Elizabeth and Michael

by Donald Bogle

  While in England, the two starred in The V.I.P.s with an international cast that included Orson Welles, Louis Jourdan, Margaret Rutherford, Maggie Smith, and Rod Taylor, which became a huge international hit.

  After all the publicity and public outrage, Cleopatra opened in 1963—and promptly received a drubbing by many critics. But audiences flocked to see it. Some delighted, however, in saying the movie never recouped its cost, though Twentieth Century Fox’s David Brown said that was not true. It may have taken Cleopatra time, but indeed, said Brown, it was in “the black” and turned a profit, helped later by a huge sale to television. The film won four Oscars: for Leon Shamroy’s color cinematography; for the costumes of Irene Sharaff, Vittorio Nino Novarese, and Renie; for set decoration; and for special visual effects.

  The Sturm und Drang of the Taylor and Burton saga didn’t end there. The two married in Montreal on March 15, 1964, then traveled to the States, stopping first in Boston, where Burton performed in Hamlet. At their Boston hotel, the couple were besieged by frenzied fans and onlookers. Some actually pulled hair from Taylor’s head. Pictures showed a distressed Taylor, perhaps one of the rare occasions when even she was stunned by the impact she had. Once Burton performed Hamlet on Broadway, nightly Elizabeth arrived at the theater after his performances. Huge crowds lined the streets of New York to see her. Often now she seemed more focused on his career than hers. Burton appeared with success in such films as Beckett, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and The Night of the Iguana. Often, too, she seemed to prefer to work only with him. Another hit followed for the couple, The Sandpiper, directed by Vincente Minnelli. She also wrote Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir, published in 1965. It seemed to be an attempt to explain herself and clear up certain misconceptions about her.

  During the years with Burton (as well as those earlier with Eddie Fisher), she continued to have her children with her. Photographs might turn up of Elizabeth’s sons on the set of Cleopatra. Photographs might turn up of Elizabeth and her daughter Liza in Puerto Vallarta when Elizabeth joined Burton during the filming of The Night of the Iguana. Photographs might turn up of Burton and Taylor at an airport with her four children by her side. Burton also adopted Elizabeth’s adopted daughter, Maria, who took his last name. Liza Todd and Burton’s daughter Kate became close friends. Even during the adolescence of Elizabeth’s sons and daughters, whatever normal youthful rebelliousness they might have had remained relatively private. With all the public outcry about the Taylor-Burton love affair before and even after their marriage, never was there great criticism of her as a mother. And Burton was known to have been a good father to all the children. Her children appeared to deal with her fame much as young Elizabeth had: it was just a fact of life that one had to work around. There were no public scandals involving the kids. And as they grew older, they joined her at the big events in her life.

  • • •

  The film careers of Elizabeth and Richard veered in a new direction when the two signed to star in the screen adaptation of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Originally, screenwriter Ernest Lehman had wanted only Taylor, but Burton became part of the deal.

  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a triumph for both Taylor and Burton. Uncharacteristically cast as a seemingly weak man dominated by his wife, Burton was forcefully understated. For the role as the fiftyish character Martha, the thirty-four-year-old Taylor gained weight and deglamorized herself. Irene Sharaff, who designed the film’s costumes, said: “For Elizabeth, it was the first part that did not depend on her looks.”

  All four principal actors—Taylor, Burton, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis—earned Oscar nominations, as did writer Lehman, first-time film director Mike Nichols, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. The movie was also up for Best Picture. But it lost to A Man for All Seasons. In the end, Elizabeth and Sandy Dennis walked off with awards, as did Wexler, Sharaff, and Richard Sylbert and George James Hopkins for Art Direction and Set Decoration. But Burton and Segal were left in the cold. Losing the Oscar damaged Burton and perhaps added to marital conflicts. He was well aware that Elizabeth was now a two-time Academy Award winner. Designer Vicky Tiel, who watched the awards abroad with Taylor and Burton, recalled: “The look on Richard’s face—he was furious! Years and years of teasing Elizabeth about her acting, her grammar, her voice. And she beat him at what he did best. Even though they stayed married for years, something changed that night. Elizabeth was upset for Richard.” Tiel added: “Richard never got over that loss, nor his childish jealousy toward Elizabeth.”

