Elizabeth and Michael

by Donald Bogle

  Michael also agonized over his features. Jermaine recalled that Michael hated his nose. “It widened noticeably,” Jermaine commented. Not helping matters were family taunts about his looks. Michael was dubbed “Big Nose” by his brothers and his father. “Hey, Big Nose, come over here,” said Joseph. All of this led to Michael’s later plastic surgery. (In fact, the first thing he would have done would be rhinoplasty, which was performed by the physician Steven Hoefflin.)

  In time, the other Jacksons also changed their looks.

  • • •

  By 1974, everyone knew that as the youngest member of the group, Michael was also artistically the strongest and, surprisingly, perhaps personally the strongest. Realizing that the rest of the family was denying the inevitable—that it was time to leave Motown—he decided to take control of the situation. “I know most people don’t think of me as tough or strong-willed, but that’s just because they don’t know me,” Michael later said in his book Moonwalk. Few entertainers understood image as shrewdly as Michael, who was well aware that the public perception of him was being soft and malleable. He created that impression perhaps as a defense mechanism, a way of protecting himself by seeming harmless and nonthreatening, even later perfecting that soft breathy voice that was used in public but not in private. His strength became boldly apparent when—because no one else made the slightest move to alter the situation with Motown—Michael took action.

  “I went over to see him, face to face, and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done,” he said of his confrontation with Berry Gordy. “If I had been the only one of us who was unhappy, I might have kept my mouth shut, but there had been so much talk at home about how unhappy we all were that I went in and talked to him.” In very definite terms, he explained that the group didn’t have any real control over its material, to select, to write, to produce their songs. Defensive and annoyed, Gordy, like Louis B. Mayer, believed he knew what was best for his performers. No one was going to tell him how to handle his business. But Michael stood his ground, and the exchange with Gordy became heated.

  But not once did he back down. He was then sixteen, and his confrontation with Gordy was similar to Elizabeth Taylor’s confrontation (at just about the same age) with Louis B. Mayer at MGM. Michael, however, had more leverage that he may not have been fully aware of. At that point, he was a major Motown star. But at the time of her protest at MGM, a teenaged Elizabeth had not yet reached major stardom. Most significant, though, Elizabeth hadn’t been afraid to walk out of MGM. After her confrontation, she had a new confidence in herself. So now did Michael. Though his feelings were complicated and conflicted, he knew the time had come to leave Motown. Part of Michael would always look up to, admire, and basically love Berry Gordy, the surrogate father who helped put the Jackson 5 on the map. Part of Michael was also affected by a conversation with Diana Ross, who believed Gordy had the group’s future in control. She felt that the brothers should stay at Motown. By then, Ross and Gordy were lovers, and Gordy clearly had been her Svengali, pushing in every way possible to showcase her great talent. But despite Diana Ross’s advice, Michael had made up his mind. “We could have stayed with Motown,” he said, “but if we had we’d probably be an oldies act.” Ironically, later even Ross would leave Motown.

  Joe Jackson now stepped into action. After negotiations with Ron Alexenburg, who headed Epic Records, a division of CBS Records, Joe decided the Jackson 5 would sign with that company. He didn’t much care what anyone else thought, including his sons. In most respects, Joe Jackson’s decision was wise. Reportedly, the group still had a mere pittance of a 2.7 percent royalty rate at Gordy’s company. Subtract from that the expenses that Motown still deducted, and it wasn’t a lucrative deal, to put it mildly. At Epic, the royalty rate would reportedly be 27 percent of the wholesale price of a record. A healthy $750,000 advance also sweetened the deal. One snag was that the president of CBS Records, Walter Yetnikoff, reportedly balked at the idea of letting the Jacksons write their material, but Alexenburg was said to have fought for the group and worked out concessions. Presented with the new deal, Michael, according to Jermaine, was hesitant about signing. Aware of his son’s admiration for Fred Astaire, Joseph—in a calculated move—promised him a dinner with Fred Astaire if he signed, which Michael soon did. But Joe didn’t know Astaire. The dinner never came. It appeared he was simply talking off the top of his head. “You have no idea how angry I was,” Michael later told Jermaine. “I didn’t believe another word Joseph said after that.”

