NONFICTION - April 7, 1991

ELIZABETH by Alexander Walker (Grove Weidenfeld: $21.50; 432 pp.) . You know that that chocolate eclair is bad for you, but you just can’t help yourself, can you? Of course not. You’ll probably go right out and buy a copy of “Elizabeth,” too. A confection like this is pretty much irresistible, no matter how aware you are that it’s clogging your brain cells. We know the stories--Elizabeth Taylor steals Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, Liz falls for Richard Burton, Liz’s body betrays her in all sorts of melodramatic ways, requiring that she be whisked off this sound stage and that. What Alexander Walker, film critic for London’s Evening Standard, offers in this biography is some cinematic trivia (want to know which lines La Taylor refused to recite in “Butterfield Eight”?), some eerie family reminiscences (Baby Liz kept her eyes scrunched up for days, and when the doc tried to pry them open all he saw was the whites!), spiced with a rather bold willingness to play pop psychologist. His computer must have one heck of an indexing program: Walker repeatedly calls up comments from now and refers them back to then, or vice versa, all of which makes it seem like you’re getting a bit more nutrition here than you actually are.