Friday, 25 March 2011

The Daily Mail Vs Liz Taylor: Made-up Figures

The Daily Mail has milked marked Liz Taylor's death by running over a dozen stories to date.
Everything and anything Liz-shaped was suddenly newsworthy from an auction of Andy Warhol's Liz #5* (Estimate $30million), to sales of her celebrity fragrance White Diamonds (Estimated at $61million).
Troublingly - but pleasingly - for some at the Mail, if you dig around Liz long enough you're going to hit a homo - and today they turned up two, of varying degrees of spuriousness.
''Is Liz's Gay Manager About To Inherit Her Millions?' (Estimated at $360million - though as the Mail also claim she earned that last year alone they're probably plucking these figures from the ether).
But why did the Mail think the manager's sexuality was worth mentioning in the headline?
I guess it's meant to be another signifier of her bizarro private life; "Her closest companions tended to be handsome and openly homosexual... Taylor would also spend hours surfing the television shopping channels with the dog on her lap. And, latterly, she liked to listen to the music of Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle — whose voice she found extremely moving."
The Mail's answer to its titular question is "We have no fucking idea", if you care.
We also learned; 'The Shock Secret Elizabeth Taylor Took To Her Grave'.
"James Dean was molested as a child, claims a writer who says Elizabeth Taylor took the shocking secret to her grave.
"Journalist Kevin Sessums says the legendary actress swore him to secrecy when she allegedly made the revelation during an interview in 1997."
Hmmm...
Is this true? Who knows - but I'd like to hear the tape.
The dead of course don't sue, so writers are free to write whatever they want about them.
Two have made a living out of this; the wonderfully barking Michael Munn, author of a number of biographies of dead stars, all of whom he claims friendships with that no-one they actually knew was aware of.
And Boze Hadleigh, who's like a gay Hollywood gossip version of Michael Munn - his Wikipedia entry is an hilarious example of the work of this delightful nutter.
I wonder if Michael Munn or Boze Hadleigh will get their "tell all" book about the Liz Taylor they (never) knew out first?

• The Daily Beast has published some quotes Kevin Sessums claims are from the Taylor interview. He definitely did interview Taylor in 1997 for POZ magazine, but... Whilst it's all so unremarkable I'm tempted to believe it, I have to say some of it doesn't really sound like her voice - but a Dick Van Dyke imitation of how Americans think English people speak ("A real cow..."). Sessums claims they discussed then Conservative Party leader William Hague's support for "gay marriage". Erm, in 1997? Sessums says he has all this on tape - let's hear it...

* The Mail claims the "art collector is planning to cash in on the superstar’s death... [and he] has unsurprisingly remained anonymous." Although it's public knowledge the painting is owned by the billionaire Steve Cohen and he apparently decided to sell it some time ago.

5 comments:

  1. The real mystery about "biographers" like Michael Munn is why people buy the drivel he writes.
    It's all lies. Obviously. So why bother reading the fucker's books???

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  2. John Waters remembers Liz Taylor in The Baltimore Sun...

    http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/blog/2011/03/john_waters_divine_obsession_w.html

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  3. Another mystery/worry is why papers - usually the Mail - serialise Munn's books, usually extracting the most clearly made-up "me and the stars" bits, when they clearly know they're fictions.
    I guess people buy the books cause his readers prefer "a good story" over the truth.

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  4. I think he also sells books to members of the thick community...

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