  Perhaps the most emotional indication of the career shift about to take place occurred when the brothers, including Jermaine, were set to perform at New York’s Westbury Music Fair in Long Island in 1976. The entire family was upset when Jermaine did not join his brothers onstage. One version of the story was that Motown had called and told him not to walk onto the stage. Jermaine said, however, that though he had flown into New York to be with his brothers, he had no intention of performing and informed them before show time. His father was furious. The rest of the family was also enraged. Not only would the performance that night have to be drastically altered, but Joseph also had lost his son—his favorite—to Berry Gordy. The brothers didn’t speak to Jermaine for the next six months. Aside from Joseph’s reaction, Jermaine’s absence at Westbury most affected Michael. Always Jermaine had stood at Michael’s left during performances. “I depended on being next to Jermaine,” he said. “And when I did that first show without him there, with no one next to me, I felt totally naked onstage for the first time in my life.” In the future, conflicts between Michael and Jermaine would grow to the point where the brother to whom Michael had once felt so close was someone by whom he felt betrayed and appeared to detest. Much the same thing would happen for him with his sister La Toya. It all contributed to a family dilemma that troubled him in the years to come.

  Moving forward with Epic, Joe filed a lawsuit to break the group’s contract with Motown. When the case reached the courts, it was then revealed that Joe, as the boys’ manager and guardian, had never really read the Motown contract. Nor had Katherine. After protracted arguments, Joseph got his sons out of the contract—but at a cost. Motown retained legal trademark ownership of the name the Jackson 5. An adamant Gordy would not give it up. The brothers’ professional identity had been snatched away from them. Henceforth the group was known as the Jacksons. As Michael expected, Jermaine stayed with Motown. He was replaced by Randy.

  At Epic, the group worked with the prizewinning, successful team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Based in Philadelphia, Gamble and Huff were already legends in the making. Working with such artists as Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the O’Jays, Jerry Butler, and Archie Bell and the Drells on their Philadelphia International Records label, Gamble and Huff turned out huge hits: “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” “Love Train,” “Only the Strong Survive,” and “I Can’t Stop Dancing.” For the Jacksons, Gamble and Huff produced the albums The Jacksons and Goin’ Places. But despite such hit songs as “Enjoy Yourself” and “Show You the Way to Go” and despite the fact that Michael wrote such songs as “Blues Away” and “Different Kind of Lady,” mostly the sales were not like the old days. In the end, much as Michael respected Gamble and Huff, he felt their musical tastes were not right for the group.

  Acting to protect his sons from a professional disaster, Joe arranged a meeting with CBS president Walter Yetnikoff. To the family’s surprise, he asked Michael to accompany him. No doubt Joe was honest with himself, that without Michael the group had no clout, no credibility, no professional presence in the minds of the music executives. In the end, the meeting helped keep the group alive. The brothers began work on a third album, Destiny, that later proved successful and had the hit “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground),” written by Michael and Randy. Now that Jermaine was no longer in the group—and discovered that his solo career at Motown was not going very far—Michael appeared to bond protectively with his baby brother, Randy. Th
at protective bond stretched back to the years when the family had lived in Gary. Daily, Michael would pick up Randy after school, and the two walked home together. In the years to come, Michael appeared to feel that Randy was not given enough credit for his talents, that Randy was considered an afterthought rather than an important member of the group and as a musician as well. In later years, however, the brothers would have a terrible rift.

