Hear Elizabeth Taylor in Oscar Winner “Genocide”

Embarrassing as it is, I have to admit I’ve never actually watched a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, who died this week. She was that kind of Hollywood icon that made you feel like you’d seen all her work, even if you hadn’t. Seriously, it came as a huge surprise that I hadn’t seen any of her films in their entirety. Although, I guess I don’t usually like the kinds of heavy dramas she regularly appeared in, so maybe it’s not that shocking.

Another film I’ve never seen in full is Arnold Schwartzman’s “Genocide,” which won the documentary feature Oscar in 1982. It features narration by Taylor and Orson Welles. He does the more dominant voice of God stuff, while she handles the reading of letters. According to writer Rabbi Marvin Hier in the companion book Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust, A Companion to the Film Genocide, Taylor was convinced to do the film by then-husband Senator John Warner and refused pay because the project was “very special to her, since she regarded the Jewish people as her people, and wanted to identify personally with the tragedy of the Holocaust.”

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