Elizabeth and Michael

by Donald Bogle

  There must be some hope for sanity when such homey touches as these compete for front-page space with Quemoy and Lebanon and Sherman Adams.

  Of course, some might now ask who Sherman Adams was, unaware that he was once President Dwight David Eisenhower’s beleaguered White House chief of staff who was forced to resign after a political scandal in 1958.

  In the years to come, the public would become accustomed to stories about stars who had adulterous affairs or who lived together or had children without the benefit of marriage. Such stories would be fun to read. But rarely would such tales engender huge public disapproval. If anything, Elizabeth Taylor had altered this aspect of the culture. It would become yet another sign of female independence and assertion.

  Though Fisher and Reynolds were clearly established stars, accustomed to dealing with the press, neither had ever experienced this kind of nonstop scrutiny. Fisher’s career suffered. And it was hard for him to accept the public scorn and ridicule. Sitting in front of his television set one evening, he was pleased to hear entertainer Steve Allen announce that Fisher would appear on his program the following week. But then Fisher was shaken when he heard loud boos coming from the studio audience. Later, his own television program, The Eddie Fisher Show, ran into problems. On one occasion, when Taylor was backstage viewing the live broadcast, network officials were said to be irate because “she defied an NBC edict to Fisher to keep her away.” The network denied the story. But nobody believed that. In early 1959, Fisher lost his TV show, presumably because of low ratings. Fisher was in the early stages of a decline also fueled by alcohol and drugs. Later it was revealed that Fisher was bipolar.

  But Fisher fell deeply in love with Taylor. Everything revolved around her. “I loved buying things for Elizabeth. She was always so delighted and surprised, no matter what it was. The most expensive presents were jewels. An emerald wedding ring, the first gift I ever gave her, a diamond bracelet, an evening bag with ‘Liz’ spelled out in twenty-seven diamonds for her twenty-seventh birthday. I bought black pearls, rubies—whatever caught my eye—and little charms for a bracelet she had. The NBC peacock in gold and different colored stones. A platinum Michelob bottle, her favorite beer. A Dom Pérignon bottle of platinum and emeralds. Eventually that bracelet weighed about forty pounds. It was ridiculous but she wore it.”

  Because of public sympathy, Reynolds received good press. Earlier she had appeared in the classic musical Singin’ in the Rain. Now she starred in one movie after another: The Mating Game and The Rat Race and later the very successful The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which won her an Oscar nomination. Yet as much as the public liked her, her career did not reach the heights of Taylor’s.

  For Elizabeth, the scrutiny itself was nothing new. But never before had she been depicted as a scarlet woman, even when she had divorced Wilding to marry Todd. Now there were repercussions. The Theater Owners of America dropped plans to give her their Star of the Year award, which went instead to actress Deborah Kerr. “Miss Taylor’s selection for her role as Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof appeared to be a cinch until headlines blazed the so-called affair between her and singer Eddie Fisher. Sympathy for Debbie Reynolds as Fisher’s wronged wife spread like fire,” the executive editor of the organization explained in rather bluntly honest terms. “The movie industry is at the mercy of public opinion and to award Miss Taylor the honor at a time like this was out of the question.”

  In Hollywood, she was socially ostracized. “Until Debbie filed for divorce we didn’t dare go out in public,” said Taylor. “Friends, at least people I thought were friends, didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us.”

  “Liz Taylor’s Year of Disaster” was the title of columnist Joe Hyams’s article at the start of 1959.

  “Elizabeth seemed to feel bewildered by the fact that the public had turned against her,” said Hyams. “The same public which had cheered and envied and asked for autographs jeered her the few times she went out of the house. Mail poured in to her studio from people who said they would never go to see her in another picture.

