My Life in Focus

by Gianni Bozzacchi,Joey Tayler

  The day came when even the helicopter pilot, a colonel, decided the weather was too bad to fly back from the day’s shooting. We spent the night in a kind of mountain refuge, an unheated cabin near the river. None of this bothered Richard in the least. He was different, as a man and as an actor. He had no need of the usual comforts. He enjoyed going without the luxuries of his life with Elizabeth. It gave him a sense of adventure. It was freezing that night. I wore every piece of clothing I had, and covered the bed with every blanket I could find, including a carpet. But Richard drank and didn’t feel the cold. He’d asked for two bottles of vodka. But all they had was slivovitz, a kind of Yugoslavian grappa made from plums. I tasted it. It was awful. Pure alcohol. In fact, Richard didn’t feel at all well the following morning, but he went to work all the same.

  Marshal Tito only came on set once, in order to follow the progress of the final battle scene. It was extremely difficult to choreograph. A group of partisans were holding the high ground of a gorge, while German tanks advanced from below and Luftwaffe planes tried to take off and climb above the steep cliffs under partisan fire. It was the decisive moment, the one in which the partisans win the battle. The place was swarming with assistants armed with walkie-talkies, telling hundreds of extras where to go, desperately trying to synchronize the action in the middle of a deafening roar of gunfire and explosions. We shot one full take. Then the director, Stipe Delić, said we’d do it again for the president. Tito arrived, and after some moving ceremonial, Delić shouted, “Action!” The tanks advanced but didn’t shoot. The planes flew much higher than required, and didn’t fire. Richard observed that this was the same scene we’d just shot, only tamer. Delić promptly came over and explained, “It’s for our president’s safety.” Richard was flabbergasted. “What?! So we’re just cannon fodder?!” he exclaimed, and he was never quite so enthusiastic about the movie after that.

  We also learned—much later—that shooting had been far more dangerous than we even realized. During one battle scene, it seems the props department forgot to change the live ammo for blanks and a number of soldiers died. Talk about “friendly fire”! In another scene, a helicopter with a cameraman on board hit an overhead cable and exploded in midair. If these stories are true, the incidents occurred when Richard wasn’t on set, and the government did an excellent job of keeping them hushed up.

  We were relieved to get out of Yugoslavia alive. Richard was paid for his work, but I wasn’t. Yugo Films offered to pay me in Yugoslavian currency. But it was impossible to exchange, so I refused. So they simply didn’t pay. I later sent Tito a dozen or so photos and informed him that Yugo Films hadn’t paid me. He replied, “Thanks for the photos.”

  I never saw the finished movie, and wasn’t sure it ever got out of Yugoslavia. I’ve since learned that it was one of the most expensive movies ever made in Yugoslavia. It was entered for Best Foreign Language Film at the forty-sixth Academy Awards, but not accepted as a nominee.

  The Taylor-Burton circus moved on to Budapest, where Richard was due to play the lead role in Bluebeard, a movie directed by Edward Dmytryk that, to my surprise, had nothing to do with pirates (I was thinking of Blackbeard). The executive producer, Ilya Salkind, who went on to do the live-action Superman movies of the seventies and eighties, had called me in Paris asking me to show Richard the script. Elizabeth came with us to Budapest, but not to work on the movie. She came to keep a sharp eye on its string of beautiful costars: Raquel Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon, Joey Heatherton, Agostina Belli, Marilù Tolo, and Karin Schubert.

  I didn’t see Raquel arrive on set the first day. Crew members told me she was around, but I couldn’t find her. Then, taking lunch in the canteen, I saw a beautiful girl eating all alone at a table. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and no makeup, had a very casual beauty, incredible skin, and one arm in a plaster cast. I went over to find out who she was. “Hi. I’m Gianni. I’m a photographer. What do you do? What’s your name?”

  She was highly offended by the question, and I had to apologize profusely. The thing is, before you actually met Raquel Welch, you were bound to form a certain idea of her in your mind. I’d expected some high goddess of sex. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. For one thing, I couldn’t get used to how tiny she was, just five foot one. She was wearing a cast because she’d broken her arm in her last movie, the physically grueling Kansas City Bomber. We only exchanged a few words, so I couldn’t have been more sur prised when, the following day, I got a message from Richard’s makeup artist, Ron Berkeley. He said Raquel wanted to go to bed with me and Richard together.

