How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  But the Taylor show had been subdued so far. If spotted, Elizabeth was always with her husband. She'd chosen a villa far out on the old Appian Way with walls so high that photographers couldn't see over them, even when perched in trees and armed with telephoto lenses. On the day she reported to Cinecittà Studios for costume tests, she flicked a finger at the mob of paparazzi and Joe Mankiewicz promptly ordered twelve guards at every gate.

  Kroscenko's boasts led some people to suspect that he was planning to manipulate a shot with Taylor and a "lover," much as Secchiaroli and Sorci had done with Ava Gardner. If the star wouldn't give them an authentic love affair, the photographers might just hire some idle Italian nobleman to plant a kiss on her cheek. But on New Year's Day, Petrucci—Kroscenko's young protégé—brought news of what he'd spied inside Bricktop's. "And then it became the mission of all of us," Petrucci said, "to get the first photo of Burton and Taylor together."

  Six thousand miles away, Hedda Hopper, widely syndicated columnist and notorious maker or breaker of Hollywood careers, took a call from one of her "leg men."Just days into the new year, Hedda was on to a story, and she'd told her spies to bring her the dirt. In the biz, these leg men were usually gay and enjoyed a wide swath of worldwide connections. This particular foot soldier had just gotten back from Rome, and he repeated what Hedda had been hearing for weeks: that as far as Elizabeth Taylor was concerned, Eddie Fisher was almost history. But he added a bit more juice. Sources on the set of Cleopatra reported lots of giggling and whispering between Elizabeth and her costar, the handsome Welshman, Mr. Burton. Just like Tom Mankiewicz, Hedda's spies considered an affair inevitable—if, in fact, one hadn't already begun.

  Hedda seethed. She saw herself as more than a mere gossip columnist; she was the watchful mother and moral arbiter for an industry she loved deeply, even if she regarded it as often in need of chastisement. Long widowed, deeply lonely, approaching eighty, Hedda's whole world was her column and the vicarious view that it provided of other people's lives. Once she'd been more than just a fan of pretty little Elizabeth Taylor; she believed that she'd made the girl a star by promoting her in her column. But Taylor's marital adventures had always rankled Hedda, particularly the one that had brought Eddie Fisher into the picture. To Hedda's mind, Elizabeth had stolen Eddie away from sweet little Debbie Reynolds, and so she'd made it her job to instill that impression in the public's mind as well. Elizabeth's shameless actions had tarnished the industry's reputation, Hopper believed, damaging the movies as much as those horrible European directors and their damnable "realist" films. So she'd turned hard against her former protégé, and now that Elizabeth was at it again, she was about to turn harder. Like Fisher, Richard Burton was a married man with two children. In Hedda's view, "Hollywood's home wrecker" had to be stopped—as much for Sybil Burton as for the motion-picture business itself.

  But for all her moral indignation and concern about the industry, Hedda also wanted to break the story before anyone else. Within days she'd drafted a column on the affair that claimed inside knowledge despite a lack of actual firsthand information. This was not the first time such techniques had been used in journalism, and Hedda had certainly printed rumor as fact before. Yet when her lawyer, Martin Gang, read the draft, he ordered her to kill the story. "You couldn't print that," he told her. "It would be very embarrassing for me to sue you." Not only did Gang represent Hedda, he also counted Elizabeth and Richard among his clients.

  Hedda held back reluctantly, no doubt fretful that someone else might scoop her, but also livid that Elizabeth's bad behavior would proceed without censure. What added injury to insult in Hedda's mind was that Cleopatra was also bankrupting Fox. Many feared that the film's excess (which Hedda couldn't separate from Elizabeth's) would shutter Fox and put an end to the studio system. Ever since Cleopatra had started running over budget and behind schedule due to a change of director and Elizabeth's long recuperation from her pneumonia, Hedda had been offering snide assessments of the film's troubles. Miss Hopper had not extended any sympathy to Elizabeth over her near-death experience. While the entire world was waiting on edge to see if Taylor would pull through, Hedda scoffed to friends that it was all just a ruse so that Elizabeth could bleed more money from Fox. "Hedda had it in for Taylor," said one of her chief "spies," Robert Shaw. "She thought Elizabeth was destroying the Hollywood that she loved so well."

