Elizabeth Taylor-Adolescent Star

 

 

MGM cast Taylor in “Lassie Come Home” with child star Roddy McDowall. Taylor would share a lifelong friendship with Roddy McDowell. Roddy McDowell would later recalled regarding her beauty, "who has double eyelashes except a girl who was absolutely born to be on the big screen?"

 

The film received favorable attention for both Taylor and McDowell.

 

MGM signed Taylor to a conventional seven-year contract starting at $100 a week and with regular raises. Her first assignment under her new contract was a loan-out to 20th Century Fox for the character of Helen Burns in a film version of the Charlotte Brontë novel “Jane Eyre”.

 

Taylor returned to England to appear in another McDowall picture for MGM, “The White Cliffs of Dover”.

 

Taylor's persistence in seeking the role of Velvet Brown in “National Velvet” made her a star at the age of 12. Her character is a young girl who trains her beloved horse to win the Grand National. Taylor costarred fellow young actor Mickey Rooney and English newcomer Angela Lansbury in the movie. She became a great success upon its release in December 1944. Many years later Taylor called it "the most exciting film" she had ever made.

 

Viewers and critics "fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor when they saw her in it." Walker explains why the film was popular:

“Its enormous popularity rubs off on to its heroine because she expresses, with the strength of an obsession, the aspirations of people—people who have never seen a girl on horseback, or maybe even a horse race for that matter—who believe that anything is possible...A philosophy of life, in other words...a film which...has acquired the status of a generational classic...”

“National Velvet” grossed over US$4 million. MGM signed Taylor to a new long-term contract. Because of the movie's success she was cast in another animal film, “Courage of Lassie”, in which Bill the dog outsmarts the Nazis. The film's success led to another contract for Taylor paying her $750 per week. Her roles as Mary Skinner in a loan-out to Warner Brothers' “Life With Father”, Cynthia Bishop in “Cynthia”, Carol Pringle in “A Date with Judy”, and Susan Prackett in “Julia Misbehaves” were all successful.

 

Taylor received a reputation as a consistently successful adolescent actress, with a nickname of "One-Shot Liz" (referring to her ability to shoot a scene in one take) and a promising career. Taylor's portrayal of Amy in the American classic “Little Women” was her last adolescent role.

 

MGM studio provided schooling for its child stars with classrooms within the studio grounds. Taylor, however, came to dislike being cut off from typical schools with average students who were not treated like stars. She recalls her life before studio acting as a happier period in her childhood:

“One of the few times I've ever really been happy in my life was when I was a kid before I started acting. With the other kids I'd make up games, play with dolls, pretend games. . . . As I got more famous—after National Velvet, when I was 12—I still wanted to be part of their lives, but I think in a way they began to regard me as a sort of an oddity, a freak.”

 

“I hated school—because it wasn't school. I wanted terribly to be with kids. On the set the teacher would take me by my ear and lead me into the schoolhouse. I would be infuriated; I was 16 and they weren't taking me seriously. Then after about 15 minutes I'd leave class to play a passionate love scene as Robert Taylor's wife.”