  Mr. Burton goes to war in The Battle of Sutjeska—and me too! Only later did we learn that the production used live ammo in some of the battle sequences. This explosion was so powerful even my camera shook.

  What actually unfolded was quite another story. Around 3 in the morning, I got a call from Richard. He was sobbing, as if heartbroken. Elizabeth and Claudye had left for a costume test, and I was terrified that Richard was crying because their plane had gone down! I dressed and raced upstairs to Richard’s apartment. He was drunk and weeping uncontrollably. Opening the door to his bedroom, I saw Raquel Welch passed out on his bed, naked. “Gianni!” Richard sobbed. “I should never have done it! Never!” For a moment I thought he’d killed her. “Richard,” I shouted, “what have you done?!” But he just kept whimpering. “I should never have done this to Elizabeth!” I have no idea what really happened. I’d never seen anyone more drunk. He couldn’t stay on his feet. I shook Raquel awake, helped her dress, and took her to her room. Richard never told me what did or didn’t happen that night, quite possibly because neither he nor Raquel could remember a thing about it.

  Bluebeard was a French-Italian production with a mixed-nationality crew, and there was distinct friction between the two groups. Salkind was French and had put the French crew in a good hotel, while the Italians had been stuffed into a cheap, squalid place with a miserable daily allowance. When one of the Italian crew complained about this to me, I passed it on to Richard. He asked me to talk with Salkind immediately and tell him that everyone had to be treated in the same way, with no distinction of nationality. If the Italians weren’t happy with their hotel, they could come to ours, the Hotel Intercontinental (which was even more elegant than the one where the French crew was staying). Richard had a lot of power on that set, even more than usual. He was the only reason for the movie’s existence. His name had guaranteed the funding, while the costars had only accepted their parts thanks to Richard’s presence. And Richard was a very fair person. He was always friendly with the technicians, never placed himself above them, and always insisted on equal treatment for everyone.

  Ilya Salkind didn’t want to hear about equal treatment. I relayed this to Richard, who sent me back to Salkind. The Italian crew members were to be moved to our hotel and given a suitable allowance. I passed the message on. “We’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Salkind. “Fine,” I replied, “but I’ve already told the Italians to move to our hotel because that’s what Richard has decided.” He began shouting and stormed out of his office. I went back to Richard to tell him that maybe we had a problem. “Just go on set with Gaston,” he said, referring to our chauffeur, “and tell everyone that today I have a headache. And that I’ll probably have one tomorrow too. In fact, I’ll keep having a headache until these differences are smoothed out the way I’ve requested.” End of discussion. Everyone got the same allowance; everyone got the same quality of lodging.

  When shooting began, Richard and I were both very struck by Raquel’s talent. She was neither a doll nor a model but an excellent actress. I wanted to photograph her as the serious actress she was—aware of her sensuality but without concentrating on it exclusively, like most other photographers did. But she already had her own photographer with her, an arrogant English snob by the name of Terry O’Neill. When I asked if Raquel could do something in particular, he’d always reply, “I don’t know if she’ll have the time.” So
I decided to ignore him altogether and just go through Richard, asking him to help me get the best compositions, without saying a word to Raquel. After a while she began to get offended and asked me exactly what it was I wanted to do. I explained that my plan was to do a photo to publicize the movie. A friend of mine was painting a portrait of Richard with his eyes fixed on a woman who was supposed to be her. So I needed a good photo to get the desired result. Finally, I took it, and we finished the poster.

  This little episode notwithstanding, nothing negative I’d heard about Raquel proved to be true. She wasn’t a snob. She wasn’t full of herself. On set she was sweet with everyone. And she took her work very seriously. Richard said she had perfect timing and was very easy to work with. Her minute body was perfectly proportioned. Shot from below, she looked like a six-foot model, and her golden skin was truly photogenic. And incidentally—as fate would have it—she very nearly became my mother-in-law. When I moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s, I dated her daughter Tahnee for ages. They were extremely similar in looks, though not in character. It was one of those love stories that began without being planned and—sadly—ended badly.

