NPC in History: Elizabeth Taylor counters AIDS misinformation

Movie stars often come to the National Press Club as the spokespeople for worthy causes. That’s the one way an organization can assure an avid turnout of an audience, even if many people are there just to see the star and to ask questions about Hollywood.

As chairman of the speakers committee in 1987, I had the opportunity to sit next to Elizabeth Taylor during lunch. Yes, she did have violet eyes to die for. And with her history of gaining and losing weight, she looked stunning. She noted to me the battery of press photographers poised just a couple of feet from her and confided that she could not eat lunch.

“All I have to do is put a fork in my mouth and it will end up on the cover of every tabloid in the country,” she said.

“But do you want to see something funny?” she asked me. She opened her pocketbook and took out a compact. With deliberate ease, she opened it, and took out the pad and daubed it on her face.

Cl-cl-cl-cl-cl-cl-cl-cl-cl-cl-cl-click – the photographers went wild. “I love to do that,” she laughed.

But Taylor was at the Club for a serious cause. At the time she spoke, the AIDS epidemic was expanding rapidly, and many people she had known dearly in the movie industry were dying. As the national chairman for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, she had made it her cause to counter so much misinformation and to get the facts about AIDS.

“I usually do not welcome the opportunity to speak to the news media,” she said, referring to her stormy relations with print and broadcast news organizations during her movie career that stretched back to the early 1940s. But she said she was at the Club because she recognized the influence the news media had.

“Like no other profession you have the power to provide information, to conquer ignorance and to mobilize opinion,” she said. “I would like to thank you for the important role you have played in the dissemination of information about AIDS to the citizens of our country and the world. Not only is AIDS information imperative in order to save lives, it is also of critical importance in ensuring compassion and dignity for those who are diagnosed.”

She told the story of a young man with AIDS who went home to see his family. He feared he would not be met with the love and compassion that he needed. But instead he found that he was greeted with open arms and his family did not fear the contagion.

“His family already knew there was no risk of catching the contagion from their son,” she said. “Their knowledge came from watching television and reading the newspapers, and that’s thanks to you.”

In presenting Taylor with the customary certificate of appreciation for appearing at the Club, President Andrew Mollison of the Cox News Service, said this was “probably the first time my mother thought I would ever give my autograph to Elizabeth Taylor.” She also gave the scruffy-faced Mollison a kiss on the cheek, something he was talking about decades later.

This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 111-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, journalism and the Club itself. Many of these events were caught in illustrations that tell the stories.