Elizabeth and Michael

by Donald Bogle

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  To Emery Wimbish and Grace Frankowsky

  To Marie Dutton Brown

  To the memory of Marie Kanalas Bogle

  To the memory of my agent Bob Silverstein

  And to my parents, Roslyn and John; my brother John; and Carol Bogle

  February 16, 1997

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  IN SOME RESPECTS, it was just another Hollywood night, another of those big affairs with a gallery of glamorous stars, overeager publicists, agents, managers, and immaculately groomed industry executives—as well as a surge of pushy photographers and reporters who snapped pictures and shouted out questions. Barricaded on the sidelines were the fans, pumped up with excitement at seeing so many famous faces. On such occasions, everyone was accustomed to the star glow, the sparkling jewels, the designer gowns, the brilliant smiles, the air kisses, and the funny chatter that didn’t mean much of anything. On such nights, it was almost hard for anyone else to be really impressed. Glamour was, of course, valued, appreciated, held to high standards. Yet glamour in Hollywood was almost second nature.

  But then in the midst of all the expected fanfare, all the lights and cameras and cries of joy, all the gilded chaos, there was a hush in the air. Something miraculous seemed to have happened. Suddenly, they were there. Exiting from a limousine was Elizabeth Taylor, perhaps the greatest movie star of the twentieth century, and there wasn’t one person who did not strain to see her. She still elicited the kind of awe that was seldom seen, the kind that had vanished long ago with the demise of the classic Old Hollywood and the old studio system. But no sooner had the great Liz come into view than another wave of excitement roared through the crowd as a second star, the elusive Michael Jackson, no doubt the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century, stepped out of the same limousine.

  Elizabeth and Michael. A dazzling pair. Every eye was on them. “Michael and Elizabeth’s combined celebrity was just so incredibly intense,” Carrie Fisher once recalled. “And in a way it may have been comforting for each of them to have found someone with equivalent unimaginable celebrity. A rare species—endangered, protected, shiny.”

  The event that night was ABC’s televised tribute to Elizabeth Taylor’s sixty-fifth birthday. In a short time, she was scheduled to enter the hospital for brain surgery. Doctors were optimistic, but no one could say for sure how the operation would go. Because the tribute had been scheduled long before she knew she’d have the surgery, Elizabeth Taylor decided to go ahead with it. And Michael Jackson knew he wanted no one else to escort her but himself. So there they were.

  Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson were hooked on each other. Not too long after their first meeting, a deep friendship had blossomed: a true kind of love affair, frankly unlike any relationship either had had before. They were eager to share secrets, to express their ways of looking at the world, to enter a private realm all their own. At his Neverland Valley Ranch in Los Olivos, California, Michael constructed a room in Elizabeth’s honor. Taylor, in turn, saw that he was one of those misunderstood, sensitive souls to which she had long been attracted.

  But, frankly, what added to the crowd’s fervor at seeing the two together on this special night in February 1997 was the fact that no could quite figure them out. Both within and outside the entertainment industry, among the public at large and among other stars, some thought the relationship was flat-out weird. Incomprehensible. What went on with these two? What was this friendship all about? They were Hollywood’s Odd Couple. Old enough to be Michael Jackson’s mother, Elizabeth Taylor was a woman of the world who had been on the scene for decades, from the time she was a little girl, then through her youthful reign as the town’s dark-haired princess until her ascension as Hollywood’s Queen Elizabeth (and eventually, Dame Elizabeth). Why was a woman who looked as if she had been everywhere and done everything spending time with him? He was something of a strange bird, an asexual enigmatic Peter Pan, also on the scene since his childhood, now looking fearful of growing older, forever in search of finding the childhood he believed he had lost.

  In essence, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson couldn’t be considered a couple at all. Each was too bright and bold to ever really complement the other. No one could ever imagine them as two halves that now completed a whole. Her husbands had often been consorts, all of them there at the service of the queen, bending to her will, absorbed into her world and reflecting her glow and glory as best or powerfully as they could. At times even Richard Burton, despite his power and charisma, knew deep down that partly what had made him Richard Burton, in the eyes of the public, was the fact that she had chosen him. But that never seemed the case with Michael, who was always the king of his own universe, never a consort to anyone, never standing in the afterglow of someone else. His brothers—and his onetime manager father, Joseph Jackson—had realized this early on, accepted it, and were as magnetized by his star power as anyone else.

  So Taylor and Jackson were always separate entities that somehow clicked without one ever being at the service of the other, even though Michael appeared to love playing the part of the gentleman escort during their public outings. This separateness in a sense made them all the more a compelling pair, all the more a duo that puzzled, intrigued, and ignited the imagination. When they were together, it was admittedly something special, something wondrous to behold. Always he looked at her with adoring eyes and a smile that signaled some secret joy she brought him. Always she glanced at him in a protective, loving way.

