Tweeting with the stars

I watched A Place in the Sun recently, having recorded it on TCM during their month devoted to the Method. A Place in the Sun is an Actors Studio double-whammy, with Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters strutting their unglamorous stuff all over the place. According to my TV grampa, Robert Osborne, Elizabeth Taylor credited this movie, her first time working with Clift, with making her more serious about the craft of acting.

The movie didn't blow me away as much as I expected it to (especially after Osborne's nearly giddy intro), but I enjoyed it well enough, and afterward I went to IMDB to dig into the credits. IMDB is the first website I can remember bookmarking, back when I was still accessing the web via AOL dial-up. Still just as indispensable fifteen years later. Impressive! It has been getting steadily more comprehensive over the years, but even I did not expect to find, on Liz Taylor's profile page, a link to "Elizabeth Taylor (DameElizabeth) on Twitter."

I'm not on Twitter and don't plan to change that. But I was tempted, I must say, by the thought of following and tweeting back at Liz. Here's something I bet you didn't know about Liz Taylor, if you aren't already reading her tweets: She is sort of obsessed with Kathy Ireland. This is her Twitter output from August 17 through September 22:

I'm so excited to see Kathy Ireland on Dancing With The Stars! She is so beautiful.
1:52 PM Aug 17th, 2009

To watch her in movement will be a golden chance to see beauty in action and grace which is what that lady is all about.
1:54 PM Aug 17th, 2009

She is beauty personified because it glows from within and takes her on wing.
1:54 PM Aug 17th, 2009

All of you who are watching Kathy Ireland on DWTS tonight...please vote for her. The # is on the screen. She's so gorgeous, isn't she!
5:13 PM Sep 22nd, 2009

It goes on, but you get the idea. Dame Elizabeth, superfan. (She's also all about Susan Boyle: "I want to hear her magnificent voice again and again.") Do you think she hangs out in the TWoP forums?

There are other highlights -- on June 19, she posted an admiring note someone sent her (with the signature redacted), just in case you were wondering whether people still love Liz, I guess. And then, of course, there are all the tweets about Michael Jackson -- Twitter is an excellent outlet for grief. It started up again after she saw a screening of This Is It, that rehearsal-footage-turned-feature-film that was rushed to theatres to capitalize on his death. She, uh, liked it.

You owe it to yourselves and your loved ones to see this again and again. Memorize it and say to yourselves, "I saw genius in my lifetime"
2:35 PM Oct 26th, 2009

Keep in mind that I had just finished watching A Place in the Sun. I was still basking in the glow of a highly regarded 1951 classic when I read this on five-time-Oscar-nominee Elizabeth Taylor's Twitter feed, regarding This Is It:

It is the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen.

What would Robert Osborne say?!

I'm staying off Twitter. Now every time I see Liz Taylor I'll be picturing her watching DWTS, and it turns out I like a little distance between me and the stars. You make up your own mind. I will leave you with this couplet from Dame Liz -- no commentary necessary:

Humor is the only way to stay alive.
5:58 PM Jun 18th, 2009

Life without earrings is empty!
11:29 AM Jun 19th, 2009