by Donald Bogle
Amid all this media speculation over possible nuptials for the young star, over at Paramount negotiations had begun with MGM to star Elizabeth in director George Stevens’s adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s powerful, classic novel An American Tragedy, eventually to be called A Place in the Sun. The film would dramatize the story of a young man torn between two women: one an alluring wealthy girl, the other a drab working-class young woman. When the latter is tragically drowned, the young man is arrested and then tried for killing her. Stevens was a major filmmaker, whose career stretched back to silents when he had directed Laurel and Hardy shorts and further developed with his direction of such classics as Alice Adams with Katharine Hepburn, Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, The More the Merrier with Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur, and the moving I Remember Mama with Irene Dunne. Stevens—deeply affected by the devastation he saw when he toured war-torn Europe—was in a new phase of his career, moving away from comedies and seemingly lighter fare to films with more adult themes and a darker vision of America. The key role of the tormented young man in this Paramount picture was to be played by the New York–based actor Montgomery Clift, then the hottest young dramatic actor on the scene. Elizabeth’s role—that of the wealthy Angela Vickers—would be far more challenging than anything she had ever done, and it might put her in the front ranks of postwar dramatic film actresses.
None of this seemed to matter to Metro, which refused to lend her out for a Paramount film. Because she was now too hot a “commodity” to be left idle—no young star was getting this kind of press coverage—MGM wanted to keep her working almost nonstop in its productions and informed her that while waiting for Father of the Bride to go into production, she would film the comedy The Big Hangover, to be directed by Norman Krasna and to costar Van Johnson. By anyone’s estimation a slight picture, The Big Hangover told the story of a man whose allergy to alcohol keeps getting him into “comic” hassles. Elizabeth was to play his girlfriend. But having read the script for A Place in the Sun, Elizabeth—and Sara—had other ideas. The opportunity to work with Stevens and Clift was too important to pass up. While Stevens continued negotiations with Metro, Elizabeth and Sara campaigned for A Place in the Sun. Finally, the studio agreed to the loan-out, mainly it was said because MGM wanted Paramount actor John Lund for one of its films. It was also said that there had been confusion as to which role Taylor would play. MGM did not want her to play the poor girl. The part of Angela Vickers was acceptable.
Then the August 22, 1949, issue of Time hit the newsstands—with seventeen-year-old Elizabeth gracing its cover—and took the industry by surprise. Magazine covers, of course, were nothing new to Elizabeth. Already she had graced the cover of Life, which represented glamour and signaled a star’s impact on the public and the industry. A Life cover would always be treasured by Hollywood. Look magazine, not quite as prestigious as Life but just as glamorous, was important also, and it, too, would feature Elizabeth on covers now and in the years to come. But a Time cover meant something entirely different. Usually, Time cover stories were on political figures or world leaders or great artists, seemingly “serious” personalities. A cover with an entertainer meant that the performer had put an impressive stamp on the culture at a point in history and sometimes that the performer was such a cultural force that even those who had never seen a performance by the star were nonetheless aware of the performer. It was another level of influence and prestige.
Within Henry Luce’s Time Life publishing empire, editors maintained close ties with the studios, which were always pitching story ideas, primarily for Life. When MGM learned of Time’s upcoming story on the new postwar Hollywood stars, certainly the studio pushed for coverage of its stars. What may have helped Elizabeth land on the cover was Life’s ongoing interest in her, which indeed was shared with Time’s editors. Then, too, MGM clearly saw her as the wave of the future and no doubt conveyed that belief to the magazine.
Focusing on Hollywood’s postwar shifts, the Time story pointed out that such veteran stars as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, James Cagney, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, and Claudette Colbert, whose careers stretched back to the early 1930s, now faced challenges as they grew older and as audience tastes changed. No longer was the public rushing “by the millions to see a picture merely because one of them [the older stars] is in it,” the magazine stated. The same was true for such other seasoned stars as Errol Flynn, Irene Dunne, Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamarr, even Mickey Rooney. Such performers as Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Tyrone Power, Jimmy Stewart, Olivia de Havilland, and Joan Fontaine were “still-bright.” “But the public, according to an experienced Hollywoodsman, is scanning the marquees for new names.”
Among the new stars that Time pointed out were Ava Gardner, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer, Shelley Winters, Richard Widmark, Robert Ryan, Ruth Roman, Mel Ferrer, and Audrey Totter, some of whom would live up to Time’s star-watch forecast, others who would be forgotten by later generations. Of the bright lights for the future, the magazine felt two stood above the rest and had the goods for huge movie careers. One was Montgomery Clift.
The other bright light—the brightest, in fact—was Elizabeth, whom Time believed could develop into one of the greatest movie stars. So much of America already seemed to be in a swoon over her. Midshipmen at Annapolis had voted her “The Girl We’d Abandon Ship For.” At Harvard, she was “The Girl We’ll Never Lampoon.” At MGM, a photographer had told her: “I thought you’d like to know that the boys have voted you the most beautiful woman they have ever photographed.” Taylor’s response: “Mother! Did you hear what he said? He called me a woman!” Now being paid $1,000 a week, she would earn $1,500 a week the next year. An MGM executive estimated she was a “property” valued at “$50,000,000, maybe even $100,000,000.” Today’s equivalent would be just about a billion dollars.
