Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If you had to pinpoint the start of the 1960s — that is, the counterculture revolution — two events are almost universally agreed on as the era’s formative earthquakes.
One was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The other (the real spark to the tinderbox) was the first appearance of the Beatles on “Ed Sullivan,” which happened only 11 weeks later, and which all but answered the assassination by saying, “Here is joy.
Here is hope. Here’s a new way to be.” Yet there was another global media phenomenon that took place over a slightly longer period of time, and it was one that was just as defining of the era’s new energy.
That was the scandalous romance of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. We tend to think of that saga as, simply, the apotheosis of celebrity gossip.
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