by Donald Bogle
As Elizabeth glided down the church’s candlelit center aisle on the arm of her father, Helen Rose observed: “Francis was tall and handsome and carried himself with assurance and poise. When he and Elizabeth walked down the long aisle to stand before the altar, young girls the world over vicariously lived this fairy tale event.” Still, Elizabeth’s nervousness showed. So did the effects of the cold and fever. However, once she and Nicky had exchanged vows, the couple was jubilant and radiant. As they left the church, the fans outside screamed and shouted for them. The two entered a limousine and were driven off as photographers continued to snap pictures. Then the crowd stormed inside the church to see the carpeted aisle and the flower arrangements still adorning the church and the altar. The actual ceremony had taken about fifteen minutes. But in the end, it was, like Grace Kelly’s marriage to Prince Rainier a few years later, one of the great weddings of the twentieth century, to be discussed for years to come.
Afterward, at the reception held at the Bel-Air Country Club, Elizabeth and Nicky stood with their parents to receive their guests in the reception line; this took about five hours. Once many guests had started drinking champagne and dining, others still stood in line to extend best wishes to the newlyweds. Finally, Elizabeth and Nicky slipped away by plane to a deluxe lodge at Pebble Beach. Later they flew to Chicago and then on to New York, and on May 24, they sailed on the Queen Mary to Europe for a three-month honeymoon. It all looked glorious. At the reception, while Sara beamed, Conrad Hilton Sr. turned to his former wife, Nicky’s mother, Mary, and reportedly said: “They’ve got everything, haven’t they, our boy and his wife? Youth, looks, position, no need to worry about where their next meal is coming from.” “Maybe they have too much,” the former Mrs. Hilton responded. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy for them.” “Nonsense,” said Hilton Sr.
“I am sure Sara and Francis Taylor breathed a sigh of relief,” recalled Helen Rose. “Their beautiful daughter was safely married to a rich, handsome socialite husband—what could possibly go wrong? Apparently everything, and very quickly.”
• • •
By the time the couple arrived in Cherbourg, France, on the Queen Mary, tension was building. Though Nicky knew he had married a famous young woman, he clearly hadn’t anticipated the extent and breadth of her fame. Everywhere, people clamored to see her. And not just the fans. The famous, the celebrated, the privileged in Europe yearned to meet her. Photographers were always around. At each arrival on their honeymoon, the press asked the couple questions, but few were interested in what Hilton had to say. Though no one called him Mr. Taylor, that was how he was received. He may have shrugged it off and given a smile, but the whole thing eventually gnawed at him. “He was completely spoiled, completely charming,” said writer Ruth Waterbury, “and he had grown up in an atmosphere as colorful as Elizabeth’s without one trace of the discipline of hers.” Very quickly, his temper became foul, his language abusive.
In Deauville, France, Elizabeth, because of her age, was not permitted to gamble at the casino. But that did not stop Nicky, who loved gambling, drinking, and carousing, all of which seemed to excite him more than spending private time with his bride. From Deauville, he motored with Elizabeth to Paris in a sky-blue Cadillac that “they picked up in Chicago on their way from Hollywood to New York.” The car had also been brought over on the Queen Mary. In Paris, they were pursued right and left and attended a wedding anniversary party for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Sophisticated, worldly, and wickedly witty, the Europeans were a whole different breed from America’s nouveau riche. Nicky was bored by them. But they piqued Elizabeth’s curiosity. Already, on those trips abroad with Sara, she had been exposed to the manners and mores, even the fabulous foibles and follies, of the Continent’s high and mighty, and she wanted to see more, learn more, experience more. In Paris, Nicky hit the casinos again, often leaving Elizabeth alone in their hotel room. She wanted more time with him. He wanted more time having fun on his own. He also wanted the attention back on himself. The role of consort clearly did not appeal to him. “Mr. Hilton spent most of the time away from her when they were in France on their honeymoon,” Taylor’s attorney William Berger later said. “He spent night after night at the casino and remained away until 5 or 6 in the morning and forced her to take a cab back alone. This also was true after they returned to Los Angeles.”