  If she couldn't write directly about what was going on in Rome, Hedda made sure her words would still reek of reprobation. She implicitly attacked Elizabeth's grandiose lifestyle by telling readers how she'd walked by the star's first home in Beverly Hills, implying that it was modest (it was hardly that). "Now a palazza in Rome," Hedda sniffed, "with enough servants to take care of Cleopatra and her appendages." It was interesting wording, but whether coy or clueless, one could never be sure.

  A few weeks later Hedda was cheering Jack Warner for calling off Elizabeth's next film after the star had failed to sign her contract on time. Privately, Hedda told Shaw that she was outraged that Taylor had agreed to appear nude (albeit discreetly) in Cleopatra and that she was equally irked at the Fishers for having the gall to adopt a baby girl from Germany when their marriage was floundering. "What's left for Liz but to go on repeating her mistakes?" Hedda asked. "What's to become of her? I'm not a prophet, but I have a terrible suspicion."

  The new baby in the Taylor-Fisher villa was the least of Dick Hanley's problems. More than just Elizabeth's secretary, Dick was the gatekeeper, facilitator, ringmaster, therapist, and locator of errant gems. He made things happen when his employer snapped her fingers—or just snapped. The week after New Year's, Elizabeth—whose appetites included a dazzling array of culinary choices from caviar to hot dogs—developed a hankering for good old-fashioned American holiday fare, so Hanley placed a transatlantic call to Chasen's in Beverly Hills and ordered a thirty-pound roast turkey and two Virginia baked hams to be air expressed to Rome.

  Dick had experience serving demanding bosses. He'd been Louis B. Mayer's secretary at MGM and then the assistant to Mike Todd, the flamboyant showman who was Elizabeth's third husband. Producers, directors, reporters, and husbands all knew the fastest way to Elizabeth was through Dick Hanley.

  "He was the most important nobody in the universe because his job consisted of picking up Elizabeth Taylor's underpants," said Chris Mankiewicz. Dick could be shrill, brusque, and rude, but he was also fiercely loyal. Elizabeth trusted him more than anyone. Like most of her closest confidantes, Hanley was gay. He had taken a flat near Elizabeth's villa with his longtime lover, John Lee, with whom Elizabeth was also close.

  Upon initial review, Hanley had been quite satisfied with the lavish, high-walled, fourteen-room (six baths) villa the studio had secured for the star, her husband, and her three (suddenly four) children. But when Elizabeth had pronounced it a dump, Hanley was on the phone shrieking to Fox. Elizabeth thought the place was "filthy," and claimed that the pantry was filled with rat droppings. A cleaning crew was quickly dispatched.

  "It was one of the great old stone houses on the Appian Way," said Tom Mankiewicz. "It wasn't going to be pristine like a new house in Beverly Hills. But Elizabeth was a star, and she had certain standards."

  In Roman times the Via Appia Antica was known as the "Queen of the Roads," winding its way from the imperial seat down to the heel of the Italian boot. The Apostle Paul had used the road to enter Rome; catacombs built by ancient Christians and Jews lay beneath the rocks on either side. Although Elizabeth's villa was actually located on Via Appia Pignatelli, a newer route jutting off to the north of the ancient highway, she was still smack-dab in the middle of history. Twice a day she passed under the Porta San Sebastiano, a gateway supported by two crenellated towers set into the old Aurelian Walls that had once protected the city from the threat of barbarian invaders.

  But things antique held little appeal for Elizabeth unless they came bearing checkbooks. Dick Hanley understood her requirements, as well as her occasional need to m
isbehave and make the suits sweat a bit. "Life is different for her," he told friends who shared his more simple Midwestern upbringing. "A great star sees the world very differently than you or I. That's not good, that's not bad. It just is."

  Charged with hiring staff for the villa, Hanley had managed to woo the French ambassador's Greek chef, who upon meeting Elizabeth declared, "You are the most beautiful of all the womans of the world." His new employer succumbed without hesitation. To serve as butler, Hanley hired an Italian with the incongruous name of Fred Oates, a tall man with "a beautifully cut white coat," whom Elizabeth found "dignified" and "charming." A painter, Oates flattered "Madame" by asking for permission to paint a portrait of her. She agreed.

  But Oates was less enchanted when life interfered with art. Elizabeth smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and never used the same holder. Fresh ones—at least ten a day—always had to be at the ready, and they had to be color-coded. A green dress called for a matching holder—and Madame changed outfits quite frequently as her moods shifted. Every morning Oates prepared a box of cigarette holders based on what Elizabeth would be wearing throughout that day and evening, and not only did the holders have to match her outfits, they couldn't clash with the tablecloth.

