Elizabeth Taylor died yesterday...

...at age 79 and her obituary in the Times was so impressive -- situated prominently on the front page -- that it was practically worthy of some head of state. Here are some of my favorite tidbits (my emphasis):

In a life of many surprises, one of the oddest facts is that as an infant she was considered to be an ugly duckling ... At birth, her mother said, her daughter’s “tiny face was so tightly closed it looked as if it would never unfold.”

Elizabeth made her movie debut in 1942 as Gloria Twine in a forgettable film called “There’s One Born Every Minute,” with Carl Switzer, best known as Alfalfa, the boy with the cowlick in the “Our Gang” series. The casting director at Universal said of her: “The kid has nothing.” Despite that inauspicious debut, Sam Marx, an MGM producer who had known the Taylors in England, arranged for their daughter to have a screen test for “Lassie Come Home.” She passed the audition. During the filming, in which Ms. Taylor acted with Roddy McDowall, a cameraman mistakenly thought her long eyelashes were fake and asked her to take them off.
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Since childhood Ms. Taylor had been surrounded by pets. When she was not allowed to take her dogs to London because of a quarantine rule, she leased a yacht for them at at reported cost of $20,000 and moored it on the Thames.

...In 1982 ... she held a wedding reception for her adopted daughter at the Helmsley Palace Hotel. There was talk that she charged it to room service.

(The picture at top is from her performance as Gloria Wandrous, a call girl, in the 1960 production, "BUtterfield 8," for which she won her first Academy Award for best actress.)