Dame Elizabeth Taylor
Angus McBean Photograph. © Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University.
Dame Elizabeth Taylor
by Angus McBean
bromide print, 1966
9 1/2 in. x 7 3/4 in. (241 mm x 196 mm)
Purchased, 2001
Primary Collection
NPG P910
Artistback to top
- Angus McBean (1904-1990), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 283 portraits, Sitter in 79 portraits.
Linked publicationsback to top
- Pepper, Terence, Angus McBean Portraits, 2006 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 July to 22 October 2006), p. 104 Read entry
The British-born Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor is celebrated both for her long career and for the number of her marriages, which included two to Richard Burton. Her first marriage to Burton in 1964, after their romance during the making of the film epic Cleopatra (1963), led to an explosive but productive acting partnership. Taylor won an Academy Award for her role opposite him in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) and starred with him again as Katharina in Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967). McBean was commissioned to photograph Taylor as Helen of Troy in the OUDS production of Doctor Faustus, which also became a film (1967), and then again for her starring role with Mia Farrow in Secret Ceremony (1968).
Events of 1966back to top
Current affairs
The English football team wins against West Germany at the World Cup Final in Wembley.144 people, including 116 children, die in the Aberfan disaster when a colliery waste tip slides down a mountain in Wales.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley are sentence to life imprisonment for the brutal Moors Murders.
Art and science
Tom Stoppard's first play Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead premiers. This absurdist play uses two minor characters from Hamlet to explore the existential themes of free will versus determinism and the futility of language.Seamus Heany publishes his first volume of poems, Death of a Naturalist.
International
The Cultural Revolution is launched in China in order to bring Chinese culture and society in line with communist ideals. It was also, however, an attempt by Mao Zedong to regain control of the country after the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward.Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur Michael Ramsey meets Pope Paul VI, the first official meeting between the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches for 400 years.
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