  One of the members of the Hungarian crew was a big guy built like a barn door. He had a huge head and gigantic hands. He’d lift heavy set lights like they were feathers. We decided to play a joke on him. The rest of the crew began to tease him, telling him that the photographer—puny little me—was stronger than he was. For a couple of weeks, every time he came by, he’d touch my arms and laugh. The day of the joke came around, and my accomplice told him to put his arms out straight, under my armpits, and try to lift me. He couldn’t do it. Everyone then asked me to demonstrate my own strength on him. I pretended to stretch, do some deep breathing, and then, just as he’d done, I put my arms out straight and under his armpits. Without him noticing, however, my companion got behind him, grasped my wrists, and we lifted him off the ground together. He blinked, totally astonished. Every day, for the rest of the shoot, he’d come by and touch my skinny arms, trying to work out how I’d done it. Italian crews were always extraordinary, and working with them was a pleasure. Jokes and pranks were the order of the day.

  Raquel Welch, gorgeous off set; and dressed as a nun with Richard in 1972’s Bluebeard.

  I’ll never know what really did or didn’t happen between Richard and Raquel in the hotel bedroom that night, but Richard couldn’t have been more impressed with her acting chops.

  However, some very serious things happened on that movie too. A number of the Hungarian crew members simply disappeared. We noticed they were invariably the ones who, always in a whisper, complained about the political situation. I talked about it at length with Richard and Elizabeth.

  Edward Dmytryk had also directed one of my favorite movies, the 1958 war drama The Young Lions starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Dean Martin. In my opinion, however, Bluebeard was not the right kind of material for him. The authors had intended a black comedy, but Dmytryk’s seriousness turned the movie into something far less enjoyable.

  I believe Dymtryk invented a role in the movie for Joey Heatherton just because she was his girlfriend. She brought her choreographer along with her, and one of the crew told me he was very displeased that I was ignoring him. I couldn’t understand why. He wasn’t an actor; he wasn’t the director. I had no idea who he was or why I should photograph him. One day he called me over and asked me to watch him, whereupon he executed a leap and pirouette and landed in exactly the same spot, an effortless, graceful, perfect movement. “I was a star before you were born,” he said, informing me that he was George Chakiris, the man who’d played Bernardo, the leader of the Puerto Rican Sharks in West Side Story. “Okay,” I replied. “So what do you want me to do? Are you a star in this movie?” No. He just looked after Joey’s choreography. All the same, he felt I didn’t respect him. What could I say? I apologized, told him that I was nobody too, just a photographer paid to take photos of the stars on set.

  Elizabeth was very interested in Hungarian social realities that seemed linked to communism in any way. None of us could fail to notice all the young girls who would hang around the hotels where the cast and crew stayed. They were all hoping to have a love story with an Italian or French citizen, marry him, and leave Hungary; and a few did get lucky that way. Meanwhile, the government and pro-government writers didn’t look favorably on Elizabeth and Richard’s presence in their country, mostly because of their lavish comforts: a Rolls Royce Phantom with driver, a butler, wardrobe assistant, hairdresser, and bodyguard. The decadence and luxury of their lifestyle was all it took for them to be charged with anticommunist behavior, without them making any statement on the subject. So Elizabeth decided to make a statement of her own—and do it her way, naturally. Her fortieth birthday was coming up, so she organized a huge party and invited everyone in Budapest who counted. As well as half the rest of her universe. It was her way of telling the communists that the world should be a free place, and that no one should stop anyone from doing what they wanted.

  The day before the party, our hotel went insane. Assistants, catering staff, and hotel employees swarmed all over the place, police were everywhere, journalists staked out the hotel from top to bottom. Crowds gathered in the street outside, amazed at all the private planes circling the sky and landing in Budapest. Guests included Princess Grace Kelly, Roger Moore, Faberge CEO George Barrie, Alexandre, dozens of actors, actresses, artists, and friends, and everyone who was working on the Bluebeard set. A string of vans delivered the best food available in Budapest, top-quality catering and alcohol all round. Years later I learned that the Hungarian government had put Elizabeth and Richard on its blacklist. All that glamour offended the communists. Elizabeth had hit her target.

