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Gay Bar Mourns Elizabeth Taylor
Axel Koester for The New York Times
Patrons of The Abbey in West Hollywood, a favorite
hang-out of the late Liz Taylor, pay their respects at a shrine erected
in her honor.
By BROOKS BARNES
Published: March 24, 2011
Axel Koester for The New York Times
The Abbey was a favorite hang-out of the late Liz Taylor.
“I told her not to come,” he said. “It was too busy. And there were already a half dozen Elizabeth Taylors here anyway.”
A gay bar, even a fancy one with chandeliers and a roaring fireplace
like the Abbey, seems an unlikely haunt for a megastar. But the actress,
who died on Wednesday at 79, was a once-a-week regular in recent years —
sipping tequila shots, downing watermelon and apple martinis or simply
waving merrily from her wheelchair.
Sometimes she brought her dog, Daisy, who, some bar-goers insist, liked to nod her head along to the bar’s throbbing Madonna soundtrack.
The scene in the “Elizabeth Taylor Room” — her favorite spot amid the
Abbey’s many nooks and crannies — was decidedly somber just after news
of her death on Wednesday. Regulars, fans and Abbey employees started
leaving flowers, candles, pictures and other tokens of affection (an
autographed napkin) around a donation Ms. Taylor once made to the bar: a
large portrait of herself in her prime.
Sitting untouched on an empty table nearby was a remembrance from the
bar staff, a Blue Velvet martini, a bluish drink made with vodka and
blueberry schnapps and named in a nod to Ms. Taylor’s 1944 film
“National Velvet.”
“People have been walking up and starting to cry,” said Brian Rosman, an
Abbey spokesman and a patron. “Others can’t talk, they get so
emotional.”
Mr. Cooley said it should not be a surprise that people in this proudly
rainbow-flag-flying town are responding to her death with such feeling.
There have been other gay touchstones — Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Cher, Debbie Reynolds,
Madonna — but Ms. Taylor perhaps eclipsed all of them, at least for a
certain generation, with her outspoken efforts to raise the profile of
AIDS at a time when people still referred to it as “the gay disease.”
“Taylor’s relationship with gay men provided a new model of gay icon,”
Paul Flynn, an editor at the British gay magazine Attitude, wrote in The
Guardian on Thursday. “No longer was it enough to be a woman with whom
gay men retained a bass-note of empathy, the kind of strung-out
glamour/tragedy axis Judy Garland immortalized.”
Ms. Taylor started raising money for AIDS research and victims after her friend Rock Hudson died of the disease in 1985. Over the next 25 years, she would become
synonymous with the fight against AIDS, ultimately helping to raise more
than $100 million for the cause.
“For her to testify before Congress as early as she did was really
remarkable,” said John Scott, the former executive director of the Elton
John AIDS Foundation.
Indeed, Ms. Taylor also became a heroine for many gay people for
criticizing a slow response to AIDS from politicians. “I’m not even sure
if he knows how to spell AIDS,” she said of President George Bush in
1991.
“She helped make talking about being gay O.K.,” said Mark Conaghan, a
tourist from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who had his picture taken next to
the Abbey’s shrine on Wednesday night. “She let it be known, God forbid,
that she even had gay friends herself.”
The Abbey, which opened in 1991 and has grown to 16,000 square feet, has
become a tourist attraction because of Ms. Taylor’s patronage, which
started about four or five years ago, according to Mr. Cooley.
Sightseeing buses regularly drive by, with guides pointing out the door
through which Ms. Taylor, usually wearing gaudy rhinestone sunglasses,
would enter and leave.
One such exit can be seen in a video posted to TMZ.com in June of last year. Ms. Taylor — wearing knee-high boots, a pink
blouse and a white golf hat — was wheeled to her car as people shouted
greetings.
“Aside from my back, fine,” she responds when asked about her health. An Abbey employee follows behind carrying Daisy.
She was not the only star of her era to frequent West Hollywood’s cluster of gay bars. Legend has it that Loretta Lynn once judged a drag contest of men dressed in her likeness. But no other
celebrity of Ms. Taylor’s wattage became such a presence, said John
Heilman, a member of the West Hollywood City Council. “I used to run
into her all the time at clubs on the strip,” he said.
Still, the Abbey was her hangout. Mr. Cooley said she told him on one of
her visits that it was her favorite pub. He had the sentiment printed
on a plaque and placed near her donated portrait, which captures her
diva qualities: arms extended, wearing an extravagant, shimmering gown
recalling her wardrobe in “Cleopatra.”
But the bar finds itself continually replacing the plaque.
“People steal it,” Mr. Cooley said. “We’ve screwed it on. We’ve glued it
on. Nothing works. I think it’s a symbol to people — that she loved us
as much as we loved her.”