by Donald Bogle
A frustrated, stoic Francis repeatedly had to step back—for another reason. When MGM signed Elizabeth to a new contract at $750 a week with a six-month option that would boost her salary to $1,000 a week, Sara was paid $250 a week to watch over Elizabeth. Today’s equivalent of $750 a week would be more than $10,000 and Sara’s weekly $250 would be almost $3,500. Francis realized that without his daughter’s income, the family would have to live in a far more modest way. “I was a child supporting my family,” Elizabeth said. “My father took the money. Some of the money was put aside for me, but a lot of the money was put back into the entire family. I was just working the whole time.” Katherine Jackson would also come to realize how important Michael’s later career—his income—was to the family’s entire way of life. Francis understood that the entire extended family—which included a network of aunts and uncles—was invested in Elizabeth’s career in other ways. His uncle Howard still boasted about his grandniece as did everyone associated with her.
Yet Francis was adamant about not permitting Sara to take control of their son, Howard. The boy himself may have felt just like his father. When a studio arranged to interview him for a film role, he made it clear that he wanted no part of Hollywood. On the day of his appointment, Howard showed up at the studio with his head completely shaved. That was the end of any talk about his working in films. Elizabeth always admired her brother’s rebellious streak. Francis began to spend more and more time with his son. Whenever Sara and Elizabeth were otherwise occupied, he’d take Howard off on vacations.
• • •
With the end of the war, the studios soon had to contend with changing tastes and attitudes—and the fact that the movie audience had lost some of its innocence. Gradually, Hollywood began to tackle more adult themes with an eventual exploration of social issues that had long festered in American life—and long been ignored by the studios. The Oscar-winning Best Motion Picture of 1946 was The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler’s trenchant drama about troubled war veterans returning home to an America that clearly was a different place. In 1947, Elia Kazan’s attack on anti-Semitism, Gentleman’s Agreement, received the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. Both Wyler and Kazan won Oscars for Best Directing for their respective films. Within the next few years, the list of these adult-themed movies would grow; so would Hollywood’s examination of other social and racial issues, as well as female sexuality. Traditional lighter weight fare still predominated. But American movies were becoming more reflective, and a new postwar younger generation was in search of its own stars.
Already the media was turning a postwar focus on Taylor. When she was thirteen, she was asked to perform on a special broadcast from the White House for the March of Dimes. Along with former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady Bess Truman, and actress Cornelia Otis Skinner, Taylor addressed a national audience. “The request for Elizabeth came not from Hollywood,” said Hedda Hopper, “but from the White House and I know of no one here better fitted for the job.” This was a pretty heady experience for a teenager. But Taylor waltzed through—with every eye in the place on her. Not long after the release of National Velvet, Life magazine photographer Peter Stackpole had visited the Taylor home to take pictures of her. Already the magazine saw her as possibly a budding major figure whose career—and personal life—would be of interest to its readers. Thus began the magazine’s splashy pictorial documentation of her life on- and off-screen. Naturally, the idea was to present her as a relatively typical American girl with loving parents and a model home life.
In its July 14, 1947 issue, Life ran fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor on its cover. Inside, there was no real story, just a full page with pictures and a scant text. But that didn’t matter. A Life cover remained a great status symbol, almost the ultimate, for a movie star, and MGM considered this a coup. This was the first of her fourteen Life covers. MGM also became all the more protective and overbearing. In 1945, when Elizabeth was tempted to stretch her talents and do a play in New York, the studio had put the clamps down on its valuable property and would not let her go east.
MGM decided the time had come to ease her into more grown-up roles and also to use her to reach the youth audience. For a time, the studio toyed with the idea of casting her as Rima in Green Mansions, a romantic fable set in South America. But, frankly, Elizabeth, then thirteen when MGM first paid the huge sum of $150,000 for the rights to the novel on which the film was to be based, seemed too young for the role. Within the next year, MGM still considered starring her in the film. But one delay after another kept the project on the shelf. When it was finally filmed in 1959, a mature Audrey Hepburn would play the role once intended for Taylor. Still viewing her as more British than American, MGM also considered starring her in Now That April’s There, the story of the daughter of an Oxford don living in America who returns with her family to her homeland after the war.
