Richard Meryman: Last News

Brent Lang Executive Editor She was the most famous woman in the world. Her marriages (there were eight), affairs, jewelry and medical disasters were all exhaustively chronicled by the tabloids and paparazzi.

“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” which premiered Aug. 3, features interviews that the late movie star had with journalist Richard Meryman from 1964 to 1965.Taylor called her marriage to Fisher “one big friggin’ awful mistake” in one of the interview tapes.“Eddie made sure that I felt lonely.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic There’s something that unites the recent documentaries “Faye” and “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes.” It isn’t just that both played on HBO — “Faye” launched in July, while “Elizabeth Taylor” is to premiere August 3 — or that both center the stories of legendary, Oscar-winning performers. Faye is, of course, Faye Dunaway, of “Network” and “Chinatown,” while Elizabeth Taylor, one of the most decadently media-hounded figures of the 20th Century, practically needs no introduction at all.

There have been countless books written about the immortal star, Elizabeth Taylor, even some credited to her as both memoir or autobiography including 1989’s “Elizabeth On Elizabeth”. But a book released on January 1, 1965 probably comes closest to a pure autobiography, and looking at the cover it simply says “Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor”. It is a by the numbers account of her life through her own words up until that point, but the fact is it was actually written by Richard Meryman, a journalist credited with among other things the last interview with Marilyn Monroe (published two days before her August 4, 1962 death). Meryman got Taylor to sit for some taped recorded sessions in 1964 out which he would be able to write the book as if Taylor did it herself. Now exactly 60 years later those presumed “lost” tape recordings have been found and cleared for release by Taylor’s and Meryman’s estates. They have been in fact in Meryman’s wife’s possession all these years, but now filmmaker Nanette Burstein (Hillary, The Kid Stays In The Picture) has rediscovered a treasure trove of about 40 hours of interview in order to produce the new HBO Documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes“.