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They had Elizabeth Taylor - we have Snooki

By Andy Goldberg Mar 24, 2011, 20:47 GMT

What we have - Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi - Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi Luxor Hotel and Casino - Las Vegas, NV, USA © PRN / PR Photos

Los Angeles - The celebrity media has invented a whole new list of superlatives to describe Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor, who died Wednesday aged 79.

But if there's one theme that runs through the coverage, it's that her death brings down the final curtain on an era of Hollywood glamour that will never be equaled.

Her star power and personality certainly put today's celebrities in the shade. If the Hollywood glamour era had Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, our celebrity-obsessed culture has Snooki and the Situation, not to mention countless other so-called stars who no doubt will soon be superseded by pseudo-celebrities of even more dubious substance.

Even Taylor's scandals were classy. Her greatest impropriety involved her and Burton leaving their spouses to embark on one of the most passionate relationships since Anthony and Cleopatra. Nowadays, we revel in Charlie Sheen's ego-driven, hotel-smashing, coke-fuelled flings with bevvies of hookers and porn stars.

It's a natural human trait to shower the dearly departed with compliments no-one would have dreamed of paying them in life. But in Taylor's case, the accolades have a ring of truth.

Taylors death leaves only a handful of survivors among the stars who made it onto the American Film Institute's 1999 list of top 50 screen legends. But to say her death closes the golden age of Hollywood would surely do a disservice to her even-longer lived colleagues on the list: Lauren Bacall, 86, Shirley Temple, 82, Sophia Loren, 76, Kirk Douglas, 94, and Sidney Poitier, 84.

Then again, none of them ever reached the heights of celebrity - both enjoyed and suffered - by an actress who was often called 'the world's most beautiful woman' and 'the greatest movie star of all time.'

Researchers and movie critics have been weighing in incessantly about what made her such a captivating and dominating star.

They point to her incredible violet eyes and incomparable eyelashes that the camera loved more than anything. They laud her courageous and varied choice of roles in which she portrayed women in charge and unashamed of their own sexuality.

There were the turbulences, passions and challenges of her private life, dominated by her eight weddings and most of all her twice- married relationship with Richard Burton, which began with unprecedented scandal on the set of Cleopatra and earned the condemnation of the Vatican as 'the caprices of adult children.'

Even when her acting career was in decline, and she was in almost constant pain from a litany of health problems, she retained her zest for life and a determination to stay relevant. Her pioneering role to promote AIDS awareness in the early 1980s was historic.

On a lesser note she was one of the first celebrities to enthusiastically embrace Twitter in recent years despite her advanced age, and sealed her contemporary status with a portrayal on The Simpsons.

'The key to her iconic status is that she's the perfect example of the movie star,' Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University told the German Press Agency dpa. 'She had the jet-set glamour, the extraordinary body of work, the marriages, affairs, scandals and addictions. She lived in hyperbole.'

Nevertheless, there are still plenty of bona fide movie stars who carry on where Taylor left off, and one only has to glance at a screening of the Oscars to realize that Hollywood glamour is still alive and kicking.

'Taylor wasn't the first tabloid star, and she's certainly not the last,' Thompson says. 'The only era that's ended is the Elizabeth Taylor era.'