LONDON - Buckingham Palace has shown its skills as a casting director.
Inviting Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Andrews to be invested as Dames on the same day, it could be sure that at least one of the American-based, British-born acting legends would provide the drama.
Predictably, it was Taylor who obliged. Health problems forced her to arrive in a wheelchair. Emotional problems forced her to emerge from the palace saying how much she still missed one of her late husbands, Richard Burton, and how she had wished he had been there with her.
Andrews, aged 64, played to type - sedate, unemotional and jolly.
Taylor, 68, who has been plagued by health problems was allowed to enter the palace through a side door so she could use a lift to the investiture.
After the ceremony Taylor said it was her crowning moment and that she wished she could have shared it with the love of her life Richard Burton.
"I miss him so much," she said, "I wish he was here. I came to Buckingham Palace once before, years ago, with Richard, when he received the OBE."
Andrews said the Queen told her it was "a great thrill" to see her there. "And I said: 'Oh Your Majesty, you cannot imagine what a thrill it is for me, too.'
"I have met the Queen before. I have a wonderful photograph of when I was 12 and performing at the London Coliseum. It was in 1948 and the show was called Starlight Roof and Princess Elizabeth, as she was then, came to see it."
Even Taylor could not trump that.
- INDEPENDENT
Dames vie for top billing
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