  Taylor and Burton went on to film Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Here she tackled a classical role—and pulled it off. But the films that followed, almost to the letter, were disappointments (to say the least): Doctor Faustus; The Comedians; Hammersmith Is Out, an oddball comedy directed by Peter Ustinov that ironically won Taylor and Burton Italy’s David Di Donatello Award; and the Tennessee Williams drama Boom.

  When Burton earned another Oscar nomination for a critical success as Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days in 1969, Taylor campaigned for him. Perhaps this would be the charm that finally won him the Academy Award. The couple returned to the States for the Oscar ceremony, at which they stole the show as they entered the theater. Taylor was lush and sensual in a lavender gown designed by Edith Head with Elizabeth’s input. In many respects the dress had been designed to highlight the spectacular $1.5 million 69.42-carat diamond necklace given to Taylor by Burton, which she wore that evening. “The dress also accentuated Taylor’s hand-span waist, voluptuous bosom and with its soft tonal play of hydrangea-blue mauves, her legendary violet eyes,” commented fashion authority Hamish Bowles. “Head and Taylor had collaborated on a visual projection of what the actress represented then as now—the paradigm of the great Hollywood star.” That night—as part of her politicking to help Burton win the Oscar—she agreed to present the Best Picture award, which went to Midnight Cowboy. That evening marked her first Oscar appearance since she had won for BUtterfield 8. Burton lost the award, however, to John Wayne for True Grit.

  During these years, Elizabeth made three films without Burton that stood out from the others. John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, based on a story by Carson McCullers, was originally planned for Taylor and Montgomery Clift. In fact, one of her primary interests in the film, aside from the material and working with director Huston, was to act again with Clift. By now, Clift was a shell of his former self, addicted to painkillers, never having fully recovered from the car accident and emotionally something of a wreck. No insurance company would cover him for Reflections, in which he would have played a repressed homosexual military officer. Aware that Clift longed to do the film, Elizabeth put up her salary as insurance to get him cast. But not long before production began, Clift suddenly died of a heart attack at age forty-five. Clift’s death marked for Taylor the end of a chapter in her life, perhaps the end of a more optimistic time. He had been her soul mate and closest friend who had helped her to look more seriously at what it meant to be an actress. Afterward, Marlon Brando hoped to play the role, but the studios mistakenly thought that because of a series of flops, his career was nearing its end. But Taylor used her clout to get Brando hired. The critics pounced on the film. In later years, Reflections in a Golden Eye managed to acquire a status as an offbeat classic.

  In 1972, X, Y & Zee was released, a tale by Edna O’Brien of a troubled marriage that Taylor may have thought would be a critical and commercial hit along the lines of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Mostly, the lukewarm notices failed to note her powerful star performance. Pauline Kael, however, wrote a glowing review that praised Taylor’s “all-out, let-it-bleed performance that shows her talent for comic toughness. She appears to be having a roaring good time on camera and she’s so energetic that Michael Caine and Susannah York (it’s a triangle movie) have to work hard to hold their own.”

  A third film, Ash Wednesday, directed by Larry Peerc
e, and focusing on an aging woman who undergoes a face-lift in hopes of recapturing the affections of her husband, costarred Henry Fonda. Surprisingly similar to the reactions of audiences to seeing Taylor’s earlier films Rhapsody and The Last Time I Saw Paris, in Ash Wednesday she was again so breathtakingly beautiful that it was impossible for the audience to take their eyes off her. Once again it wasn’t simply her physical beauty but the emotional inner life that made her so striking, a work of art unto herself. Again Pauline Kael took notice, writing that “she’s absolutely ravishing, in an unearthly, ageless way.”

  But her film career was never the same. A new generation did not appear to think of her as Elizabeth Taylor, the actress. Instead she became Elizabeth Taylor, the celebrity.

  “A star since childhood, she has sustained a long record,” said Irene Sharaff, “and despite several quite dismal films continues to interest and attract a worldwide audience.” Cover portraits of either Elizabeth alone or with Burton continued: on Life, Look, McCall’s, Ladies’ Home Journal, and as those fan magazines like Photoplay and Modern Screen died out, on the covers of their replacements, such publications as People and Us Weekly—and the new tabloid sheets: National Enquirer, The Globe, and Examiner. Publicity was often devoted to the extraordinary jewels that Burton bought for Taylor: the Taj Mahal diamond; the Krupp Diamond (a 69.42-carat pearl-shaped diamond); La Peregrina; a Bulgari sapphire necklace, to name just a few of the exquisite pieces of jewelry. Most publicity also centered on the couple’s ups and downs, their minor spats, their major quarrels, their drinking, their over-the-top extravagant lifestyle with yachts, lavish hotel suites, a steady retinue trailing behind them. The strain showed on her. She had also endured great sadness in 1968 when her father Francis Taylor died. Her health deteriorated even more.