  “The tide of sentiment against her, let loose by the break-up of the Eddie Fisher–Debbie Reynolds marriage, is reminiscent of the flood of ill will once directed at Ingrid Bergman,” Hyams added, recalling the international criticism and headlines that actress Ingrid Bergman drew when, while married to a physician in Los Angeles, she had a “notorious” affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini that led to a child born out of wedlock in Italy. Bergman had also felt the brunt of an enraged Hedda Hopper. When stories first surfaced that Bergman might be pregnant, Hopper had flown to Rome to interview her. Bergman admitted she planned to divorce her husband. But said little else. Just before the interview ended, Hopper asked: “What’s all this I hear about a pregnancy?” to which Bergman responded: “Good heavens, Hedda. Do I look like it?” Returning to Los Angeles, Hopper wrote that there was no truth to such pregnancy rumors. Of course, when that was proven wrong, Hopper turned on Bergman. In Hollywood itself, movie folk gossiped like mad, enjoying nothing more than a lively scandal. But most didn’t make moral judgments. It was only when scandals went public through the media—and might affect box office receipts because of the public’s outrage—that industry leaders became “high-minded.” For a time, the scandal wrecked Ingrid Bergman’s Hollywood career. She was considered a scarlet woman, an outright whore. On March 4, 1950, she was even denounced on the floor of the United States Senate by a representative from the state of Colorado who referred to her as a woman of “mental abnormality” and asked if she was suffering from “the dreaded mental disease schizophrenia.” The representative also stated: “Under our law no alien guilty of turpitude can set foot on American soil again. Mrs. Petter Lindstrom [Bergman’s married name] has deliberately exiled herself from a country which was so good to her.” In essence, it was being said that Bergman, born in Sweden, should not be permitted to return to the United States. Later she made an extraordinary comeback. But it took years. Now a similar outcry was directed at Taylor. Her mental health would also be questioned, and later, amid another scandal, she would find herself denounced on the floor of the House of Representatives.

  But with all the hue and cry and the public censure, something else happened with the Taylor image. It was always said that America wanted its own brand of royalty, not designated by birth but by a combination of style, accomplishment, and most significant, a larger-than-life persona. The Kennedy family, especially John and Jackie, would be precisely that. Some of the great movie stars had been that, too. In many respects, Elizabeth was still the great American princess who had lived an extraordinarily charmed life. But now she was becoming something else that Americans might have had mixed emotions about yet still respected and held in awe: she was described as the nation’s Scarlett O’Hara, a seemingly vain, spoiled, thoughtless, reckless, even ruthless, calculating, and manipulative heartbreaker who walked all over others to get what she wanted—and who ultimately, was somehow triumphant and always compelling to observe. This would be part of the Taylor image for years to come, and most observers lost sight of the real woman.

  Such an altered image may have depressed her or pressured her or turned her skeptical and cynical about people, about friendships, about the industry she was so much a part of, and it surely contributed to the intake of pills and booze that she consumed then (and in the years to come) and added to her health problems. “Elizabeth said she didn’t give a damn what anybody said, but I knew she was hurt,” Eddie Fisher recalled, “particularly by newspaper remarks like the one from Maxine Reynolds, who called her ‘the biggest slut in town.’ I cared very much, because I loved Elizabeth and because she had done nothing more sinful than fall in love with a married man.” Fisher also recalled that the most stinging comments had come from Hedda Hopper and others who charged that neither he nor Elizabeth had loved Mike Todd.

  Regardless, Elizabeth maintained her self-control in a way that Fisher wa
s unable to do. In some respects, Taylor dealt with the scrutiny and the public judgments as something to be expected, as part of the game of fame. And that Christian Science upbringing again fortified her with a belief, conscious or not, that anything could be endured or overcome with prayer or concentration.

  • • •

  On the night that Taylor and Fisher appeared at the Oscar ceremonies in Los Angeles, she felt the greatest blow from the scandal. Nominated as Best Actress for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, she lost the award to Susan Hayward for I Want to Live! Many believed the scandal had killed her chances. Afterward, she was back in Vegas with Fisher, then back in Los Angeles, where she entered Cedars of Lebanon Hospital—this time to have her tonsils removed.