  But even before the completion of Destiny, Michael veered in a different career direction. By then having met Sammy Davis Jr., he marveled at Davis’s talents: a richly versatile artist who sang, danced, did impressions, and acted. In turn, Sammy, who playfully called Michael the midget, saw something of himself in this fiercely gifted kid. Closely observing Davis, Michael learned something about career management. Having begun his career in the act known as the Will Mastin Trio with his father and “uncle” Will Mastin (despite the press releases, Mastin was actually not a relative but a family friend), Davis had been a child prodigy who became the group’s spark plug, its dynamo, its main attraction. Eventually, Davis left the group to go out on his own, stretched himself artistically, and became an even bigger star. At this point, Michael, impressed by Davis and still transfixed by Diana Ross, also witnessed Ross, having left the Supremes, triumph not only as a solo recording artist but also as an Oscar-nominated actress for her performance in Lady Sings the Blues. From Davis and Ross, Michael understood the power of striking out on one’s own, even when everyone else was dead opposed to it.

  Joe and Katherine, however, had a simple credo: family came first. Still itching to stretch his creative wings, Michael let the family know of his intention to appear as the Scarecrow in the movie musical extravaganza The Wiz. Based on the Broadway musical that had been a reworking of The Wizard of Oz for a black cast, the movie was to star Diana Ross, to be directed by Sidney Lumet, and, among the other stars, was to include the legendary Lena Horne. Supervising the music was maestro Quincy Jones. The family, however, balked at the idea of him doing the film, especially since Motown was producing it. How could he deal with a company that had robbed them blind? But Michael wouldn’t back down. Eventually, the family accepted his decision, perhaps assuming it was just a temporary kind of experimentation for him.

  La Toya accompanied him to New York for the filming. Staying in an apartment in the city’s exclusive Sutton Place, it marked their first time of living on their own. Occasionally, Katherine visited. On one visit to The Wiz set, Katherine became alarmed by a scene in which Michael as the Scarecrow lay on a table with a buzz saw about to slice him apart. “Get my son off that table!” she exclaimed. “You’re not going to do this to my son!” When the director called “Cut,” La Toya remembered that Michael had to assure his mother that it was only a movie. Once he completed The Wiz, and following the release of Destiny, Michael moved full steam ahead—on his own. Now he decided to do an album without his brothers. Already he had performed on those four solo Motown albums—while still with the group—but this time around he would call all the shots, select material, decide on musicians, be totally in charge.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  ONCE WORK BEGAN on A Place in the Sun, director George Stevens took the production to Lake Tahoe for exterior sequences. Clift arrived on location with his drama coach Mira Rostova. Actress Shelley Winters—cast as the dowdy Alice in love with Clift’s character George Eastman—brought her sister, Blanche, along. Always by the side of the underage Elizabeth was, of course, Sara. Elizabeth recalled that she completed work on The Big Hangover “at 5 one evening, and by 8:30, Mother and I were on the train to Lake Tahoe for scenes in A Place in the Sun.” The protective Sara, concerned about Elizabeth’s fragile health, repeatedly complained because the weather was often cold and damp and the water in the lake was often freezing. Yet the actors had to pretend it was summer and warm.

  Before working with Clift, Elizabeth was already developing into a strong actress. National Velvet had proven that, and so had Little Women. Critic Mel Gussow would later say of Elizabeth that although she had a “lack of professional training, the range of her acting was surprisingly wide.” The truth was that although she had not studied at an acting school and was not a student of the Method, Elizabeth by now had excellent training within Hollywood’s system. Over the years, working with directors like Clarence Brown, Michael Curtiz, Mervyn LeRoy, George Stevens, and soon Vincente Minnelli—and appearing opposite such seasoned pros as Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, William Powell, Mary Astor, Donald Crisp, Anne Revere, Greer Garson, Mickey Rooney, Walter Pidgeon, and Nigel Bruce—she learned to listen as an actress, and to understand that on-screen her emotions had to match theirs. Or she would have to take the lead and create the emotional foundation for a scene, which in turn they would have to match in order to build the scene. She also understood lighting and the camera itself, being able to be the person while the camera recorded her feelings. “I noticed on the set, even in costume tests,” said designer Irene Sharaff, “that she has an instinctive rapport with the camera and seems completely at ease, a gift which may partly account for that elusive quality which makes a few stars shine more brilliant than others.” She was doing the very thing that James Agee wrote was crucial for the movies: being the right person for the role.

