CONCORD, N.H. — Before becoming a bride eight times over, Elizabeth Taylor was a 17-year-old starlet scribbling letters to her first fiance, recording on pale pink stationery his progression from her one-and-only to the one who got away.
“I’ve never known this kind of love before — it’s so perfect and complete — and mature,” Taylor wrote to William Pawley on May 6, 1949. “I’ve never loved anyone in my life before one third as much as I love you — and I never will (well, as far as that goes — I’ll never love anyone else — period).”
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Taylor, who died last week at age 79, was engaged to Pawley in 1949, just before her first marriage. More than 60 of the letters she wrote him between March and October of that year will be auctioned in May by RR Auctions of Amherst, N.H. It bought the letters two years ago from Pawley, who lives in Florida.
The unpublished letters — some written in purple fountain ink on pink paper — provide a glimpse of a teenager’s transition to adult screen star.
She frets about her weight (“As I’m sitting here — writing to you, I’m just stuffing myself on a box of candy — honestly I’ve got to stop eating so much”) and passing her high school exams. And she contrasts two movies she was filming at the time, “A Place in the Sun” and “The Big Hangover.”
But mostly, she gushes about Pawley, the 22-year-old son of a former ambassador to Brazil, reassuring him over and over that her love is true.
In May, she told Pawley she was ready to say goodbye to her career, “For I won’t be giving anything up — but I will be gaining the greatest gift that God bestows on man — love, marriage, a family — and you my Darling.”
By September, however, Taylor was writing about returning her engagement ring at Pawley’s request.
“I know with all my heart and soul that this is not the end for us — it couldn’t be — we love each other too much,” she wrote.
Less than eight months later, she married hotel heir Conrad Nicholson “Nicky” Hilton.
Bobby Livingston, spokesman for the auction house, said the letters were estimated to be worth $25,000 to $35,000 before Taylor’s death, and he expects they could fetch two or three times that amount now.
Kennedy, the bachelor, engaged to be married
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Patrick Kennedy, the 43-year-old former Rhode Island congressman and son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, is engaged to be married to a New Jersey middle school teacher.
Kennedy, a lifelong bachelor, got engaged Saturday in Rhode Island to Amy Petitgout, former aide Sean Richardson said Monday.
No wedding date has been set.
Richardson said they met about a year and a half ago at an event in New Jersey. Kennedy told The Associated Press last month that he was living in New Jersey with his girlfriend.
Petitgout, who teaches sixth grade in a public school, has a 3-year-old daughter, Harper, from a previous marriage.
Burns to tackle Vietnam
NEW YORK — Having already done the Civil War and World War II, Ken Burns is working on a documentary about the Vietnam War.
PBS said the 10- to 12-hour film by Burns and longtime partner Lynn Novick will be broadcast in 2016.
Burns said his film will tell the human stories of Americans and Vietnamese affected by the war, along with those of Americans who protested against it.
He said that four decades after the war’s end, most people have opinions about it but few truly know its history.
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