Taylor Released From Hospital

L O S   A N G E L E S, Aug 9 -- Actress Elizabeth Taylor wasreleased today from the hospital where she spent sixdays being treated for a mild case of pneumonia, her spokesmansaid.

Taylor, 68, was admitted on Friday to Cedars-Sinai MedicalCentre near Beverly Hills and was discharged thisafternoon, spokesman Warren Cowan said.

“She’s feeling much, much better,” he said.

Taylor, whose last big-screen appearance was in the 1994live-action comedy The Flintstones, is expected to go beforethe cameras in September for the ABC television movie ThoseOld Broads, co-starring Shirley MacLaine, Debbie Reynolds andJoan Collins.

Hampered by Medical Problems

Taylor’s bout with pneumonia came almost exactly a yearafter she spent 10 days in the same hospital with a vertebralfracture caused by a fall at her Bel Air mansion. The two-timeOscar winner suffered a similar back injury about a year beforethat.

Taylor has had a string of medical problems in recentyears. She underwent surgery to remove a benign tumour from thelining of her brain in 1997 and has had two hip-replacementoperations.

In 1995 she was treated for high blood pressure and anirregular heartbeat, and in 1990 she nearly died ofcomplications from a respiratory illness that kept her in thehospital for three months.

Taylor won a best-actress Oscar for her role as a call girlin the 1960 film Butterfield 8 and again for her 1966portrayal of an alcoholic wife opposite her husband at thetime, Richard Burton, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In May, the London-born actress was given the title “Dame”— the female equivalent of a knighthood—by QueenElizabeth.