BEACH READING

There’s a remarkable story in William J. Mann’s new biography of Elizabeth Taylor. While shooting a scene for “Butterfield 8,” director Daniel Mann handed his star a couple of eggs and told her to pretend to make breakfast while standing at the stove. Ms. Taylor’s eyes grew wide. Holding an egg out in each hand, she asked, “But what do I do with them?” She had never made breakfast in her life, nor had she been to a baseball game or school dance that wasn’t pre-arranged by the publicity department of MGM

Mr. Mann, who has written several successful Hollywood biographies, draws on personal interviews and access to the private papers of such heavy hitters as Mike Todd, George Stevens, Ernest Lehman, Hedda Hopper, Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor to finally reconcile the real Elizabeth Taylor with the mythical creature behind the hype.

He documents the early rift in the Taylor family that pitted her mother on one side, her father on the other, and young Elizabeth in the middle. The lengths to which her mother went to secure roles for Elizabeth are legendary.

For example, one can almost see Mrs. Taylor with her 11-year-old daughter in tow chasing Clarence Brown across the MGM lot in her

determination to

land Elizabeth the role in “National Velvet.

Mann’s book underscores the fact that Elizabeth Taylor is — above all else — a survivor. Through rocky marriages that included an abusive Nicky Hilton, singer Eddie Fisher and actor Richard Burton, her brushes with death and scandals, she simply lived life on her own terms. If she broke rules, challenged authority and slipped in and out of marriages and affairs along the way, so be it.

Perhaps that is why she is so relevant and remains, even after more than half a century, one of this country’s most fascinating celebrities. 