“Elizabeth’s womanly beauty usually makes strangers forget that she is, after all, only a youngster,” Time commented, “but her behavior quickly reminds them of it. Beneath her breathtaking face there is scarcely a symptom of sophistication. But Elizabeth, for all her youngish ways, is a purposeful girl in a way that Hollywood admires: she is feverishly ambitious to make a success in pictures.” Actually, she was far more sophisticated than the magazine realized. Her feverish ambition was tied to a sophistication that even she may have been unaware of. The magazine informed readers that the forthcoming Conspirator would spotlight Elizabeth in a more womanly role.
Time’s cover story made the entire entertainment industry all the more aware that this teenager was a power player. But despite all this fanfare and the attention, MGM itself seemed to be dropping the ball. To put her in The Big Hangover, a routine picture at best, seemed to both waste and exploit her. A great star would need important films. Stevens’s A Place in the Sun might be one. But it was for Paramount, not Metro. In the meantime, Conspirator, despite the publicity, was hardly causing excitement at the studio, which held up the release of the film. The truth was that she was simply too young for the role.
“Elizabeth was a bit of a worry then to all of us,” said MGM producer Pandro S. Berman. “We recognized her beauty, but she didn’t have the strength of voice at sixteen or the personality to go with her face.” Berman said that later she became “a great technician, a great actress, and a great businesswoman, but at sixteen she was half child, half adult, and she was actually not as good an actress as she had been at the beginning making Courage of Lassie or Life with Father.” Or, of course, National Velvet.
• • •
The press corps—as breathless about her as a love-struck teenager—continued to follow her engagement to Pawley as the couple commuted between LA and Miami to see each other. When not together, the two wrote letters in which Elizabeth poured out her heart to him. But despite their passion for one another, Pawley never understood Hollywood. And basic questions surfaced. Where would they live? What would h
e do professionally if in Los Angeles? Then, too, her schedule would keep them apart. As soon as she completed one film, the studio had her set to begin another.
Then, on September 3, an odd item appeared in Hedda Hopper’s column. “Bill Pawley Jr. had better return here in a hurry or his Elizabeth Taylor might transfer her romantic interest elsewhere. A local millionaire, who has not been without publicity, is wooing her—but so secretly.” Who was Hopper referring to? Sixteen days later, on September 19, Hopper announced that the three-month engagement to Pawley was over. Pawley told Hopper: “I love her very much and I believe she loves me, but due to the distance, her constant work, which all her energy should go into, I feel the only fair thing is to release her from her engagement.” Hoping the broken engagement was temporary, Pawley may never have really gotten over the fact that she never came back to him. In fact, on the day of her first marriage, he reportedly arrived at the Taylor home and advised her not to marry. To most of the Taylor family, he must have looked like he was half out of his mind. But Pawley carried a torch for her for years. “He told me he couldn’t bring himself to marry anyone until twenty-five years after the split,” said a friend of Pawley’s. He kept her love letters almost until the end of his life. After Taylor’s death, the letters were sold at an auction in 2011. He died a year later, in July 2012.
As the press once again deliriously covered her romantic life, a new media image was being crafted for Taylor. Now she was depicted as spoiled, rather thoughtless, and immature, something of a ruthless, self-centered heartbreaker. No one had forgotten the way she had “broken off” her “romance” with Glenn Davis—the young man who was serving in Korea. Now, no matter what Pawley himself said, everyone felt Elizabeth had duped him, that she had grown bored and moved on to someone else, whoever that might be.
• • •
By the next month, the talk was about Elizabeth and her costar in A Place in the Sun, Montgomery Clift. Born in 1920 (with a twin sister) and raised by his mother to be something of an aristocrat, Clift and his brother and sister were homeschooled and later had private tutors in the States and in Europe. Once Clift went to actual school, he couldn’t completely adjust. At age fifteen, he started acting on the New York stage in such productions as There Shall Be No Night with theater legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne and later in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth with Tallulah Bankhead. Strikingly handsome, with green eyes, chiseled features, and a slight but taut build, Clift would be the most intense actor Elizabeth had ever worked with. Schooled in the Method to use personal experiences to develop his characters and also to question every move and gesture of the characters he played, Clift could become so immersed in his roles that he seemed unable to turn his characters off at the end of a play or a scene for a film. Stars like Spencer Tracy and Anne Revere took their work seriously and had their own techniques for creating a character; of course, those actors no doubt took their characters home with them, but it wasn’t as apparent as it was with Clift. Instead, he lived the part twenty-four hours a day. Having already appeared in Fred Zinnemann’s The Search and Howard Hawks’s Red River, in which he had held his own with veteran John Wayne, Clift had turned down long-term studio contracts, and in this age before Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Paul Newman had made it to the movies, Clift was viewed as a rebel—and a brilliant one ushering in a whole new acting style for the movies.
