THE LAST MOVIE STAR
by Leonard Maltin

April, 1994

Several weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award dinner for Elizabeth Taylor. As always with these annual events, the evening was elegant and enjoyable; it will certainly make a good TV special, as you'll see when it airs on ABC in May.

But the evening also raised some interesting thoughts about starpower, and the passing of Hollywood legends. I wasn't the only one thinking about these things; everyone I know who attended the dinner felt a sense of changing times.

Someone referred to Elizabeth Taylor as "the last movie star," and that's certainly a good description. "Actress" is not the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of Taylor, though that amounts to a putdown for someone who has shown real talent over the years. Look at Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer, or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf if you don't believe me.

The problem is that Taylor's headline-making life has overshadowed her film career, compounded by the fact that her most recent performances have been inconsistent at best, terrible at worst.

So why choose Taylor to receive the AFI Award? I can only speculate, but I think I know the answers: this annual event is the Institute's major fundraiser (netting a reported $1 million this year). You don't get that kind of response if you don't have an attention-grabbing name as your honoree.

And let's face it: there's hardly anyone left from the Golden Age of Hollywood to honor. Consider the people who've won the award before: John Ford, Bette Davis, Fred Astaire, James Stewart, Lillian Gish, James Cagney, Gene Kelly, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, John Huston, to name just a few. Each new candidate must be worthy of joining that company.

Rumor has it that Katharine Hepburn has told the Institute she doesn't want to be honored; I'd imagine that's true, or she would have been on that podium years ago.

I've always thought that it would be great to see the AFI honor Roy Rogers or Gene Autry--or both of them, for that matter. Their contribution to American film was as substantial in its own way as that of their "mainstream" counterparts; what's more, they're still pretty impressive men, with legions of fans around the world. But that would be too far off the beaten path for the image-conscious Institute, I fear.

So instead, we had Miss Taylor, as gracious a recipient as I've ever seen, looking magnificent and doing herself proud with an earnest and self-effacing acceptance speech. The film clips (which bypassed a lot of obvious scenes--sometimes disappointingly so) showed her at her best, though the piece de resistance was a lengthy clip from "The Lucy Show" with Taylor and Richard Burton in a hilarious piece of visual comedy with Lucille Ball. As columnist Robert Osborne noted, if someone had been selling cassettes of the whole show in the lobby afterward, he could have made a fortune!

But the evening was more subdued than most AFI affairs, and one big reason was the lack of costars on hand to help pay tribute to the guest of honor. A few whom Taylor invited, like Marlon Brando and Paul Newman, politely declined because they simply don't participate in events like this. Mickey Rooney was a last-minute no-show.

Most of the other potential guests are (you should pardon the expression) dead. This fact was so blatant that when Taylor took to the stage at evening's end, she paid special tribute to Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Rock Hudson and of course Richard Burton with a lovely sequence of film clips.

Some of Taylor's colleagues were there, of course, and they certainly brightened the evening: Angela Lansbury harked back to the days of National Velvet, and Roddy McDowall went back even further, to Lassie Come Home and The White Cliffs of Dover. Margaret O'Brien spoke warmly of their days at MGM working on Little Women.

I'd forgotten that Dennis Hopper played Taylor's son in Giant. He got one of the big laughs of the evening when he began his remarks with, "Hi, Mom!" Michael Caine, Michael York, and hostess Carol Burnett spoke warmly of their more recent films with the guest of honor.

Most of the previous AFI Life Achievement Award shows are now available on video, and they are a stunning lot. I saw most of them when they first aired, but when I look at them now, I'm overwhelmed by the people who populate the screen. It's not so many years ago that these giants--from honorees like Cagney to guests like John Wayne--were still alive.

They brought to these programs a larger-than-life glamor, an aura of Old Hollywood that's disappearing from our midst. Someone suggested turning to a younger person like Clint Eastwood (who's 60!) for next year's award. I'm all for that; I admire and respect him. But I don't love him.

The stars (and even star directors) of the past carried themselves a certain way, and they were promoted as Gods and Goddesses in their time. No wonder so many of us felt as we did toward them. In recent years, when the Academy Awards wanted to add a touch of glamor and grace to their show, they would invite Audrey Hepburn; now even she is gone.

I would never disparage today's top actors; I look forward to any film that Jack Nicholson or Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep or Al Pacino or Robert De Niro appear in. They're the best of the best. But they're actors, not Gods. And sometimes I miss that larger-than-life feeling.

If Elizabeth Taylor is indeed The Last Movie Star--in the old-fashioned sense of the term--she may have brought the AFI award show to a crossroads. Because if the Institute is forced to turn to more contemporary people to honor, they will also have to face the fact that modern-day stars and filmmakers, by and large, aren't going to generate the warmth and resonant excitement we've all come to expect from these events.

They say that change is inevitable, and I guess it's pointless to sigh that things ain't what they used to be. But it's equally hard to ignore such a sharp left turn.

Meanwhile, if you haven't seen the older AFI shows, run, don't walk, to your video store and grab a handful. At their best, they are positively thrilling. And, as this year's gala reminded us all, they celebrate a Hollywood that is gone with the wind.