  But an Oscar winner or not, Taylor’s career soared. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was a huge hit. Audiences may have expressed anger with her, but they were fascinated, and once they sat in theaters, Taylor delivered a performance that made the price of admission worth it. And despite the decision of the Theater Owners of America not to give her its top award, Film Daily—in its poll of more than two thousand movie, television, and radio reviewers—selected her as the favorite film star of 1958. A professor at UCLA, who invited her to give a talk to students in the motion picture department, told the press in no uncertain terms: “Miss Taylor has been invited because we consider her to be one of the great actresses of the day.” Getting lost in all the press coverage and public outrage was indeed the fact that she was a remarkable actress and a more serious one than most realized. Of course, the still-angered Hedda Hopper, not about to pass on any opportunity to get a dig in at her once-favorite actress, added her two cents. “When they say Elizabeth Taylor is a dramatic actress it makes me laugh.”

  Offers poured in. The September 27, 1958, edition of the Los Angeles Times reported that she was signed for the then astronomical sum of $500,000, to play the lead in Two for the Seesaw. Producer Jerry Wald rushed to star her as Sheilah Graham in his film about Graham’s love affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald in Beloved Infidel. Ultimately, she appeared in neither film. But that didn’t stop other producers and directors from pounding on her door. Finally, she agreed to star in another controversial Tennessee Williams drama, a tale of incest, corruption, cannibalism, and homosexuality, Suddenly, Last Summer, which would costar her with Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn under the direction of Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

  • • •

  The media covered the scandal into the next year. There was much to-do when Taylor, in March 1959, converted to Judaism in a ceremony performed by noted Rabbi Max Nussbaum at Temple Israel. While married to Todd, Taylor considered adopting Judaism but Todd “refused to let her do it,” said Fisher. “Why? What difference will it make?” Todd had asked. Fisher also discouraged her. But Elizabeth had made up her mind and began studying the religion. Hers was one of the big star “conversions” of the era. Marilyn Monroe and Sammy Davis Jr. also converted to Judaism. Still, most were baffled by Taylor’s decision. “What the hell does she see in all these Jewish guys?” asked her befuddled uncle Howard. During the conversion ceremony, “Elizabeth’s mother and father were there, too, in what appeared to be a state of shock,” said Fisher, who also recalled that there followed “an avalanche of hate mail. It didn’t bother Elizabeth. She sincerely believed in what she had done, and then forgot all about it.” For Fisher, the criticism of Elizabeth had “an anti-Semitic tinge.” But Taylor “was incensed by a newspaper story claiming in banner headlines that she had converted because she had gone insane and was now confined to the Menninger Clinic,” said Fisher. “We were going to sue, but then decided to go to dinner at Chasen’s, where everyone in Hollywood would see us. The newspaper eventually printed an apology in headlines of the same size.” Ironically, the night of that dinner at Chasen’s, she looked heavier and haphazardly made up and coiffed. For one of the rare times in her public appearances, the tension and pressure showed in her face; so, too, did her vulnerability.

  When Fisher appeared at the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas, Taylor took up residence at a luxurious ranch in the city with her three children, a nurse, and a valet. “In Las Vegas, I got my first real taste of what it would be like to live with her,” recalled Fisher. “Children, pets, servants, minor problems transformed into major tragedies, confusion, chaos, everything at fever pitch,” recalled Fisher. “In Las Vegas a chronic sore throat suddenly became seriously infected, and I remember looking in her mouth and seeing large white abscesses.” She was rushed to the hospital. “Living with her was like living with a hurricane; each storm built in intensity, then subsided into an eerie calm as the eye passed, only to begin all over again.”

  Without any letup, the public fascination continued, sometimes reaching a frenzy. Years earlier, when Sara had noticed the way the French had stared at her daughter even before she was world-famous, she witnessed a phenomenon that now intensified. Just to see Elizabeth Taylor in all her beauteous glory became almost legendary, even at this point in her life. On Eddie’s opening night, she was accompanied by her parents and her Cat on a Hot Tin Roof costar Burl Ives and his wife. Outside the nightclub, Fisher was “shocked to see pickets parading in front of the hotel carrying signs that read ‘Liz Go Home’ and ‘Keep the Marriage Vows, Eddie.’ ” At Taylor’s entrance, the flashbulbs went off, and patrons in the nightclub gawked and nearly fell over themselves to get a closer look at her. “The Fisher opus was more sideshow than show with the audience seemingly more interested in Elizabeth Taylor’s nightly entrances (ah, the great craning of necks, the undertone of ‘there she comes now. . .’) than in Fisher’s singing.” Said Fisher: “The only word to describe it is pandemonium. Elizabeth created a commotion wherever she went. And whether or not she liked it in public, she seemed to thrive on it privately.”

