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After five divorces and assorted careless raptures, Actress Elizabeth Taylor has made more exits than a cross-country truck driver. Last week she added still another. Taylor, who first wed Actor Richard Burton in 1964, divorced him in 1974 and then remarried him last October, went to New York City to watch his opening in the Broadway show Equus. Liz was miffed, however, to find Dick spending his offstage time with Susan Hunt, 27, estranged wife of Race-Car Driver James Hunt. For his part, Dick, 50, was said to be troubled by Liz's reported outings recently in Switzerland, on the arm of a Maltese advertising executive. So, after a quick reunion with her husband, Liz abruptly packed off to California. Said a friend of the couple: "The only thing that could divert a divorce would be another reconciliation." All right now, once more with feeling . . .
The bride choked a bit on the sacramental wine, and one elderly babushka-topped guest kept protesting the presence of a photographer. Otherwise the San Francisco marriage of Ballerina Natalia Makarova, 35, and Electronics Executive Edward Karkar, 43, came off like a perfect pas de deux. Among the guests: Dancers Alexander Minz and Mikhail Baryshnikov, who, like Makarova, had once belonged to the Soviet Union's Kirov Ballet. The bride, who had been married prior to her 1970 defection from the Kirov, did not bother with a honeymoon this time around. One day after the ceremonies, she began rehearsals for a performance of La Sylphide in Los Angeles.
"I feel less awful than I thought I would," said opera star Beverly Sills, smiling away her pains after a hard day's singing and—of all things—hoofing with Comedienne Carol Burnett. The pair joined forces last week for a TV show titled Sills and Burnett at the Met, a CBS special scheduled for next fall. The program features a blues and opera duet by the entertainers—and a demanding tap-dancing finale to be filmed at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House. "I had my first tap lessons when I was five," explained Sills, now 46. "They were 50¢ an hour, and I learned four steps. We haven't used any of them."
Paloma Picasso, who stands to inherit a sizable chunk of Father Pablo's multimillion dollar art fortune, may have felt less than flush when she agreed to appear in Immoral Tales back in 1973. The French-made, soft-core porn film casts Paloma, 26, as a 17th century Transylvanian countess who gets her kicks by bathing in the blood of virgins. Though given few lines to speak, Paloma appears nude, engages in a lesbian love scene and at one point bathes in a vat of genuine pig's blood. "I did not like the part I had to play," she says ruefully, insisting that she will skip the film's New York premiere this month.