A Passion for Life: The Biography of Elizabeth Taylor - Donald Spoto Audiobook

Written by Donald Spoto
Read by C. M. Hébert
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

Born in England to socially ambitious parents, Elizabeth Taylor was catapulted into child stardom and molded by MGM into the great violet-eyed beauty of postwar America. Along the way, without training or counsel, she became an award-winning actress, dazzling audiences everywhere with spectacular performances.

Spoto explores the gripping story of her brutalizing six-month marriage to compulsive gambler and hotel heir Nicky Hilton, her romances with top Hollywood directors, and her marriage to the ailing Michael Wilding. Four years later, she would be swept off her feet by showman Mike Todd into an alternately violent and loving marriage that would end with Todd’s death in a plane crash, leaving Taylor a twice-divorced widow with three children at the age of 26. And here are Taylor’s years with Eddie Fisher, Republican Senator John Warner, and Richard Burton, with whom she would share a hedonistic, brash lifestyle that would virtually define the 1960s jet set.

At once scathing and sympathetic, Spoto’s biography presents Elizabeth Taylor as “the ultimate star - both as achiever and as casualty,” a quintessential romantic who came to perceive all her relationships through the prism of movies and whose life’s work has been to try to grow up.

Date of release: 1995 (book), 2011 (audio)
Length: 12 hours 30 minutes