Ivana Trump, André Leon Talley, and the Queen: The Famous Faces Who Left Us in 2022

A special delivery from the Vanity Fair Archive

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From Hollywood to the halls of Buckingham Palace, the VF Archive revisits six profiles of exceptional people who died in 2022.

The Elizabethan Aura

To mark her 90th birthday, Queen Elizabeth II sat for an unprecedented photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz, their second collaboration. The resulting portraits provided an intimate, wide-ranging tribute to a steadfast ruler—the longest-serving monarch in Britain’s history. William Shawcross analyzed the subtle power of her reign.

Grease Lightning

As Grease began filming, in June 1977, it had several strikes against it—a modest budget, an indifferent studio, and largely untested young (and not-so-young) leads. But producer Allan Carr caught lightning in a bottle, to make it one of the largest-grossing American movie musicals (and soundtrack LPs) of all time and the launching pad of a megastar. In 2016, John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, and other cast members told Michael Callahan about the epic party Carr started.

Ivana Czechs In

From Eastern bloc to writers block? Alas, no. In 1992, Ivana Trump unleashed her debut “novel,” For Love Alone. And there was life after Donald: With her Italian millionaire and a pile of business schemes in tow, “La Trumpová” had become the social queen of Mitteleuropa. Bob Colacello reported from Prague and Saint-Moritz.

The Eyeful Tower

André Leon Talley was an imposing, if improbable, fashion landmark, steeped in style history, his judgment sought by top designers. By 64, light-years from the segregated South of his childhood, Talley had apprenticed with Diana Vreeland, gone clubbing with Karl Lagerfeld, and seen Anna Wintour in the dressing room. Visiting Talley in White Plains, Vanessa Grigoriadis heard about his love life, his avoirdupois, and the importance of gloves, darling.

Pride and Prejudice

As race riots swept the nation in the summer of 1967, its most beloved movie actor was Sidney Poitier, whose three films that year—To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner—would also make him Hollywood’s box office king. Charting Poitier’s coolly uncompromising navigation of his symbolic status, Laura Jacobs recalled the pointed message he sent to white America.

VF Portrait: Angela Lansbury

The young British war refugee who idolized Bette Davis and Ginger Rogers became a legend of stage and screen herself. As Angela Lansbury returned to Broadway, in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, her 1979 Sweeney Todd costar Len Cariou testified to her cooking, her courage, and her ultimate gift.