Elizabeth Taylor

LORELAI: Hey Mom. I was in the neighborhood, ’cause there’s that wedding dress place on Willow. Elizabeth Taylor bought one of her dresses there.

Dame Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) was a British-American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian. Beginning her career as a child actress in the 1940s, including a part in Lassie Come Home, previously mentioned, she became one of the most popular movie stars of the 1950s. She successfully continued her career in the 1960s, including as the female lead in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, previously discussed, for which she won the Best Actress Academy Award. She remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life, and is regarded as one of the great screen legends.

Elizabeth Taylor was famous for her many marriages, marrying eight times to seven men. Her marriages were to hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton in 1950, British actor Michael Wilding in 1952, producer Mike Todd in 1957, singer Eddie Fisher in 1959, Welsh actor Richard Burton in 1964, and then again in 1975, Republican politician John Warner in 1976, and construction worker Larry Fortensky in 1991 (ending in 1996). None of her marriages lasted a long time (she was widowed about a year after marrying Mike Todd), and this is another hint to us of the probable fate of any marriage between Lorelai and Max.

Elizabeth Taylor did not buy any of her wedding dresses in Hartford, and only had a traditional white wedding dress for her first wedding to Nicky Hilton [pictured]. It was made by MGM costume designer Helen Rose (who also made Grace Kelly’s wedding dress), and was a gift to Taylor by the studio. Her other wedding dresses were stylish gowns, with the most “wedding like” of them being for her last wedding, to Larry Fortensky. It was a pale yellow floor-length lace gown by the designer Valentino, and given to her by him as a gift.