in the shadow of her sun. Of today's stars, not one may be deemed worthy of stepping even within a mile of that shadow.

The first volume to examine the iconic Elizabeth Taylor in this light, Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption paints Taylor as the seminal representation of “celebrity.” A figure of enormous charisma and cultural sway, she intrigued a global audience with her marriages and extra-marital improprieties, as well as her extravagant jewelry, her never-ending illnesses, her dependency on alcohol, and her perplexing friendship with Michael Jackson. Despite her continued world-renown, however, most people would be hard-pressed to name even three of her films, though she made over seventy. Ellis Cashmore traces our modern, hyperactive celebrity culture back to a single instant in Taylor's life: the publicizing of her scandalous affair with Richard Burton by photographer Marcelo Geppetti in 1962, which announced the arrival of a new generation of predatory photojournalists and, along with them, a strange conflation between the public and private lives of celebrities. Taylor's life and public reception, Cashmore reveals, epitomizes the modern phenomenon of “celebrity.”

Elizabeth Taylor was one of the major film stars of the twentieth century, embodying all the glamour and allure of Hollywood stardom. Yet her achievements as an actress have often been overshadowed by her beauty and tumultuous life off-screen. To redress this imbalance, Susan Smith offers an illuminating study of Elizabeth Taylor's work in film, exploring her fascinating trajectory from child to adult star. Smith reveals the influence that Taylor's early work exerted over her later career and the ways in which her on-screen identity is profoundly rooted in her association with animals and nature. Smith carefully unpicks what made Taylor such a distinctive and dynamic on-screen performer – from the expressive use she made of her eyes to the dramatic significance of her voice – and considers the importance of certain professional collaborations that Taylor forged during her career, most notably her acting partnership with Montgomery Clift.

Elizabeth Taylor is one of our last great movie stars. An Oscar-winning actress, she has lived her entire life in front of the spotlights, and her glamour and smouldering, sensual charisma are the stuff of legend. In Elizabeth, Alexander Walker presents the story of a life that was lived, on and off camera, with a passion rarely matched by even today's outspoken celebrities. From her privileged childhood, the influence of her strong-willed mother, and her rise to stardom in films like National Velvet, A Place in the Sun, and Cleopatra, to her husbands, her obsession with jewelry, and her amazing resilience in the face of public scandal and personal tragedy, Walker shows us the real Elizabeth--as an actress and as a person determined to live on her own terms.

“Shimmering in blue sequins and periwinkle eye shadow, Elizabeth Taylor strode onto the stage of the Mark Hellinger Theater to present the 1981 Antoinette Perry Award for Broadway’s best musical…As she started to speak, the entire audience suddenly rose to give her a standing ovation. Wildly cheering, the crowd paid homage to the woman whose beauty had for so long enchanted the America. Now ripe and opulent at forty-nine, she no longer looked like the little girl who had ridden to glory in National Velvet; but the audience did not care, She could still bestow a touch of magic.”—from the preface This biography of Elizabeth Taylor tells her story as no other can. Drawing on extensive reporting and interviews, Kitty Kelley’s classic portrait follows the rise, fall, and rebirth of the woman who was perhaps Hollywood’s brightest star. Now with a new Afterword by the author, this is the definitive record of Elizabeth Taylor’s fascinating life.

From the bestselling author of Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairy Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainer comes this fascinating biography of film legend Elizabeth Taylor. She has been written about many times, but never like this . . . For more than six decades she has been part of our lives. An American icon, Elizabeth Taylor has been surrounded by fame and notoriety since childhood. Now acclaimed biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli looks past the tabloid version of Elizabeth's life to the person she really is-and how she evolved from a child star to a woman in her own right.At the heart of this impeccably researched work is the first fully realized portrait of Elizabeth Taylor's family: her canny, controlling mother, who, from the moment she laid eyes on her baby, began plotting her success; and her father, often portrayed as distant, but whose connection with his daughter was far more complex than people knew. As Taraborrelli brings to life the people around Elizabeth and her rise in 1940s Hollywood, he reveals the qualities that made her a star, the associations that put her at the right place at the right time, and the ways in which she was singularly unprepared for life out on her own. While Elizabeth's eight marriages to seven men have been widely publicized, this author examines the psychological and emotional roots of each relationship, including her abusive marriage to Nicky Hilton, her attraction to swashbuckling Mike Todd, and the complex, incendiary Taylor-Burton love affair that continued for decades and never truly died. Finally, Taraborrelli chronicles Elizabeth's most bravura performance of all. Despite the highly public battles with substance abuse and chronic illness, she achieved new success and sustenance in family, friendships, and philanthropy. With never-before-published family photos by Taylor historian Tom Gates, as well as rare family photos, Elizabeth is the story of a woman you thought you knew-and can now finally begin to understand

From her days as a youthful minx at Metro Goldwyn Mayer to her post-studio reign as America's lustiest middle-aged movie queen, Taylor has defined the very essence of Hollywood stardom. How to be a Movie Star is a different kind of book about Elizabeth Taylor: an intimate, up-close look at a girl who grew up with fame, who learned early-and well-how to be famous, and how that fame was used and constructed to carry her through more than sixty years of public life. Indeed, one might say Elizabeth went to school to learn how to be famous, her education courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the greatest, most glamorous movie studio of all time.

Includes Part 1, Books, Group 1 (1946)