Then there was the prospect of Young Bess, the story of the girlhood years of Queen Elizabeth. MGM owned the rights and was aware that its stars Katharine Hepburn and Greer Garson wanted the part. Deborah Kerr was also a candidate. But the studio held off—keeping the project for Elizabeth. But there must have been concern in the studio’s executive offices about her youth—especially after she did a screen test for the part—because the film did not go into production. Talk of it continued for years. Finally, in 1953, Young Bess was filmed with Jean Simmons in the role. Likewise, Orson Welles wanted to do Romeo and Juliet with Taylor and Roddy McDowall; nothing came of that. Warner Bros. also wanted Taylor for the title role in That Hagen Girl with Ronald Reagan, but MGM would not lend her out. (Shirley Temple would go on to play the part.) At Warner Bros., Michael Curtiz wanted to do another film with her. After Curtiz’s reputed affair with Sara, there was no way MGM would have wanted him anywhere near any of the Taylors. Finally, the studio settled on Cynthia, in which she played a sickly girl whose parents had to learn to let her live a little. Elizabeth and everyone else knew it was lightweight fare—and weaker than any of the other film projects. But Cynthia had its charms, mainly because of Elizabeth, and she received a screen kiss from actor Jimmy Lydon.
While Metro continued its search for the right films, Sara and Elizabeth, again without Francis or Howard, sailed to England—her first real vacation in years. During the crossing of the Atlantic, Elizabeth fell ill. On the ocean liner was socialite and political figure Nancy Astor—the former Nancy Witcher Langhorne of Danville, Virginia, who had become the very famous Lady Astor when she married Waldorf Astor, the second Viscount Astor, who was a member of the House of Lords in Britain’s Parliament. In 1919, a rather daring Nancy had become the first female member of the House of Commons in Britain’s Parliament. Hearing that Elizabeth was not well, the bewitching Lady, who was also a staunch Christian Scientist and may have known Sara during those earlier years in London, visited Elizabeth and tried to help during her recovery. This was one of the early illnesses—said to be due to food poisoning that also affected her mother—that the press reported on. Whether she was actually distressed by the fact that both her parents were not traveling with her was something no one discussed.
In London, mother and daughter stayed at the posh Dorchester hotel, a favorite of Elizabeth’s in the years to come. Suddenly, Elizabeth became ill again with a temperature of 104, this time from a virus infection. Once she recovered, Elizabeth saw her godmother, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, and other family friends. She also visited her godfather Victor’s estate and the old family home Heathwood.
Upon her return to Los Angeles, the studio had lined up a series of press events for her. Openings. Interviews. Even a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was feted by the students at Harvard, who voted her their most popular actress. Twelve hundred and fifty freshmen gave a party in honor of the fifteen-year-old. Some three thousand people attended a special screening of Cynthia.
Soon MGM looked almost frantically impatient to cast her in more mature roles, especially after her appearance in A Dat
e with Judy in 1948, which starred perpetual teen favorite Jane Powell. The film was shot in Technicolor, and audiences—seeing those dark locks and those violet eyes—were stunned by her ever-developing beauty. Elizabeth worked opposite Robert Stack, and the two made a glorious couple, looking like a young goddess and god who had descended from Mount Olympus to mix with mere mortals. Something else was apparent now. By the age of sixteen, Elizabeth had a 37-inch bust, a 22-inch waist, and 32-inch hips. With her emerging sensuality, she was ready for full-fledged romance on-screen.
Afterward came Julia Misbehaves, in which she was cast as the daughter of a divorced British couple, played by the now “older” stars Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, who, of course, by the end of the film, were reunited. Playing a tutor secretly in love with Taylor was Peter Lawford. She developed a heavy crush on Lawford that grew rather intense within the next year or so.