  Each was complicated. Each had demons. Burton was viewed as a Faustian figure who had sold himself out, the man who looked destined to become England’s next great stage actor, instead was making movies—some shockingly bad—and basking in a lifestyle that didn’t seem to have a place for high art. Yet he enjoyed the sometimes maddening years with Elizabeth and the media attention. “Unlike his wary, media-bruised wife, Richard loved the press!” recalled columnist Liz Smith. “And, he loved to talk.” Few things seemed to please Burton more than having an audience offstage and -screen as he gave another kind of performance, in an attempt sometimes to justify his life’s choices to everyone, including himself. But he also didn’t seem able to shake his guilt, not only about some aspects of his career but also for having hurt Sybil and his children. That explained part of the reason for his excessive drinking.

  But the drinking, which Burton knew was part of his public image—he was the lusty manly man who drank hard and lived hard—had also been a way of life for him for far too long. The British writer Michael Thornton recalled that when he first glimpsed Burton on location at Heathrow Airport for a scene to be shot for The V.I.P.s, Burton was “wild-eyed and red in the face” and was “punching the air like a boxer who had lost co-ordination.” Thornton thought he might be filming a drunk scene. But that wasn’t the case. In actuality, he was drunk. Thornton “discovered that he had consumed 14 Bloody Marys before lunch, then moved on to a neat vodka in the afternoon.” In his diaries, Burton once wrote: “Drank enormously and cheated when E. [Elizabeth] wasn’t looking. Don’t remember much except falling a lot and suggesting divorce. Can’t control my hands, so cannot write any more. Very silly. Booze!” The next day he wrote: “Having been so drunk yesterday, felt terrible in morning and was desperately ill. Went quietly at 9:30 to find a double brandy. Bar closed until 10. Asked for Fritz (manager). Reluctantly, he opened bar for me and suggested vodka as it wouldn’t be so smelly when E had morning kiss. Drank it with very shaking hands. Have become a ‘falling-down’ [drunk]. My handwriting indicative of the shakes. Painful knee, bottom, right elbow, back of head, right ear.”

  During the years of her marriage to Burton, Elizabeth’s consumption of alcohol grew even more. The constant round of social engagements—where the alcohol flowed—did not help matters. The booze helped enliven their luncheons, their dinners, their afternoons, their evenings, their late nights. Neither gave their drinking serious thought. For too long, neither considered the effect it had on their health and their relationship. Sometimes Elizabeth appeared to be drinking to keep up with Richard, although she handled the booze better. And Burton himself became self-conscious—when with Elizabeth—about his huge alcohol intake. “I started drinking with Burton in 1949,” recalled columnist James Bacon. “He could outdrink anyone but Elizabeth Taylor. I have always thought that is why their marriage broke up. Who wants to be a legendary drinker married to a wife who can drink you under the table?”

  Taylor’s complications were not as obvious. Columnist Smith, who began writing about Taylor in 1965, observed that thirty years later Elizabeth was her “most mentioned subject.” “The star was frosty at first, but eventually thawed out,” Smith recalled. “Richard Burton helped a lot.” The two had the remarkable gift of knocking one another off his or her high horse. Smith commented: “Elizabeth can be an elegant, distant icy creature when she wants to use her MGM-trained goddess stuff. Burton liked to joke how she could turn on ‘the frost in her eyes.’ ” Smith became friends with Taylor—one of the few people in the media Elizabeth appeared to genuinely like. Smith saw beneath that glacial facade. “The real ET is a rowdy, raunchy earthy profane dame. Of course, she is also very spoiled—she wants what she wants when she wants it, and she wants what she wants right away! But that’s been as much a part of her life as those incredible eyes. The girl can’t help it.” That aspect of Taylor—the star with demands, the star who in some respects, but not all, believed the world revolved around her, the star who delighted in her material possessions—never really changed. But Taylor was always looking for something larger than herself, something she could give herself to that would have meaning. In some instances, it was other people, their work, their careers, their aspirations. That clearly was the case with her husbands Todd and Burton. That clearly was the case with her children; her brother, Howard; her family life. That clearly would the case with Michael.

