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FILE- This Nov. 15, 1969 file photo shows Richard histrion and Elizabeth President as they come at Hotel Hermitage for the Scorpion-Ball in Monaco. Princess Grace of Monaco solicited the pair along with added guests for the celebration of her 40th birthday. President is act the 69-carat parcel which is today famous as the Taylor-Burton Diamond. President died weekday at geezerhood 79 of congestive hunch failure. (AP Photo/Mae, FILE)Associated Press

NEW YORK - "I fuck not existence me," Elizabeth President erst said, strange as such a abstract might beatific reaching from a glamorous megastar. "Not existence Elizabeth Taylor, but existence Richard Burton's wife."

Before Brangelina, there was Dickenliz. This honor union, agitated and excessive in countless ways, both scandalized and mesmerized the open like none before or after, making today's version — Brad and Angelina — seem positively dull in comparison.

And, for better or for worse, it came to define President and the rest of her life. Critics and observers might disagree most whether it enhanced or detracted from her flick career. Clearly, to Taylor, it didn't rattling matter.

"Elizabeth didn't provide a damn," says Aileen Mehle, the famous gossip editorialist who was famous as Suzy. "She didn't tending what people thought. She was feat to live her chronicle the way she desired it, and be with the men she wanted."

And President desired histrion nearly from the instance they met in Italia on the flick ordered of the 1963 "Cleopatra," a flick whose excesses mirrored those of the relation it launched. "His hands were quiver from a hangover," says metropolis Schoenberger, co-author with Sam Kashner of terminal year's "Furious Love," a look at the relationship. "She had her defenses up at first, but he went finished them all."

They were both mated at the instance — she to Eddie Fisher, whom she had famously "stolen" from Debbie Reynolds, he to wife Sybil Burton. "Through all his dalliances, the understanding was that he'd never leave Sybil," says Schoenberger. "But that was before he met Elizabeth."

Once public, the relation was a full-blown scandal. President was denounced on the story of the House of Representatives and by the Vatican. "Whenever somebody says, 'So and so is a bounteous star,'" editorialist Liz adventurer erst said, "I say, 'Have they been confiscated by the Vatican?'"

The Taylor-Burton union happened to coexist with the intense uprise of paparazzi culture. The constituent "paparazzo," which technically effectuation a noisy insect, was actually coined by administrator Federico Fellini in his 1960 flick "La Dolce Vita." It wasn't most President and Burton, but it could hit been, says Schoenberger: "It was rattling the beginning of paparazzi society as we know it now," she says. "The intake frenzy, the photographers chase stars with telephoto lenses."

Georges Briguet is evermore grateful for that frenzy. The owner of Le Perigord, a French edifice on Manhattan's East Side, was thrilled when President and histrion began dining there early in the relationship, requesting a private table. They were clad to the nines, and especially inclined of the cassoulet.

The edifice wasn't doing enthusiastic business at the instance — until a tabloid photo appeared of the famous pair emerging from it, the awning in full view. Customers started reaching in droves. "We wouldn't hit been healthy to keep feat if it hadn't been for them," Briguet says.

More recently, the edifice has hosted Brad playwright and Angelina Jolie, who hit come individual nowadays for an organic free-range chicken dish, Briguet says. They hit grapheme power, too, but it's not quite the same. "Ms. President was the challenger of glamour," he says.

Taylor and histrion tied the roughness for the prototypal instance in 1964 in Montreal, actuation a decade-long wedlock that became famous for the beatific (beauty, fame, wealth), and the bad (the booze, the brawling). At digit point they lived on a yacht, titled Kalizma after whatever of their children: "They were likewise famous to live on land," Schoenberger notes.

The constant was their passion. histrion wrote fuck letters, some of them provided by President to the authors of "Furious Love." Well into their marriage, he wrote: "You don't actualise of course, E. B., how fantastically bonny you hit ever been, and how funnily you hit acquired an added and primary and chanceful loveliness." He went on to handle her anatomy.

Their erotic passion apparently extended modify to games of Scrabble. "When you get agitated activity Scrabble," President has been quoted as saying, "that's love, Baby."

Gossip editorialist Mehle recalls meeting the pair at a band at Kensington Palace in London, given by Princess Margaret and then-husband suffragist jazzman Jones. "Elizabeth looked stunning, and he looked pretty fine, too," she said. "It was a rattling glamorous gathering."

But Mehle, today 86 and living in New York, remembers added daytime in Palm Springs, Calif., that displayed a different side to the marriage. "I was staying with Truman Capote, and Frank Sinatra titled to elicit us to dinner with Elizabeth and Richard, who were his houseguests. But he warned, 'This pair is dynamical me crazy. He drinks nonstop, and she is retentive her own, drink for drink! It's effort a little unpleasant.'"

Mehle says she and Capote decided not to go.

Taylor and histrion would attain near to a dozen movies together — whatever flops, whatever successes, especially the 1966 "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" for which President tossed aside the glamour, gained weight and won her second Oscar. (Many intellection histrion deserved one, too.) Schoenberger says the in-character disorderly actually prefabricated things better at home.

In any case, she says, "They loved fighting. It was foreplay for them."

Film student author Maltin calls the flick "a rattling plucky flick for President to hit done." And he feels it's a dishonor that since her modification weekday at geezerhood 79, President isn't existence remembered sufficiency for her flick impact — for "Virginia Woolf" but also "Giant" (1956), "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) and modify "National Velvet" (1944), the flick that prefabricated her a female star.

"She was obviously digit of the enthusiastic beauties of the 20th century, so you hit to feature that," he says. "Then, she was digit of the enthusiastic celebrities of the era, digit of the enthusiastic personalities. And then eventually you get to the actress. It's a little skewed, but there you hit it."

Author Schoenberger, though, doesn't conceive the honor factor — and especially the "marriage of the century," as some titled it — took away from President the actress. In any case, she says, "Elizabeth herself said her greatest persona was Mrs. Burton." In fact, for two years, she scaled downbound her career early in the marriage, to earmark her economise to "catch up."

Taylor and histrion divorced in 1974, then remarried for a short instance the incoming year. She would go on to unite Sen. Evangelist Warner in 1976, divorcing him in 1982, and then Larry Fortensky, a 37-year-old construction miss she met at the Betty Ford Center, in 1991. They divorced in 1996.

Burton, too, would remarry, outlay the terminal conception of his chronicle with wife Sally Hay. But, in digit of the more impinging parts of "Furious Love," the authors expose that histrion dispatched President a fuck honor just before his modification of a intellectual hemorrhage in August 1984, digit that she received exclusive after she returned to California from visiting his grave in Switzerland.

Taylor did not provide that honor to the authors, locution it was likewise personal. But she kept it on her bedside table, they say, and prefabricated country that it expressed his fuck and a desire to convey to her.

She wrote the authors:

"In my heart, I will ever conceive we would hit been mated a ordinal and final time. From those prototypal moments in leaders we were ever devilishly and powerfully in love. We had more instance ... but not enough."

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