Soon the international press asked if she would have children and give up her career. Elizabeth said that time had not come yet. But Nicky stressed that when she was a mother, she would stop acting. In truth, she had no real intention of giving up her career. She amused herself by thinking she might, but the career, and her own ambition to see how much farther she could go, were a part of her core, the essence of her identity.
From Paris, the couple traveled to London, then to Florence, Venice, and Rome. Rumblings of deep troubles in the marriage spread through Europe and then in the States. Their arguments became public. As he hit the dice and roulette tables, Hilton didn’t seem to care what anyone said. Elizabeth frequently called her parents, who were becoming alarmed about their daughter’s situation. True, she had said that she had married to get away from her parents, but part of her was also lost without them.
In Rome, they had an audience with the pope. Elizabeth paid a visit to the set of Quo Vadis, which was finally being filmed, with Deborah Kerr in the role of Lygia. As a lark, the film’s director, Mervyn LeRoy, cast Taylor as an extra. Something was very clear to Elizabeth on that set. Though she might have been weary of the control the studio had over her, at least on a movie set she was valued, appreciated, and never ignored. There she talked with her friend Sydney Guilaroff, who was working on the film, and who was shocked by how thin and pale Elizabeth looked. While everyone there knew Elizabeth, Guilaroff realized no one knew exactly who Nicky was. “Elizabeth looked so unhappy that I drew her aside and asked what was wrong,” Guilaroff recalled. “She poured out her heart to me. Her marriage was a farce, nothing like the romantic parts she had played on the screen. Real life for her was filled with disappointment and bitterness. She was married to a man who treated her like a child and spent little time with her, preferring to busy himself with his friends and the frivolous pursuits of the idle rich.”
• • •
By July, Father of the Bride became a huge hit, then the most successful comedy in MGM’s history and eventually an Academy Award nominee for Best Motion Picture. For the millions who had not seen her walking on her father’s arm down the aisle of the Church of the Good Shepherd, they could now watch her walk the aisle with movie dad Spencer Tracy. The on-screen wedding gown, designed by Helen Rose, drew raves—and copies sold in huge numbers in department stores around the country. MGM moved ahead with plans for the sequel Father’s Little Dividend and then Love Is Better Than Ever to costar her with Larry Parks.
By September, Elizabeth returned to Hollywood, reportedly without Hilton, then took off again. Reaching her in Chicago, Hedda Hopper asked point-blank if she and Hilton had separated. Denying rumors of a split, she said that Hilton was with her, which indeed he then was, in an attempt at a reconciliation. But she didn’t tell Hopper that. The couple planned to drive to her uncle Howard’s home in Wisconsin, then would visit Nicky’s mother in El Paso. “Hedda, believe me. I am happy,” said Elizabeth. “When I am not, I will tell you.”
Soon filming began on Father’s Little Dividend. By November 1, the film was completed. For the time being, Elizabeth’s marriage seemed back on track. But Hilton’s irrational flare-ups continued. At one point, when the couple arrived at a hotel in Los Angeles, she was unpacking while being visited by her mother and Barbara Thompson, the wife of actor Marshall Thompson. “What the hell is going on here?” Hilton asked. It appeared he was annoyed because she was with her mother and a friend. But who could say what set him off? Taylor tried to calm him down. But he was in a foul mood. It was only one of many such incidents.
Early the next month, Elizabeth and Hil
ton separated. She moved back into her parents’ home. Nicky went on a hunting trip in Mexico with his father. There was hope they might reconcile, and there were attempts on Hilton’s part. But for Elizabeth, it was over. “They have everything—money, position, jobs, families,” Hedda Hopper said. “A more striking couple can’t be found. And what have they got to quarrel about? He wants her to give up her job, have babies and make a home. She won’t give up her job, and won’t have babies until she’s ready. She wants her career and Nicky too.”