  • • •

  For Taylor and Burton—the tabloids’ and the public’s beloved Liz and Dick—there came the tumultuous breakups. In 1974, they divorced. In 1975, they remarried in Botswana. A year later they divorced again. Afterward Taylor seemed at loose ends, emotionally adrift, her weight fluctuating, her drinking increasing. A visit to Washington, DC, where she was hosted by the Iranian ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi with whom it was rumored she had an affair, ultimately led to a romance and then a surprising marriage to the Republican former Secretary of the Navy John Warner of Virginia in 1976.

  If Elizabeth Taylor ever fully emerged out of the cocoon she had lived in all her life, certainly it was during this time. With senatorial aspirations, Warner campaigned with Elizabeth by his side. She attended barbecues, lunches, banquets, fund raisers. On one occasion, so many people rushed to shake her hand that blood vessels were broken. On another occasion, when their campaign vehicle broke down, she and Warner boarded a public bus where passengers were startled to see her. Her chum during this time was the ultimate political wife, first lady Nancy Reagan. “She was ‘my partner’ in what appeared to be an impossible challenge—for the United States senate,” recalled Senator Warner. “Hand in hand we marched off with no campaign staff, no funds were raised, and we had but nine weeks to put together a campaign which we did. And won.” In many respects, Elizabeth Taylor won John Warner his seat in the United States Senate.

  During this time, many were shocked because she often didn’t seem to care about her appearance; if anything, she seemed psychologically angered by the beauty. Was she not valued for something more than her face? Heavier than ever, puffy, looking middle-aged in a way Hollywood stars were not supposed to age, the question asked was: “What has happened to the onetime most beautiful woman in the
world?” With unflattering cover portraits on such publications as People and Us Weekly, she endured the fat jokes of comedians, the gossip of the tabloids, the maddening, nonstop scrutiny of the media.

  A period of deep loneliness followed Warner’s election to the senate. Warner proved to be a hardworking, dedicated senator, often away from home, leaving Elizabeth alone. Still accustomed to an environment in which she resided at the center, she seemed disoriented and restless. Politically, she also struck many as being the polar opposite of the conservative Warner. Eventually, she returned to acting in a 1981 Broadway revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. On the day the play was announced, it sold out. A slimmed-down Taylor triumphed and won a Tony nomination for a performance that Frank Rich called a “black and thunderous storm that just may knock you out of your seat.” Not long afterward she divorced Warner.

  “She has everything: magic, money, beauty, intelligence,” Andy Warhol reportedly said. “Why can’t she be happy?”

  Returning to Broadway in 1983, she starred opposite Burton in a revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives. Burton’s life and career had had a wildly fluctuating set of ups and downs. During these years, he had starred in a series of terrible movies such as Exorcist II: The Heretic and The Klansman. While Burton filmed The Klansman, columnist James Bacon said the actor drank vodka from a coffee cup during the day. In the evenings he had double martinis most of the night, said Bacon. After his second divorce from Elizabeth, Burton wed Suzy Hunt. He also returned to theater where he gave a fine performance in the drama Equus. He starred in the 1977 Sidney Lumet film version for which Burton won his seventh and final Oscar nomination. In 1980, he appeared in a revival of the musical Camelot, the very play that had marked such a dramatic change in his life after Joseph L. Mankiewicz had seen his performance and offered him the role of Marc Antony in Cleopatra. But now he was in a declining physical state, suffering from bursitis and disintegrating vertebrae. He left the production to have surgery for his condition. Elizabeth had urged him to do Private Lives. By now, she had divorced John Warner. It looked as if she hoped to rekindle her romance with Burton and perhaps try marriage with him for a third time. Taylor herself had romances with Henry Wynberg and Victor Luna. Later she would briefly be engaged to Dennis Stein. Private Lives was panned by the critics; Burton lost patience with her; her drinking continued. At the end of the play’s run, a commercial hit despite the critics, she and Burton parted, though neither could ever get the other out of their systems. Burton married Sally Hay, a thirty-four-year-old former BBC production aide. He had met her on the set of the television film Wagner, in which he had starred.