The Sailings of a Showgirl: Elizabeth Taylor’s Voyages Aboard the Queen Mary

With Taylor Swift’s new song “Elizabeth Taylor”

putting the violet-eyed icon back into the cultural spotlight, it feels like the right time to revisit a chapter of Taylor’s life that rarely makes it into documentaries or biographies: her deep history with the RMS Queen Mary. Long before she became the Hollywood legend we picture today, Elizabeth Taylor was a young girl stepping aboard the world’s most glamorous ocean liner.

Her crossings in the late 1940s and early 1950s capture something essential about both her and the ship: two legends on the cusp of their most mythic eras, meeting in the middle of the Atlantic as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Elizabeth Taylor’s First Voyage on the Queen Mary (1947)

In 1947, at age fifteen, Elizabeth Taylor boarded the Queen Mary in New York. She had returned to England only once since infancy. Like a scene straight out of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a group of determined young fans managed to sneak aboard before departure, they located her room and crowded inside until a steward found them. One boy announced he was going to stow away to stay near her.

For the first few hours, the trip lived up to the fantasy of transatlantic travel. She leaned over the rails to watch the sea widen behind her. She stretched out in a deck chair. She sampled the ship’s famously indulgent meals. She wandered the promenade, posed for a few photos.

And then, one day into the crossing, she fell ill, leaving her feverish and miserable. The ship’s doctor told her she would have to stay in bed “all the way across.” It was a small heartbreak for a girl who had dreamed of this voyage, but the Queen Mary, even when experienced from her sickbed, kept the voyage interesting. Fellow affluent passengers volunteered to entertain Liz.

Even running a 104-degree fever, she insisted on visiting the First-Class Beauty Parlor to have her hair styled for the formal dinner she was too ill to attend.

Dancing, Deck Strolls, and Two Very Spoiled Poodles: The Return to New York

When Elizabeth boarded the Queen Mary again a few weeks later, fully recovered, the actress got a do-over. This time she experienced the voyage the way she’d always imagined it.

She had brought new evening gowns from London and wore them to dinner each night. She danced every evening in the ballroom, soaking in the ritual of glamorous ocean travel. She explored the decks she’d missed on the sickbed crossing. She seemed determined to make up for all five lost days.

And she wasn’t alone. While recovering in London, she and her mother had stopped at a pet shop where she couldn’t decide between a white poodle and a black one. Naturally, Elizabeth Taylor ended up with both. The puppies became tiny celebrities themselves, trotting alongside her across the decks so often that other passengers joked they were “paraded around until they were depressed.” The ship’s original kennels on the Sports Deck housed them at night.

The voyage also came with its own set of admirers. Actor Cary Grant and playwright Frederick Lonsdale were onboard and decided to entertain themselves by sending her a series of teasing “fan letters” instead of approaching her directly. Lonsdale instructed her to look for him in the lounge, where he’d be wearing a blue flower, and to cough three times if she approved.

The most astonishing moment came on the final night: a group of 808 Harvard freshmen, an entire class traveling to Europe, hosted a party in her honor.

As the ship approached New York and the Statue of Liberty reappeared on the horizon, Elizabeth found herself unexpectedly emotional. She told reporters she wished the voyage had lasted longer, and joked that next time she’d choose “the slowest boat there is.”

The Honeymoon Crossing (1950)

She kept her promise to return. In 1950, now eighteen and newly married to Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr., Elizabeth Taylor boarded the Queen Mary again, this time bound for a European honeymoon.

In a delightful twist of fate, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor happened to be on the same sailing. Normally, a former king aboard would have been the talk of the ship. But not this time. Contemporary accounts noted that Taylor was the bigger star. She and Hilton kept a relatively low profile, but enough photographs survive to show her waving from the decks, radiant and unmistakably happy.

A Lifelong Love of the Sea and Cunard's Ocean Liners

Elizabeth Taylor continued sailing with Cunard well into adulthood, even as jet travel replaced ocean liners. She crossed with husbands, friends, her children; she traveled on the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, and later the QE2. She loved the pace of it—the separation from Hollywood, the calm, the ritual.

In 2019, Cunard honored her with a dedicated crossing aboard the modern Queen Mary 2. onboard was the ‘Property from the Lifestyle of Elizabeth Taylor’ exhibition. It was a fitting tribute to someone who had shaped part of her life aboard their ships and whose presence, in turn, enriched their history.

A Showgirl on the Atlantic

Elizabeth Taylor’s chapters aboard the Queen Mary are a perfect blend of Hollywood glamour and ocean-liner elegance: a teenager with a fever; a ballroom filled with hundreds of Harvard students; poodles trotting the teak decks; a honeymoon that outshone royalty.

For a ship as storied as the Queen Mary, these are exactly the kinds of human, sparkling moments that make her history feel alive. And as the Queen Mary Heritage Foundation continues its mission to preserve the ship’s spaces, collections, and stories, we’re proud to share this one: a reminder that even a legend like Elizabeth Taylor once stood at these rails, watched the Atlantic roll beneath her, and fell a little bit in love with the sea.