  How they really came together or why may always be baffling. But Michael Jackson’s devotion—and devotion is the only word to describe his feelings—to Elizabeth Taylor was different from those past relationships and friendships with Brooke Shields, Tatum O’Neal, and even the woman who had first fascinated him, Diana Ross. He had pursued and courted Elizabeth Taylor, and she had been resistant to his pursuit, perhaps asking herself what on earth this young man wanted. But, gradually, he won her over, and she succumbed to his attention and to his vulnerability. For her, nurturing doomed souls, like actors Montgomery Clift and James Dean, was a part of who she was, at the core of her DNA. Jackson’s onetime publicist Bob Jones—clearly surprised by the relationship as it built and took shape—felt that Michael usually didn’t want many women around. “There was at least one exception: Elizabeth Taylor,” recalled Jones, who was aware of the undeniable fact that “she captured Michael Jackson’s imagination.”

  Something drew them together, bound them, may even have puzzled them as much as everyone else. Their backgrounds, seemingly so different, made theirs often a seemingly paradoxical union. But those separate backgrounds, those past histories, set the stage for their relationship, provided its exposition and backstory, and established the first and second acts of their individual lives. During what unexpectedly turned out to be act three of each of their lives, they met and began the friendship. But so much had come before—for each of them.

  Chapter 1

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  ELIZABETH TAYLOR’S CHILDHOOD reads like something of a fairy tale, albeit with its requisite dark side. The second child of a dreamy-looking American couple living abroad, she was born on February 27, 1932, in London. Her mother, Sara Viola Warmbrodt, born in 1896 in Arkansas City, Kansas, was the daughter of an engineer. Ambitious, lively, and outgoing, with large eyes and a friendly smile, Sara met a handsome young dark-haired man with piercing blue eyes named Fra
ncis Lenn Taylor, who had been born in 1897 in Springfield, Illinois, and whose family lived in Arkansas City. From the very start, girls were all over Francis, falling into a swoon within minutes after seeing him. One classmate recalled that “he was the first boy I was ever aware of. I could have eaten him like ice cream on a stick.”

  Not only were there those striking looks, but there was also his background and his breeding. This was no naïve, unpolished local lad unaware of the world. Though his father managed a general-goods store and had a modest income, Francis was the favorite of his wealthy uncle, Howard Young. Living in Saint Louis and married to Francis’s aunt Mabel, Howard was a prosperous art dealer with galleries in St. Louis and eventually New York and London, with beautiful homes in those cities as well as in Connecticut, Florida, and Wisconsin. Howard and his wife had no children, and though he was known as a man who did not show his feelings, he doted on Francis and was keenly aware of his nephew’s potential. When Francis turned nineteen, Uncle Howard brought him to St. Louis and later to New York and tutored him in the world of high art. Selling paintings was not just knowing the artistic merits of a piece of work. One also had to know the market for it—or how to create a market—and how to mix and mingle with the wealthy, the influential, the powerful. Also important was the image of the dealer. Young Francis—innately elegant and increasingly more and more sophisticated—soon dressed in splendidly tailored suits with the appropriate shirts and ties and shoes. He spoke in an eloquently thoughtful, knowledgeable manner. People took one look at him or heard him speak and instantly assumed he was somebody.

  Certainly that was how Sara Warmbrodt felt upon meeting him. But it wasn’t love at first sight. Too many other things were then going on in her life. Mainly, Sara was hell-bent on building a career for herself. Her ambition? To be an actress; to conquer the world from the stage. Under the name Sara Sothern, she appeared in the stock company of actor Edward Everett Horton, then made her way to Los Angeles, where she debuted playing a lame girl in the drama The Fool. She reportedly made a screen test for MGM but nothing came of it. Then, at age twenty-six, Sara appeared in The Fool on Broadway. Two years later, she went to London with the drama. Afterward, Sara was back in the States in a small role in another Broadway show: The Little Spitfire. But that play closed quickly, no other roles came her way, and Sara, at loose ends, realized she might never have the stage career of her dreams. Then and there, she met up with Francis again. Now an ambitious young man of the world, he was like a knight in shining armor who made her envision another life for herself. About a year later—with permission from Howard Young—they married. Then came their world travels. Uncle Howard paid for their European honeymoon. Then Francis became his uncle’s purchasing agent in Europe and traveled the continent, meeting artists and assessing their work. He proved quite adept at his job and prospered. By 1929, Howard had installed thirty-one-year-old Francis as the head of his London gallery at 35 Old Bond Street.

  • • •

  In London, Francis and Sara were a magnetic, young American couple, looking like something out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel: boldly attractive and stylish as they shrewdly maneuvered their way through the city’s tony social set. Though Sara was considered a social climber and perhaps too brash, she was balanced by her sedate, rather serious, and cultivated husband. They may not have reached the very top of the British social ladder, but they certainly did all right for themselves. In their circle were Victor Cazalet and his sister, Thelma Cazalet-Keir. Victor was a conservative member of Parliament, lively, aggressive, never at a loss for words, and always impeccably dressed and something of a snob. Thelma Cazalet-Keir became one of the first female members of Parliament. With a sharp sense of the ins and outs of British social decorum, each Cazalet had an array of connections that helped Francis professionally. As for Sara, she loved the luncheons, dinners, receptions, parties, and gala openings that she was now attending.

