Elizabeth Taylor: National Velvet was a Christian Science Lesson
“God knows I’m not a trained actor. Ask anybody! I learned everything doing it on a set, with great people, for the most part. I didn’t have the brains or the intellect to question anything, so I was asking, Hey, what am I supposed to be doing here?
My mother was the best coach, because I think she really was a natural actress. My mother was the one who should have been a star. Sara Taylor was not a stage mother, and I doubt that anyone resented having her around, because she made me better: She was good with everyone.
My mother was a devout Christian Scientist, so there was nothing that all of us could not do. We had the capacity to rise and reveal, as she said, but it wasn’t arrogant, because we could only rise and reveal if we relied on God. God gave us the talent, the opportunity, the very stage on which we were filming.
I loved the idea of being around horses and being a heroine, but I didn’t know how to relate to my family in the movie. They were lovely — fairy-tale perfect — but they weren’t like any family I had known. The mother [Anne Revere] reminded me a bit of my mother, in her kindness and her humor, but I didn’t know what I really needed to do. Anne was a joy — she comforted us all.
It was my mother who told me to always see things through the lens of metaphysics. She sat me down with my Daily Lesson every day, and she would tell me how to apply what I was reading and learning to every situation in my day. Mama told me that National Velvet was full of Christian Science. She told me to look at the scenes and what is being said through them all.
There is generosity. Velvet [Taylor’s character] welcomed everyone; she was without judgment. Velvet is devoted to her dream, and is manically pretending to ride or groom or love a horse all the time. Velvet, my mother told me, manifested that horse and that victory and this new life into her life through her thought. And Velvet’s mother lets it be known that situations arrive and are realized at the right time. We just have to trust. The mother in National Velvet never worries about lack: Things will arrive when they are needed. She hides money away for the right situation at the right time. She trusts her family to do the right thing, and they do.
I really loved that Velvet runs up the street to offer a testimony to Mi [Mickey Rooney] about how great he had been, how great his father had been to my mother, when he coached her in her dream. Tennessee [Williams] was right when he urged you — and us — to be a witness to others.
Clarence Brown [the film’s director] was such a nice man. Look at the beautiful movie he made. He gathered us all together and treated us so well. We rose. And those colors! It was a magical time. It was a Chrisian Science Lesson. Not all films lend themselves to this sort of treatment, and I didn’t remain innocent for so long! But when I was good, I was tapped into what my mother taught me and told me.
© 2023 James Grissom
