Sometimes, it takes an addict: Elizabeth Taylor and Eugene Fodor, violin virtuoso
Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, dead at 79 from congestive heart failure. In a larger-than-life tale of alcoholic overachievement combined with chaotic personal drama that makes no sense without comprehending alcoholism, Taylor collected five Oscar nominations, two Best Actress awards and seven husbands (one of whom, Richard Burton, she married twice). There are too many stories relating to her long-standing addiction to discuss here, but one that stands out was her performance and the entire theme of the 1966 film for which she won her 2nd Academy Award, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” George Segal and Sandy Dennis play Nick and Honey, who are dragged into the insanity of alcoholism by Burton’s George and Taylor’s Martha, who throw verbal insults at each other and at their “guests” for almost the entire 2 hours 10 minutes of the movie. We might imagine evenings at the Taylor-Burton household during which scenes from Virginia Woolf were likely mimicked. The violet-eyed actress’s heyday is often considered to have been the 1940s through the 1960s, long before she got sober the first time in 1983 (she may have been the first celebrity to stay at the Betty Ford Center, where after two-weeks of a four-week stay for a 35-year long sleeping and pain pill dependency she concluded, “Oh, I’m an alcoholic too!”). She didn’t stay sober until at least a second visit in the late 1980s. Around this time, she reinvented herself, as her movie career effectively ended and she befriended homosexuals and helped humanize the AIDS epidemic, while becoming a huge advocate for safe sex.
Violin virtuoso Eugene Fodor, dead at age 60 of cirrhosis of the liver. He began playing at age 5, made his debut with the Denver Symphony at age 10 and started touring by age 12. He began using, as do most addicts, sometime during his teen years; he studied under the famed violinist Jascha Heifetz for about a year beginning in 1970, until Heifitz kicked him out of his USC class for refusing to cut his hair. At age 24 he became the first American to win the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. However, in the classic alcoholic tradition of looking like a narcissist, he took risks few sober classical musicians would consider, including posing shirtless on horseback for publicity photos (for which he was dubbed “the Cowboy violinist”), which almost overshadowed his musical prowess. His technique was described as “dazzling” and he often played showy pieces described by critics as “fiendishly difficult” by Niccolo Paganini and Fritz Kreisler, among others. In 1989, Fodor was arrested on charges of breaking and entering and possession of heroin and cocaine and went into rehab. Because classical music critics are not as “forgiving” (read: enabling) as movie critics, his fate was largely sealed: he was mostly condemned or ignored after the incident. Considering his early demise, we might be excused for suggesting he likely relapsed rather quickly and continued drinking alcoholically for most of the rest of his life.
Note to family, friends and fans of the above: the benefit of the doubt is given by assuming alcoholism (they are either idiots and fundamentally rotten, or they are alcoholic/other drug addicts—which would explain the misbehaviors). If alcoholic, there is zero chance that behaviors, in the long run, will improve without sobriety. An essential prerequisite to sobriety is the cessation of enabling, allowing pain and crises to build. Thus far, many have done everything they can to protect the addict from the requisite pain, making these news events possible. The cure for alcoholism, consequential bad behaviors and, ultimately, tragedy, is simple: stop protecting the addict from the logical consequences of misbehaviors and, where possible, proactively intervene.
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