  Sara and Francis’s first child, a son named Howard, after Francis’s uncle, was born in late 1929. In early 1932, their daughter, Elizabeth Rosemond—named after Sara’s mother, Elizabeth, and Howard Young’s wife, Mabel, whose middle name was Rosemond—was born. Theirs was a picture-postcard family. Victor Cazalet and his sister, Thelma, became unofficial godparents to young Elizabeth. Francis and Sara moved into a comfortable home called Heathwood in the Hampstead section of London—it had “six bedrooms, three baths, a living room, a sitting room, a large kitchen, and living quarters for a family of servants.” Later they also had a small country home outside the city, thanks to Victor. “I remembered seeing the four-room cottage—simple to the point where water had to be heated on the kitchen stove,” recalled Hollywood’s gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. “ ‘Little Swallows’ was its name, and it sat in the woods of her godfather, Victor Cazelet [sic]; his English estate, Great Swifts, was in Kent.” Hopper first met Elizabeth during a trip to England, since she was friends with the Cazalets. The country home didn’t remain a simple four-room cottage for long. Francis and Sara completely redid Little Swallows, turning it into a charming showplace. Weekends with the children and friends were often spent there.

  Howard and Elizabeth were showered with attention—night and day. A nanny, Gladys, cared for them. A cook prepared meals. A part-time chauffeur drove Sara and the children to their various appointments. Both children were enrolled in private schools.

  Elizabeth quickly developed into an angelic-looking girl with dark, almost jet-black hair, flawless skin with a distinct beauty mark, a mole on her cheek—which Sara later emphasized with mascara—and dark blue or violet eyes, as many believed they were, with thick, luxurious brows and lashes. “The doctor told us that she had a mutation,” recalled Sara. “Well, that sounded just awful—a mutation. But, when he explained that her eyes had double rows of eyelashes, I thought, well, now, that doesn’t sound so terrible at all.”

  Extremely shy, sometimes hiding behind her nanny, she was paradoxically also adventurous and independent. Yet from the day of her birth, she was also delicate. Her health was fragile, with a more serious problem that Sara preferred not to discuss. Elizabeth suffered from a glandular condition known as hypertrichosis, which caused a thin growth of hair all over her body. Doctors assured Sara that the condition was temporary. Indeed, the excess hair soon disappeared. But Elizabeth’s condition would reoccur at other times, then quickly vanish again. She was also born with scoliosis—a curvature of the spine—that contributed to endless back problems throughout her life. And she was very soon plagued by accidents. “My earliest memory is of pain,” Taylor once recalled. “In the house in London where I was born, there was one of those electric fires that coils and curls. I was still crawling and I remember looking at its marvelous orangey-red color and thinking, Should I or shouldn’t I? I did. Thank you very much! Half a finger almost burned off!” At age three, she was stricken with a painful infection of her ear canals; both ears had to be lanced. “For three weeks, she was running a high fever and couldn’t lie down,” Sara recalled. “She had to sit up in bed. And I was with her all the time, day and night. For about three weeks, I didn’t have a night’s sleep. She never whimpered and never cried. Her one concern was that I wasn’t getting to sleep. She was worried that Daddy and I were up all the time. She never cried. It’s just something . . . the only way that I know how to describe it is an inner strength.” Sara Taylor recalled that as she sat by her daughter’s bedside, the girl asked to see Victor. Sitting on the bed, he held Elizabeth and also read to her. Young Elizabeth soon recovered.

  • • •

  One bond between Victor and Sara was their faith. Each was a Christian Scientist. Sara’s mother claimed to hold a belief in Christian Science, but others believed that it was Victor who introduced Sara to the complex new religion, which was based on the teachings of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. One aspect of the religion held that health care and healing were possible not through medication or surgery but through a specific form of
prayer. Christian Science would be more important to the Taylor household than most realized. On any given opportunity, Sara touted and praised the dogma of her faith. Meetings for Christian Scientists were held in her home. Both Howard and Elizabeth were given lessons in the religion. The Christian Science prayer book was consulted in the Taylor home—for years. If a difficult problem troubled Elizabeth, especially later during her career, Sara sat with her daughter, the prayer book in their hands. Since Sara believed in prayer over medicine, and though her daughter would be treated by an army of physicians throughout her life, Elizabeth learned to live with pain, to seek treatment but also both to fight and to stoically accept physical suffering, especially while going about her various professional and personal obligations, often until the pain became overpowering or unbearable. That ability to cope with pain would, in a sense, enable her to survive. Yet, publicly, she said almost nothing about Christian Science.

  Of her early years in England, Taylor said, “I had the most idyllic childhood.” “She had a pony there and grew to love animals,” recalled Hedda Hopper. Elizabeth herself remembered: “My happiest moments as a child were riding my Newfoundland pony, Betty, in the woods on 3,000 acres of my godfather’s estate.” The pony—given to her when she was three—was a gift from Victor. “The very first time I got on her back, she threw me into a patch of stinging nettles. But I soon became an accomplished horsewoman. I’d ride bareback for hours all over the property.” She also recalled, “My brother and I made pets of all the animals—pet rabbits, pet turtles, pet goats, pet chickens. It was my ideal of bliss.” Decades later she would learn that Michael—and just about all of his family—also loved animals.