During this time, two incidents occurred that looked as if they’d derail Taylor’s career. MGM planned to cast her opposite Peter Lawford again in Sally in Our Alley, a story with a London setting about a girl who cannot stop smiling at the boys she sees. Apparently, neither Elizabeth nor her mother felt the story was right. Finally, Sara made an appointment to see studio head Louis B. Mayer. The autocratic and dictatorial Mayer had climbed his way from salesman and movie exhibitor to becoming possibly the most powerful man in Hollywood. He felt he knew what was best for everyone at his studio, and he did not sanction the questioning of his authority. Mayer was also the kind of man—strong and assertive, the complete opposite of Francis—who fascinated Sara.
Perhaps Elizabeth wasn’t aware of her mother’s attraction to Mayer. Regardless, sitting in Mayer’s office, Sara expressed her concerns about the proposed movie Sally in Our Alley. According to Taylor, when her mother simply asked if Elizabeth was to sing and dance in the film and when she should start to train, Mayer took them by surprise when he became visibly angry. His attitude was that they had no right to question the studio’s decisions for Elizabeth’s career. Hadn’t the studio already made this girl a star? Then he suddenly blew up. “He used the most obscene language,” Elizabeth recalled. He told Sara that she was goddamned stupid and “ ‘wouldn’t even know what day of the week it is. Don’t try to meddle into my affairs. Don’t try to tell me how to make motion pictures. I took you out of the gutter.’ ” Finally, an enraged Elizabeth had enough.
“Don’t you dare speak to my mother like that,” she shouted. “You and your studio can both go to hell.” Then she ran out of the room. But Sara stayed behind to try to make amends with Mayer. “I was frightened,” Elizabeth admitted. “I didn’t know whether I’d get into trouble with my parents, whether he was still being rude to my mother, whether I should go back in. I thought for sure you don’t tell Louis B. Mayer to go to hell in his own studio. I felt guilty because his yelling didn’t justify my being rude to him.” But when MGM executive Benny Thau—the studio official she felt closest to—told her to go back and apologize to Mayer, Elizabeth refused. “My dander went right back up again and I said, ‘No, he was wrong, I’m not going to apologize to him.’ ” She never did. Nor was she fired. Nor did she ever return to Mayer’s office. Nor did she do Sally in Our Alley. That day marked a turning point for the adolescent. Elizabeth was becoming toughened, although not yet the hard-edged woman she would have to be to survive in the industry as an adult. But her independence was growing as well as her awareness of the way the industry worked. Never did she forget that they didn’t fire her; that, in essence, she was of value to the studio.
• • •
Yet another incident revealed Elizabeth’s dissatisfaction, as well as Sara’s, with Metro. After National Velvet, Elizabeth had assumed the studio would cast her in lead after lead. But in A Date with Judy, Jane Powell played the lead while Elizabeth was relegated to a supporting role. Movies like Cynthia and Julia Misbehaves cast her as a teenaged ingenue, but the films spent much time dramatizing the plight of the parents. Neither of those later two films offered her much of an opportunity to stretch her dramatic muscles. That may have led to Elizabeth’s doubts about continuing to act—and that, in turn, may have led to a serious disagreement between mother and daughter about Elizabeth’s career itself. The pressures of always being on, always having a schedule that the studio drew up or approved, always having to fight for some private time, were gnawing away at the teenaged Elizabeth. “All day long, some official was telling her what to do and what not to do. She spent all of her pre-adolescent and adolescent days inside the walls of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,” said her future director George Stevens. “She had no time to play, no contact with other children.”