  Such regimens often befuddled new recruits, but Hanley saw it all as simply a matter of course. Taking care of Elizabeth's needs, no matter how frivolous, was his mission in life. Joe Mankiewicz was constantly revising Cleopatra, so Dick made sure Elizabeth's many scripts were always bound in her favorite Moroccan leather folders. Other chores also beckoned. When Elizabeth complained of cold tiles in her bathroom, Dick promptly produced white wool carpeting. And for Madame's baths, her faithful secretary always made sure that there were plenty of Murano votive candles on hand—not only because the power often went out along their remote road, but also because Elizabeth insisted her two daily baths, one at 7:30 A.M. and the other at 8:00 P.M., be taken by candlelight.

  It was all routine for Hanley. He was used to Elizabethan mores. What he wasn't prepared for was the affair with Burton, which tilted everything toward the surreal. No one—except the two parties involved—can ever be absolutely sure when flirtation became fornication, but it's likely Hanley found out not long after the fact. (The best bet on when and where is early January in Burton's trailer.) If Elizabeth told anyone, it was Dick—her rock, her shoulder, her twice-daily candlelighter. But the problem was that Eddie Fisher trusted Dick too. After all, part of keeping Elizabeth happy had meant keeping Eddie happy—or at least content enough that he didn't complain overmuch. Elizabeth wouldn't be able to face the pressures on the set if her home life was tense, too.

  The new baby was, as babies often are, a last-ditch attempt to salvage the controversial union, which had started so passionately and scandalously three and a half years earlier. After three difficult deliveries of children from two previous husbands, Elizabeth could no longer endure childbirth, so little Maria was adopted from an impoverished German family to fulfill Miss Taylor's wish to be a mother once more. But an adopted baby was also, then as now, a great public relations move, especially for a woman whose nonmaternal instincts had made so many headlines and for a couple rumored to be splitting up. Hanley made sure that he phoned Hedda himself to give her the news of Maria's entrance into the family. The columnist never printed a word about it, though she went on about it semiprivately to half of Los Angeles.

  No doubt Hanley felt a great deal of sympathy for Eddie Fisher, who would always speak well of his wife's secretary, even after the marriage was over and Burton had done everything he could to win Hanley over. More than required, in fact. It was hard not to like Richard Burton. At thirty-six, a bit slouchy, craggy-faced, and pockmarked, he possessed an allure, a twinkle in his eyes, a lilt to his magnificently deep voice that drew people to him. Wry, dry, bombastic—sometimes all at once—and a master storyteller, Richard was the quickest wit on the lot and fiercely smart. Reacting to a typically grandiose Burton statement that no German had ever produced an original idea, the eager Yale student Tom Mankiewicz had shouted out a challenge. What about Goethe? Hegel? Marx? "Son of a gun," Mankiewicz said, "if he didn't trace every idea of theirs back to somebody else. He was an extremely literate man."

  But the most appealing thing about Burton was the fact that he seemed unfazed by Elizabeth's great fame. Eddie bowed and scraped, but Richard called her "Lumpy." To her face. In public. Richard had a well-earned reputation for seducing his leading ladies, while his forbearing wife, to whom everyone knew he was devoted, turned a weary eye in the other direction. "Men wanted to be Richard, and women wanted to sleep with Richard," Mankiewicz said.

  The difference between Taylor's once and future husbands was apparent. Burton was the diamond plucked from the Welsh coalmines who had become the most promising actor of his generation. While he was playing in Cleopatra (little more than a soap opera in his eyes) he was also writing to Christopher Fry in London, hoping to juggle the lead in a play by Sartre. Fisher, meanwhile, three years younger than Burton, had started out as a nightclub singer at Grossinger's, a Catskills resort. He'd enjoyed a string of pop successes such as "Oh! My Pa-Pa" until the rock-and-rollers banished him from the Billboard charts. Once a playboy who'd par-tied with the Rat Pack, Eddie had been reduced to the most pathetic of showbiz clichés: Husband to the Star.

  What Burton and Fisher shared—apart from an interest in themselves and having sex with beautiful women—was liquor. Richard could go on notorious benders; for his first scene with Elizabeth in Cleopatra, he showed up suffering from a famously massive hangover. Eddie, uncharacteristically, was mostly sober in Rome, where his chief concern was keeping Elizabeth rested and happy—though he'd admit to having a few cocktails after he discovered his wife's affair, probably at the end of January. When he asked Elizabeth point-blank if she was carrying on with Burton, she admitted it. Yet Eddie refused to take the affair seriously. Nobody did at first. Dick Hanley told friends—and probably Eddie as well—that Richard would never leave Sybil. Elizabeth might be "an irresistible force," as the columnist Dorothy Kilgallen maintained, but Burton was "an immovable object."

