This Day in Groovy History: The (First) Wedding of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

By | March 11, 2022

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British film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at their first wedding in Montreal, Canada. They married twice, but both marriages ended in divorce. (Photo by William Lovelace/Evening Standard/Getty Images)

On this day, March 15, back in 1964, Hollywood superstars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton exchanged their wedding vows – for the first time; they would do it again later – at the glamorous Ritz-Carlton in Montreal. Their wedding came after a scandalous love affair between the two stars and Cleopatra co-stars, a love affair that made headlines in gossip tabloids around the world. Let’s take a look back at the (first) wedding of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. 

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The beautiful Liz Taylor. (tmc.com)

The Oft-Married Liz

When things began to heat up between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of the blockbuster Cleopatra, Taylor was already married – and to her fourth husband! Taylor had shot to stardom as a teen actress in the 1944 film, National Velvet. As she matured, she starred in many more movies and caught the eye of many men. She briefly dated football player Glenn Davis, an ambassador’s son William Pawley Jr, and (possibly) Howard Hughes. Her first marriage, however, took place when she was 18 and said “I do” to Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr., heir to the Hilton Hotel empire and great-uncle of Paris Hilton. Taylor went on to marry Michael Wilding then Mike Todd, before her scandalous marriage to Eddie Fisher. In all, Taylor was married eight times.