After completing "The V.I.P.s", Taylor took a two-year hiatus from films, during which Burton and she divorced their spouses and married each other. The supercouple continued starring together in films in the mid-1960s, earning a combined $88 million over the next decade; Burton once stated, "They say we generate more business activity than one of the smaller African nations." Biographer Alexander Walker compared these films to "illustrated gossip columns", as their film roles often reflected their public personae, while film historian Alexander Doty has noted that the majority of Taylor's films during this period seemed to "conform to, and reinforce, the image of an indulgent, raucous, immoral or amoral, and appetitive (in many senses of the word) 'Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Burton's first joint project following her hiatus was Vincente Minelli's romantic drama "The Sandpiper" (1965), about an illicit love affair between a bohemian artist and a married clergyman in Big Sur, California. Its reviews were largely negative, but it grossed a successful $14 million in the box office.