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Dame Elizabeth Taylor: Shades of Violet
Wayne Griffin, author
When I was sixteen I developed a unique attraction to Dame Elizabeth Taylor. My friend’s father introduced me to Taylor when he gave me a copy of the film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” in the mid 1980’s. From that moment on I was trans fixed by the romantic renaissance which could only be known to me as Dame Elizabeth Taylor.
I would spend hours scanning magazines at my local news agency and began collecting articles and making up scrapbooks that became overflowing with titillating tabloid gossip. There was no internet back then, so anything printed about Dame Elizabeth Taylor was all I knew.
Eventually I read an article that somehow disclosed Elizabeth’s personal address. I spent the next four years writing to that address signing off on every occasion, “forever Elizabeth your biggest fan”.
I wrote to Elizabeth Taylor on her first visit to the Betty Ford Centre and pinned what was then my favourite picture of her in a get well card. It was the first autograph in this collection. There were many more that followed. In 1992, I was personally declared by Dame Elizabeth as her number one fan. This became the inception of our 20 year penfriend ship which lasted until her passing in 2011.
Since 1992, I have amassed a most extraordinary celebrity collection, one that is quite uniquely a “one of a kind”. It has been reported as a collection never to be duplicated. On many occasions I shared this collection with Dane Elizabeth and on many occasions Dame Elizabeth has shared part of her personal life with the collection.
Since learning my great grandmother’s middle names were Elizabeth Rosemond, that Richard Burton had purchased the famous Taylor/Burton Diamond on my birthday and that I too had dated a Richard twice, to me, Dame Elizabeth Taylor was written into my life long before I was conceived. In Dame Elizabeth Taylor shades of violet, shoes, vintage fashion, personal objects and letters from the celebrity activist and icon are displayed with loving precision and helps to embellish the life story of the Queen of Hollywood.
Come with me has I navigate through the world of Elizabeth Taylor and celebrate her life and my connection with celebrity through the many facets of this 30 year collection. Dame Elizabeth herself, declared the collection as, “a very thoughtful and extensive volume, one that bought back so many memories, and made her day so very special”.
If you are a fan of celebrity, a fan of Dame Elizabeth Taylor or merely a fan of Hollywood memorabilia, be absorbed by the many shades of violet and take a magical journey with Elizabeth Taylor’s number one fan.
A connection with celebrity like no other.