  What she needed, however, were challenging characters, not the standard fare that MGM wasted her on. The same had been true of other great stars at MGM and other studios. Everyone from Garbo to Davis to Cagney to Gable to Bogart to Crawford to de Havilland had a lineup of movie duds. That was both par for the course as well as the downside of studio life. For stars like Davis, Crawford, and de Havilland, it was a constant battle for better roles and more challenging films. In her own way, Taylor fought MGM, whether it be through that earlier threat of breaking her contract or by repeatedly trying to get into better pictures. But she was still a teenager, and her rebellious fires were growing; the full-fledged rebel had not fully matured. Acting with Montgomery Clift, though, was a true awakening that made her more aware of technique and another type of concentration.

  She would always say Clift made her take acting—and the whole thought process associated with it—more seriously, that it wasn’t simply play and make-believe. In time, she would work with the most discussed New York actors of the postwar era: James Dean, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando. Though she never considered herself a Method actress, she clearly had, as did such performers as Tracy and Revere, her own method of getting inside a character, and it wasn’t just instinctual, although instincts were important to understanding the characters she played. She lived her characters, too. But partly because she was studio-trained, she had developed her process and powers of concentration to the point where she carried the character inside herself but didn’t let the characters come forth until the cameras rolled. Because the acting schools themselves were stage-oriented, teaching students how to perform in theater with its particular demands—not for cinema, which had a whole other set of rules—the lack of continuity could prove difficult and devastating for stage actors when they first worked in films. Such stage-trained actors as Clift, Newman, and Richard Burton would be surprised, as Newman once said, how quickly she could tap into her emotions, and each would learn about film acting from her. Director Mike Nichols recalled that she had a talent only the rare few possessed: “That secret, where they do something while you’re shooting and you think it’s okay, and then you see it on screen and it’s five times better than when you shot it. That’s what a great movie actor does. They don’t know how they do it, and I don’t know they do it, but the difference is unimaginable, shocking. This feeling that they have such a connection with the camera that they can do what they want because they own the audience. Elizabeth had it.”

  In Lake Tahoe—and later when the production moved back to Paramount—George Stevens saw the way his two young stars were attracted to each other—the way they gazed into one another’s eyes, the way they spoke or laughed together—which he unders
tood was important to the picture. They were playing characters who fell intensely in love, crossing social barriers, as their relationship developed and blossomed. Despite the presence of Clift’s coach Mira Rostova, who most people on the set thought was a pretentious pain, the actor wouldn’t let her inhibit his interactions with Taylor. In A Place in the Sun, the teenage Taylor often would have to be the pursuer. During the key scene in which they actually meet, Clift would be alone at a party, in the den playing pool. Though his character George Eastman was the nephew of a powerful businessman, George has grown up poor and is eager to make his professional mark in life. But he’s a social misfit around his uncle’s wealthy and privileged friends. Out of loneliness, he has become involved with the working-class young woman played by Shelley Winters. But once he has seen Taylor’s Angela Vickers, he’s captivated. In that scene, as he plays pool, Angela catches a glimpse of him, then enters the room, impressed by his one-man game. Wondering why he’s alone, she asks, “Being exclusive? Being dramatic? Being blue?” She’s decided she wants to know him better. The sequence ends with her taking him off to dance. “Come on, I’ll take you dancing—on your birthday, blue boy,” she says.

  Another key scene—when the two profess their love for each other—occurs as they dance during another party. Suddenly, Taylor’s Angela feels everyone is staring at them. It’s simply the self-consciousness of youthful love. She leads him out of the large room into a smaller adjoining one. Here, in a series of dramatic close-ups, were some of the most intense scenes in the history of American movies, sensitively conveying the power of physical desire. As Clift buries his head on Taylor’s shoulder, she tells him, “Tell Mama. Tell Mama all.” It’s an odd line for a teenage girl to say to the boy she loves; Taylor herself questioned it. But director Stevens was insistent that she say the words as written. In so many ways, the vulnerable, tormented George Eastman looks in need of a nurturing mother, and Taylor here becomes mother/lover and, in a strange way, earth mother, as well.