That was part of the official line. But a disturbing darker truth had already been hinted at in some of the stories about their arguments abroad. Hilton’s temper could turn violent, and when he drank, he was an ugly drunk. In time, there would be drugs. He wasn’t ready for marriage. He wasn’t ready for responsibilities. He wasn’t ready to have a woman who drew more attention than he did. Elizabeth wasn’t ready, either. She was indeed too young. “A month after the wedding I knew we’d made a mistake,” she later said. But she had made the attempt to salvage the union; her romanticism wouldn’t permit her to do anything less. Though there were stories that he had struck her, she never publicly confirmed such stories until years later. Once the couple returned to the States, and during the time Elizabeth filmed Father’s Little Dividend, a loud and nasty argument broke out. Hilton hit her and kicked her hard in the stomach. “He was drunk and I didn’t know I was pregnant,” she later said. “So it wasn’t malicious. But God did not put me here to have a baby kicked out of my stomach.” She lost the child she was carrying.
Shortly before Christmas, Taylor filed for divorce. Through her lawyers Jules Goldstone and William Berger, she charged mental cruelty. The marriage had lasted seven months, seven days, seventeen hours.
• • •
Back at work on Love Is Better Than Ever, she became close to the film’s director Stanley Donen. Having started his career as a dancer on Broadway and then as Gene Kelly’s dance assistant, the dark-haired, good-looking Donen had gone on to direct Fred Astaire and Jane Powell in Royal Wedding and would later strike gold when he codirected the classic Singin’ in the Rain and made such other films as Funny Face and Two for the Road. Sensitive to Taylor, Donen was seen around town with her, dancing at nightclubs, having quiet dinners at restaurants. In all likelihood, Sara believed it was too soon for Elizabeth to become involved in another romance. Nor did Sara like the fact that Donen was married, even though his wife of three years was divorcing him. The fact that Donen was Jewish may have been of concern, too. She also may have hoped her daughter and Hilton would reconcile, but when Hilton made headlines after a nasty public fight with an air force officer at the Mocambo, everyone in the Taylor household knew he was as reckless, headstrong, and immature as ever.
Still, because of Sara’s insistence that Elizabeth stop seeing Donen, mother and daughter had a major fallout. Clearly, there were “difficulties between Miss Taylor and her family,” commented writer Louis Berg. “She gave the appearance of being extremely docile—she fooled her own parents—when she was in a state of rebellion.” Elizabeth decided to move out of her parents’ home and, for the first time, get a place of her own. A young woman named Peggy Rutledge, who was hired as a personal assistant, found the perfect apartment for Taylor. Rutledge also stayed there herself. As Sara and others knew, Elizabeth’s emotional state was fragile, and it was best that she not live alone. MGM felt the same way. Still, once living under her own roof, Elizabeth had her first real taste of freedom, and it was an exhilarating experience.
“My mother was my best girl friend, my mentor, my constant companion,” Elizabeth later said. “I told her every kind of inside fear I had.” But now that Elizabeth was making her own decisions, perhaps for the first time Sara felt she could not reason with her daughter. The balance of power had shifted. Never again would she have the control over her daughter that she had once exerted.
Finally, Elizabeth was breaking away from childhood, saying good-bye to adolescence, to youth itself, as much as she could. Long remembered would be Time’s account of her response when she was told that photographers had voted her “the most beautiful woman they have ever photographed”—Taylor had been ecstatic to be called a woman. Within a few years, she would be called the most beautiful woman in the world. Yet she understood that she still had a distance to go, which led her to make another of her famous comments: “I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman.” She had always wanted to look and be older, which led her at times to almost over–make up her fabulous face. But her body had developed quickly. By her teens, she had filled out, not really voluptuous but certainly on her way. The men who eyed and flirted with her were surprised that she was still a girl. She herself understood she had not yet matured, that her decisions were not fully thought out, that they could be rash. She wasn’t yet seeing the world as an adult.