  Elizabeth turns forty and throws a full-on capitalist birthday party in communist Budapest. This is the moment everyone sings “Happy Birthday.”

  Raquel Welch and Michael Caine enjoy the birthday fun.

  Grace Kelly, Elizabeth, and Raquel Welch enjoy a women’s moment alone.

  During the party I took a photo of Grace, Elizabeth, and Raquel together, three earthly goddesses: a princess, a superstar, and a sex symbol. The photo highlights wonderfully the difference between the three women. They are all beautiful but in extremely distinct ways: the perfect bearing of a princess, the relaxed elegance of a superstar, the sensuality of a sex bomb.

  I wanted to take a posed photo of Elizabeth and Raquel together. But Elizabeth hemmed and hawed about the idea. Besides being possibly the world’s greatest sex symbol, Raquel was younger, and Elizabeth had never completely recovered from the unflattering paparazzo photos taken in Mexico. She feared looking jaded and old alongside Raquel. Then one day she turned up on set wearing a jersey with “40” visibly embroidered across her chest while Raquel was dressed as a nun for a scene. They agreed to be photographed like that together. Elizabeth adopted a clearly sarcastic expression, as if to say that the real message on her jersey was, “Sure, I’m forty. So what? I’m still the biggest star in the world.” Maybe she thought only a sense of humor could help her deal with being compared to Raquel. But the photo visibly demonstrates that she was quite wrong. And Raquel knew it, because she insisted on seeing the photo before I did anything with it.

  Elizabeth, wearing her age on her chest, grins and bears it.

  Italian actress Virna Lisi had possibly the most perfect face I’ve ever photographed—and also one of the kindest souls.

  Claudye and I were already friends with another of the costars, Virna Lisi, as well as her husband, Franco Pesci, a successful real-estate agent. We often saw them in Rome. Virna’s face was an image of perfection. It was incredibly symmetrical. Once, as a joke, I printed two copies of the same close-up, one normal and one upside down. I cut them in half, pairing a normal half with an upside down one. There was no difference. Most people have a better side, one profile that’s better than another. Not Virna. Her face was so perfect that sometimes it was hard to photogra
ph. It was difficult to make any sensuality emerge from such perfect beauty. I only managed to capture her once. As friends, we were too close for me to provoke her in the way I did with other subjects. I felt intimidated photographing her. I feared that any attempt to stimulate her might be misunderstood.

  Virna did everything she could to make it in American cinema. But her beauty always got in her way. She became famous for a commercial she did for a brand of toothpaste. She had two dumb lines, after which a voice-over spoke the slogan that would become a catchphrase: “With a mouth that beautiful, she can say whatever she wants.” The commercial got her a role as a blue-eyed temptress alongside Jack Lemmon in How to Murder Your Wife. The movie had a famous scene where she emerges from a cake. She became very popular in America, but she never managed to shake off the stereotype of a blonde seductress. Hollywood producers were hoping Virna would fill the void left by Marilyn Monroe. But that wasn’t what she wanted for her career, and she refused to do that. Eventually she returned to Italy. When a woman is that beautiful, often her skill as an actress takes second place. It took years before she got the recognition she deserved. She was absolutely extraordinary in the 1994 French period movie Queen Margot, directed by Petrice Chereau, where her performance won her a Cesar Award. Throughout her career she displayed unfailing professionalism. What’s more, she stayed faithful to the same man and was never involved in the slightest scandal. A true lady. In this business, you don’t meet many of them.

  Bluebeard was the first movie where, besides being the special photographer, I also worked on the production side. I’d proposed the movie to Richard in the first place. I’d procured a role in it for Virna Lisi. We’d needed another female character, so I’d suggested another friend, Marilü Tolo, who was popular and well known to television audiences (though less fortunate in cinema). There’s a title that comes with the job I did: “producer.” But Salkind didn’t give me a cent, nor any credit.