Elizabeth Taylor, model for the set of Richard Burton’s The Quarrel

Celebrity divorces last longer than celebrity marriages and perhaps provide the public with purer entertainment. Hearing about the clashing egos, the mutual narcissism, the extravagance – all of this rather relieves us from living our more modest and anonymous lives.

“It’s easy to get married,” said one California lawyer, rubbing his hands, “and very hard to get out of.” Love turns to hate, and soon it’s like the Wild West.

Currently, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, who said “I do” two years ago in Las Vegas, are hiring their attack dogs, that is, their expensive lawyers, to fight over the ownership of a $60 million-plus home in Beverly Hills, which has twelve bedrooms and twenty-four bathrooms.

Affleck won $38 million last year, Jennifer might want a piece of that property. Will she keep the $5 million engagement ring? There are plenty of other shared assets — a $100,000 bachelor pad in Brentwood $20.5 million; Jennifer recently sold a penthouse in New York for $23 millionWith such sums you could run a country the size of Poland.

Melinda Gates received $76 billion from Bill Gates – she could not only rule Poland, but also buy it and ship it. Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott spent her fortune on charitable causes.

After five years of marriage, Heather Mills wanted £125 million of Paul McCartney’s Beatles loot. In 2008, she settled for £24 million and reportedly spilled a bucket of water on Baroness Shackleton, the presiding lawyer.

Ivana Trump is expected to receive $14 million from the president, plus $650,000 a year for alimony. There was also a forty-five-room mansion in Connecticut, an apartment in Trump Plaza, and Ivana also wanted to use Mar-a-Lago for one month a year.

But all these examples are nothing compared to those of the parents of all the famous couples, the opulent and turbulent Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who married and divorced twice. For the record, marriage in 1964 at the Mexican consulate in Montreal, marriage in 1974 in Switzerland, marriage in 1975 in the jungle of Botswana, marriage in 1976 in Haiti.

Taylor was in magnificent form as a divorcee. The way she led her many ex-husbands astray was a demonstration of her need for conquest and contention. Her marriage to Nicky Hilton, for example, ended before their honeymoon. Yet in February 1952, she refused to sign the separation papers until she could flee with the wedding gifts—Wedgwood china, silver flasks, hand-embroidered Italian tablecloths and napkins, six coffee sets, and 500 pieces of Swedish crystal. Not to mention Cadillacs and Hilton Hotel stock, eventually worth $21.7 million.

Michael Wilding, forty years old, whom Taylor, not yet quite twenty, married after Hilton, did not last long and was reduced to becoming a waiter in a restaurant…