  • • •

  Finally, the couple wed in a Jewish ceremony in Las Vegas on May 12, 1959. That very morning the Fisher divorce suit was filed in Nevada. Among the guests were Taylor’s parents as well as Fisher’s parents, who had flown in from Philadelphia; Elizabeth’s brother, Howard, and his wife, Mara, who was Elizabeth’s matron of honor; MGM executive Benny Thau; Sydney Guilaroff; Kurt and Ketti Frings; and Dr. Rex Kennamer. It was good Kennamer was there. Just as she’d taken ill before her marriage to Hilton, Taylor was ill on this wedding day—suffering from a sinus condition. Was she having second thoughts? Following the ceremony, the couple flew to Los Angeles. Then it was on to New York, and from there to Barcelona for a honeymoon on the yacht of producer Sam Spiegel and then to begin work on her next film, Suddenly, Last Summer.

  As she had done on other occasions when love had entered her life, she let it be known that her movie career would soon end. “My personal life has always been more important to me than anything else,” she said. “I want to devote my full time to being a wife and mother.” Of course, everyone had heard that before.

  During this time, and most notably on August 29, 1958, as Elizabeth Taylor, come hell or high water, was embracing life, refusing to shy away from her thirst for more to come, an integral part of her later life was just beginning. On that day, in Gary, Indiana, the couple Joseph and Katherine Jackson welcomed into their lives their seventh of nine children, a boy named Michael.

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  SOON BACK ON a demanding schedule, Michael traveled to New York for a tribute at the American Museum of Natural History. Then came the major awards shows, first the American Music Awards on January 16, 1984, where he won multiple awards, including Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist, Favorite Pop/Rock Album for Thriller, Favorite Pop/Rock Single for “Billie Jean,” and Favorite Pop/Rock Video for “Beat It.” He also was the youngest person ever to win the Award of Merit that night. Accepting the award and thanking his parents as well as Diana Ross, who was there that night, he was dressed in a dazzling military-style red jacket with gold trim—and dark glasses. The latter was for a time part of his signature look. He would even wear them during a visit to t
he White House when he met President and Mrs. Reagan. It was partly a stylish statement: the glasses added to his glamour and enhanced his mystery, the idea of a not wholly accessible star who was keeping something back and hidden. But the glasses also helped him shield himself from the stares, from the people who wanted to get too close. The eyes are the window to the soul, and the soul was something he had to preserve for himself.

  Accompanying him was model and actress Brooke Shields. Then came the Grammy Awards on February 28. Again Michael’s date was Brooke Shields. A young beauty with a full mane of brown hair and magnificent brown eyes with thick, luxurious brows, Shields had grown up in the public eye. With her assertive mother, Teri Shields, as her manager, Brooke had been a model since 1966—at the age of eleven months—in an Ivory soap ad. Her mother had kept her working. French director Louis Malle had starred a twelve-year-old Shields as a girl growing up in a brothel in the controversial 1978 film Pretty Baby. By age fourteen, she was the youngest model ever to land on the cover of Vogue. She also appeared in a controversial commercial for Calvin Klein designer jeans in which she was seductively sprawled out as she said, “You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” By the time Michael met Shields, she had also starred in such films as The Blue Lagoon and Endless Love. Some comparisons at the time were made between Shields and the young Elizabeth Taylor. Yet lovely as Shields was, she did not have Taylor’s fires of defiance nor her Old Hollywood beauty. Shields, however, was a stunner. She exuded a sweetness that may have undercut her seductiveness. Though Michael clearly liked Shields and enjoyed her company, their relationship went but so far.