Francis stood on the sidelines, perhaps happy to see Elizabeth on her own but concerned about her. Now, though, Elizabeth became estranged from both her parents. Her newfound independence—coupled with an emerging defiance—grew, perhaps a delayed rebellion that should have begun during adolescence.
In April, Elizabeth was escorted by Donen to Father’s Little Dividend’s Los Angeles premiere. Opening to good reviews, the film became another box office success. Still, Elizabeth was aware that while her name on a marquee brought in patrons, especially younger ones, big roles were not coming her way. MGM itself was in the midst of change. After decades as Hollywood’s most powerful movie mogul, Louis B. Mayer now struggled to hold on to his position and empire. All the studios had been dealt a serious blow in 1948 when the Supreme Court decreed that they had to divest themselves of the block of theaters which each studio owned and which proved crucial in the distribution and exhibition of their movies. Television was also making inroads in American life, on its way to becoming a potent cultural force that would eat away at the movie audience. In time, many studios released their long-standing contract players. The studios needed fresh blood, not only stars who could lure in audiences but executives who could package new films that met audience needs. In 1951, Louis B. Mayer lost his throne. His long-standing nemesis Nicholas Schenck, the top man at MGM’s parent company, Loew’s, fired him and put writer/director/producer and socially conscious Dore Schary in his place. In time, those wholesome family pictures with their idealized view of American life and culture would go by the wayside. Yet with all the shifts in Hollywood and at the studio, and while other stars would come and go, MGM had no intention of letting that happen with Taylor. But MGM wasted her. It failed to put her in challenging roles.
Two years had passed since Time had predicted she’d be the star of the future. Very soon, such actresses as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Kim Novak would begin their rise to great careers. Ava Gardner also came to greater prominence. Taylor’s performances in such films as Little Women, Father of the Bride, and Father’s Little Dividend had been entertaining and engaging; commanding the screen was second nature to her. But such lackluster films as The Big Hangover, Conspirator, and Love Is Better Than Ever did nothing to advance her career. Love Is Better Than Ever was even shelved for a time because of the political problems of her costar Larry Parks, who was soon blacklisted because of his political beliefs. MGM also had her do a cameo appearance, along with Clark Gable, June Allyson, and Esther Williams, in the forgettable Callaway Went Thataway.
At the time of Father’s Little Dividend, she had renewed her MGM contract, but at every turn, she felt constricted and stifled. William Wyler had wanted her not only for Carrie but now also for Roman Holiday to costar her with Cary Grant (the roles eventually went to Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck). George Stevens hoped to cast Elizabeth and Montgomery Clift in The Dipper. But as in the past, when Orson Welles, Michael Curtiz, and others sought her services, the studio would not budge. Now discussions sprang up about putting her in the adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s classic adventure tale Ivanhoe, to be filmed i
n England and starring Robert Taylor and Joan Fontaine, with Elizabeth in a supporting role, that of Rebecca. Elizabeth balked at doing the picture and argued with producer Pandro S. Berman. Writer Ruth Waterbury said Elizabeth also believed the studio was trying to separate her from Stanley Donen and that when Taylor told Berman she wouldn’t go to London, he informed her that she’d be taken off her salary. “He knew she needed the money,” said Waterbury. Elizabeth was concerned about finances, mainly because now that she was on her own, she had to think about money for the first time in her life. Though Elizabeth worked steadily, she was not at the top tier of salaried stars such as Gable. She also spent lavishly, not only on herself but others as well. She also bought cars for her father and reportedly had given her mother a Cadillac. Of course, she also did not deny herself anything. Much was spent on clothes, on entertaining, on anything that struck her fancy. There were also medical bills. “I’ve got to work,” she told Hedda Hopper in May 1951. “You don’t need the money?” Hopper asked. Elizabeth replied: “That’s what you think. I’ve had weeks of hospital doctor bills. During my last picture I had to keep a nurse on the set. And those things cost money.” So finances were important to her now and would be more so in the years to come. Berman understood her financial needs. Thus he made the salary threat. But Elizabeth was adamant. “Then she said she’d just walk through the role,” said Waterbury.