When Taylor and Clift met, sparks immediately flew. For Elizabeth, the striking good looks were one thing; the burning sensitivity was another. His mastery of his craft impressed her. So did his intellect. Clift responded to her gentleness, her intelligence, her sensitivity, her desire to learn more, and her youthful exuberance. She wanted to enjoy life, not brood over it, to experience it, not to hold back and simply analyze it. Like everyone else, he was stunned by her beauty, yet he wouldn’t let that beauty have a power over him. Or so he tried. His nickname for her was Bessie Mae.
Chapter 6
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GORDY’S BELIEF IN the boys was soon fulfilled. The very first song of theirs that Gordy released in October 1969, “I Want You Back,” became a number one hit. So did the three songs that followed: “ABC,” released in February 1970; “The Love You Save,” in May 1970; and “I’ll Be There,” August 1970. Written by Berry Gordy, Hal Davis, Willie Hutch, and Bob West, “I’ll Be There” took Michael in a different direction. Rather than an energetic pop tune about puppy love, “I’ll Be There” was a soulful ballad, dramatically intense, full of yearning and regret for a love gone wrong yet a love that will never die. “He better be good to you,” Michael sang with the promise that no matter what, he’d be ready to rush to the girl’s side. While record buyers marveled at his intensity on that song, Michael—aged eleven—was winging it emotionally, singing of emotions he had not yet experienced. Much like sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor when MGM cast her as the wife of Robert Taylor in Conspirator, he was being pushed into feelings and relationships (in songs) that he didn’t yet understand. Later he admitted he didn’t know what he was doing. But somehow intuitively he had dipped into emotions he didn’t know he had and temporarily brought them to the forefront to perform a heartfelt rendition. The same happened with their future song “Never Can Say Goodbye.”
Now came a whirlwind of appearances. Still promoted as Diana Ross’s protégés, the brothers’ friendship with Ross, especially Michael’s, was used to the benefit of all concerned. The group opened for Ross at Los Angeles’s Inglewood Forum, and the Jackson 5’s very first national television appearance was as guests when Ross hosted TV’s The Hollywood Palace, on October 18, 1969. In December 1969, their first album, Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5, was released. But perhaps the appearance—one without Ross—with the greatest impact was on The Ed Sullivan Show. Having introduced the Beatles to American television, Sullivan’s program could guarantee a huge viewership and also signal a new act’s full ascension to stardom. Dressed in vests and bell-bottom pants with hats, and dancing as they sang, the boys—appearing on December 14, 1969—were a sensation. The studio audience and viewers at home went wild. More records hit the top of the charts. Tours followed. Throughout, teenaged girls screamed, shouted, cried, and ran after the brothers with a frenzy not that different from Beatlemania. In fact, the wild enthusiasm of the group’s fans was sometimes referred to as Jacksonmania. At one early engagement at the Spectrum arena in Philadelphia, almost en masse, fans jumped from their seats, rushing down the aisles to the stage. Fearing the stage might collapse, security quickly got the boys off it. The concert had to be stopped.
But what neither Motown nor anyone else could have predicted was that in the midst of all this, Michael was experiencing one of his first obsessions, which was indeed Diana Ross. He observed her closely: the way she lived in high Hollywood style with a swanky home, the way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way she laughed, even the way she made herself up. For Michael, Ross was larger than life, not a mere mortal but a real goddess who didn’t look, think, or act like other people.
In Ross he found someone he could learn from, and not just about show business. Little was said about Michael’s interest in art, but he liked to paint, not only as a way to express himself artistically but also to decompress. He may have thought about those strange, rare occasions in Gary when his father painted in the living room of the family home. Jermaine recalled that much as the very young Michael had yearned to paint, his father never shared the experience with his children. With Ross, it was entirely different. “Diana loved art and encouraged me to appreciate it, too. She took the time to educate me about it,” Michael recalled. “We’d go out almost every day, just the two of us, and buy pencils and paint. When we weren’t drawing or painting we’d go to museums.” Recalling the way she exposed him to “great artists like Michelangelo and Degas,” which “was really different from what I was used to doing, which was living and breathing music, rehearsing day in and day out.” For Michael, Ross became a kind of everywoman. “She wa
s my mother, my lover, and my sister all combined into one person,” he said. “She was the perfect mentor for Michael because he instantly adored her,” recalled Jermaine. But the other brothers were also entranced by her.
In time, he even “appropriated Diana Ross’ early ’70s speaking voice, an uncertain, shy, slightly way of communicating,” said Ross’s biographer Randy Taraborrelli. There was also an eerie story told by a chauffeur who said that once while driving Michael through Beverly Hills, he addressed him as Michael and Michael insisted, “Please, call me Miss Ross.” “So I did,” said the chauffeur.