Fed up, Elizabeth was ready to pack it all in and leave the movies altogether. “In the beginning, when she first started, she just loved it more than anything in the world,” Sara Taylor remembered. But there came a time when “she was going to school at the studio, and she didn’t have friends like the other girls had, going to parties and things, and I think she felt a little sort of left out. When she’d go to parties, they’d all look at her and think, oh, she was different than they were, she was a movie star, and that sort of hurt her.” An exasperated Sara realized that her daughter might be serious about giving it all up, and at one point, she knew it was foolish to fight her, to try to convince her otherwise. Sara said, “We had a talk one day, and I said to her, ‘Well, honey, it’s just up to you. We didn’t want you to be in pictures. And we’d be very happy to have you step out right now, and we could go back to our life.” Neither parent would force her to do something she did not want. “She thought it over and wrote the most beautiful letter. I’ve kept the letter,” recalled Sara. “And she said, ‘Mother, I have, I’ve thought it over, and I couldn’t give it up. It would be like cutting off the roots of a tree. It’s my life now, and I’ll never grumble again about not going to parties like the other girls and not having dates because I realize now, more than ever, how much I love it and how I couldn’t give it up.’ And she made her own decision. That’s when she was 15. But up until that time, she loved it more than anything because it was just her world of make-believe.”
• • •
Settling into life at the studio with her new perspective, she formed lasting friendships with hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff as well as designer Helen Rose. A native of Chicago, where she was born in 1904, Rose had studied at Chicago’s Academy of Fine Arts. Moving to Los Angeles in 1929, she worked at Twentieth Century Fox in the early 1940s, where she designed for musical numbers in the studio’s films. She created lush designs for Lena Horne when the singer was on loan to Fox for the all-black musical Stormy Weather. In 1943, Rose went to MGM and eventually became the studio’s top designer—creating wardrobes for such stars as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner—and won Oscars for The Bad and the Beautiful and I’ll Cry Tomorrow. Later Grace Kelly chose Rose to design her wedding gown when she married Prince Rainier of Monaco. Kelly also asked Guilaroff to create her hairstyle for the wedding. Like Guilaroff, Rose watched Elizabeth grow up. “There was something about Elizabeth that I could communicate with,” recalled Rose. “She was young but she was mature, someone that cared. She cared terribly about people. She was very kind to the wardrobe people. Very kind to the make-up people. You know a lot of stars might be wonderful to L. B. Mayer. . . . But when it came to her wardrobe people or the make-up people or anyone who worked with her, she treated them much better than she did Mr. Mayer. And I think that’s a wonderful quality because she was always doing some wonderful little things for people.”
Elizabeth also came to the defense of Rose during a difficult period at the studio. MGM was like an armed fortress. Gossip, rivalries, feuds ran rampant. But a battery of publicists ensured that in-house secrets and scandals never became known to the general public. When Judy Garland attempted suicide and was replaced by Jane Powell in MGM’s Royal Wedding, Rose was suspected of having leaked the story to Hedda Hopper, a strong supporter of Garland. Louis B. Mayer was furi
ous. Rose was then dumped from designing for the picture. It began to look as if she’d be dropped entirely by MGM. “L. B. Mayer wanted me OUT and PAID OFF,” said Rose. “My agent told me to go to the studio as if nothing had happened, which I did, but I was not surprised to find myself without an assignment.” Word of “my ‘disgrace’ got around fast and very few people spoke to me. I ate my lunch alone,” recalled Rose. She always remembered that “Elizabeth was the only star that stood by me and went to the front office in my behalf. At the time she was still a youngster, but that was Elizabeth—full of spirit as always.” Having spoken with Metro executive Benny Thau, Elizabeth assured Rose that “the incident would soon be forgotten.” Had it not been for Elizabeth and MGM producer Joe Pasternak, said Rose, “my life on the lot would have been unbearable.”
• • •
MGM ended up casting Taylor in its big Technicolor remake of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, with a cast that included June Allyson, Janet Leigh, Margaret O’Brien, and Elizabeth as the March sisters and with Mary Astor as their mother. Though it would not be compared favorably with the first 1933 version, which had starred Katharine Hepburn as Jo March under George Cukor’s direction, the LeRoy version had its charm, and Elizabeth, cast as Amy and wearing a blond wig, played a character who matured from teenager to a well-traveled, beautifully dressed young woman who walks off with her older sister’s onetime beau Laurie, played by Peter Lawford. Most of the film focused on the character’s younger years, but Taylor handled the transition beautifully.