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Monday, March 28. 2011

Legendary Figures

Sad news:
Two iconic women of the 20th Century passed away last week: Elizabeth Taylor and Geraldine Ferraro. I remember the furor when the film Cleopatra was released. The sin presented on screen with the illicit love between the Egyptian queen and the Roman Marc Antony was over-shadowed by the illicit love between the film’s two stars: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Like Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor is one of those movie stars that transcended film and became a household name as much for her personal life as for her overwhelming screen presence. She was a beauty! Loved her in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof!

In her later life she became well known for her advocacy to stop the spread of AIDS and to remove the stigma surrounding people who have the disease. I’ll never forget her standing there with Rock Hudson, an early victim of AIDS, telling us to do something about this worldwide scourge and get over our ignorance about the disease.

Geraldine Ferraro was an accomplished legislator in her own right, but came to national prominence in 1984 when she was chosen by Walter Mondale to be his running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket — the first woman (and Italian-American) to be on a major party ticket. A woman, a person, of substance with knowledge about her nation and foreign affairs, a person who worked not just as a legislator, but as a private attorney and prosecutor. She actually knew what she was talking about when interviewed and especially when she debated the issues, as she proved in her debate with then Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Both women have been immensely influential and will be remembered long after we mourn their passing.

Posted by Tim Forkes in Celebrity at 08:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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