  Only Joe Mankiewicz had his doubts. "Elizabeth and Richard are two potential world-class destroyers," he said privately, "and poor Eddie is a singing waiter from Grossinger's."

  Hanley advised Fisher to distract Elizabeth from the affair. "Take her shopping," Dick suggested. Eddie would later laugh in agreement: "To keep Elizabeth happy, you had to give her a diamond before breakfast every morning." So on February 5 Eddie and Elizabeth boarded a charter flight arranged by Hanley and headed to Paris, where the star told waiting reporters that she planned on buying a few "goodies." Her first stop was the salon of Yves Saint Laurent, who hid behind a curtain while the star selected several "vapourous" (his word) mousseline dresses. Next up was "a famous furrier" not far from the Elysée Palace, where Elizabeth checked out some "light" furs—chinchilla and pastel mink. Then on to Chanel, where a fashion show had just ended. But the models reapplied their war paint and stalked down the runway one more time for their illustrious guest. It was worth it. The grateful customer ordered three suits, two overcoats, and a couple of cocktail dresses. The buying spree concluded at Dior, where for $6,000 Elizabeth walked off with a fur coat described as Somali panther. All total, the afternoon cost twenty grand.

  Though Eddie was depicted as the "checkbook-swinging husband" trailing after his wife, the money they spent was largely Elizabeth's. But what mattered was the absence of Burton from the picture. Although the Fishers made a point of ignoring reporters after they'd landed in Paris, they knew they were making headlines, and Dick Hanley was very happy to confirm all of their purchases to the press the next day. This wasn't simply a spoiled wife being coddled by a husband desperate to regain her affections. It was a movie star behaving as a movie star, upholding her end of the bargain with the public. Hedda Hopper could carp, lecture, and direct Miss Taylor to a pastor, but housewives swooned when they read about Elizabe
th's shopping expedition. At least there was someone who wasn't stuck at home. Stories about impending divorce and scandal disappeared for a week or so, making the lives of everyone at Cinecitta Studios a little easier, if a little less interesting. For now the public was content with photos of Elizabeth in her Somali panther coat.

  News always traveled fast along the Via Veneto. Sleeping during the day and living by night, the paparazzi heard everything before anyone else. On the night of Saturday, February 17, hours before the AP or UPI reporters got the word, the street photographers learned that Elizabeth Taylor, unhappy on the set, had attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Shopping, it seemed, hadn't quite done the trick.

  Hopping on his Vespa, Gilberto Petrucci hightailed it across town. Buzzing in and out of traffic, the photographer zipped along the Appian Way and under the Porta San Sebastiano, arriving at Salvator Mundi International Hospital only minutes after Elizabeth had been carried inside on a stretcher. Crowds were gathering as the ambulance driver, Paolo Renzini, snatched a few minutes of fame by recounting in detail how he'd carried an unconscious Elizabeth from her villa. A few minutes later Joe Mankiewicz was spotted hurrying into the hospital, and the newshounds took off in hot pursuit, cameras flashing. Questions flew. Would Richard Burton make an appearance? Where was Eddie Fisher? And would all this be wrapped up so that the film could finally be finished?

  How different from the days at MGM, where studio publicity chief Howard Strickling would never have allowed such scandalous news to leak to the press. And stars and their publicists had not yet mastered the art of using scandal to their own advantage—although they were learning fast. The problem on the night of February 17 was that no one in Elizabeth's camp could get the story straight. For an organization known for its efficiency and for being on message and on time, this was a moment of panic. Awakened at 3 A.M. by a call from Reynolds Packard of the New York Daily News, Fox publicist Jack Brodsky offered no denials when asked if Taylor had suffered a throat hemorrhage related to her pneumonia and tracheotomy earlier in the year. Several news outlets ran with that story, which was apparently a wholesale invention of Packard's. News editors may have recalled how many papers that Elizabeth's pneumonia had sold for them. Meanwhile, completely out of the loop in Palm Springs, Elizabeth's agent, Kurt Frings, tried some damage control on his own, telling the press that the hospital stay was planned well in advance so the star could have a little rest.