When he returned, he was pale and shaken. Elizabeth, he announced, would not be making a statement as he'd promised she would. "You can ask a woman to do something and she doesn't always do it," he said, all his bluster and swagger gone.
"Say, Eddie," lobbed one reporter, "did you know that an Italian newspaper has just published a photo of Burton and your wife kissing offscreen?"
"Really?" Eddie laughed, trying to feign disbelief. "I'd like to see it."
The next morning he got his wish. On the front page of the New York Daily News, under the banner headline FIRST PHOTOS LIZ AND BURTON, was a grainy telephoto shot of a man and a woman standing beside a car. They were kissing. And despite the poor quality, it was obvious they were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
The enterprising Elio Sorci, who had taken those sensational shots of Ava Gardner, had once again scored a coup. Hiding all day under a car across the street from the Cinecitta studios, he had jumped out just at the right moment, that fleeting second when Richard's lips touched Elizabeth's to bid her good night. The photo had first appeared in Lo Specchio before making its way to New York; Elizabeth had certainly seen it. No wonder she told Eddie that she wanted nothing to do with his press conference. The truth could no longer be avoided; even Fisher, high or low, must have understood this as he slunk out of the Sapphire Room, cameras flashing, a beaten, pathetic figure.
"The 'kissing picture' of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton," as Dorothy Kilgallen referred to it, "was merely their way of 'making it official' for Mrs. Burton and Eddie Fisher, in case they hadn't received the message already."
Finally, it seemed, Eddie had heard it loud and clear.
"Let's order fettuccine!" Elizabeth Taylor suddenly proclaimed, throwing her hands into the air during an impromptu party at her villa. "With gobs and gobs of cheese sauce!"
Roddy was there with John Valva. So was Dick Hanley with John Lee. And Tom Mankiewicz and Elizabeth's children. And Richard Burton—a regular fixture at Elizabeth's villa now that Sybil, in a strategic retreat, had taken their children and returned to London.
Elizabeth was feeling giddy. Eddie's departure had liberated her. Not that she didn't have compassion for him. "I was, I suppose, behaving wrongly because I broke the conventions," she said. "I felt terrible heartache because so many innocent people were involved. But I couldn't help loving Richard. I don't think that was without honor. I don't think that was dishonest. It was a fact I could not evade."
She also wasn't completely blasé about the possibility of another scandal. Many times she cried in Hank Moonjean's arms, "afraid of what the world was going to say." She had been through it all before when Eddie had left Debbie to be with her and the press had been brutal. "She knew she might have to go through it all over again, and it terrified her," Moonjean said. "But she couldn't help it. She was in love. That's all she knew."
Outside the paparazzi kept up their vigil. They camped out boldly in the street, setting up television cameras on tripods. Peering out a window, Elizabeth could see men perched in the trees. Or maybe she no longer saw them. "We eventually got used to all the photographers," said Tom Mankiewicz. "They just became a fact of life." When a car stopped out front and a man hurried up to the doorway, huge arc lamps switched on to illuminate the house. Might it be Eddie come to beg for a reconciliation? Or a lawyer from Sybil come to serve papers on Richard? But it was only the guy delivering the fettuccine.
Washing down her meal with endless glasses of red wine, Elizabeth was fascinated by tales of another Hollywood marriage in trouble. Roddy had just informed her that Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh were separating. "And here I thought they were so happy together," Elizabeth said, just as the doorbell rang again.
Blinding white light poured in once more through the windows of the villa from the television crews outside. Reporters once again chased after the man who approached the house. Elizabeth opened the door herself. It was her friend, the writer Meade Roberts. "Meade," Elizabeth said dramatically, her voice barely heard over the furious snapping of cameras and the shouted questions from reporters, "is it really true what I hear about Tony and Janet?"
No irony punctuated her question. She genuinely wanted to hear the latest. Yet as popular as they were, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh never had to deal with the onslaught of attention that Elizabeth was attracting in Rome—attention she was now nearly oblivious to. Without appearing to notice the commotion she'd caused by showing her face, Elizabeth embraced Roberts and brought him inside. Once the door was closed, the lights went off, the paparazzi returned to their trees. This was the way Elizabeth Taylor lived.
All of the people around her—the newshounds, the publicists, Hedda and company, even friends like Dick and Roddy—all of these people lived for her, wrote about her, gossiped about her, chased after her, photographed her, served her, supported her, and waited on her. All of them fed off her stardom, sustained by their sliver of her reflected glory. If not for Elizabeth, where would they be? Who would they be? Their existence revolved around her—her needs, her whims, her illnesses, her romances, her mistakes. She was their sun. And each and every one of these devotees—like those far-flung fans reading movie magazines—believed that they knew her intimately.
It had always been this way, ever since she was a young girl on the MGM lot. "I don't remember ever not being famous," Elizabeth would say. This was a woman whose existence—fact, fiction, and reality, both heightened and harsh—had become conjoined, merging into something that few others, even other movie stars, would ever know the pleasures or costs of experiencing. That's really the key to understanding everything else about her. So famous, so constantly in the public eye, she was, as critic David Thomson has observed, "half asleep from being stared at." Of course, she wasn't really oblivious to the ubiquitous photographers. But she was never Marilyn, cowering in fear; she was never Jackie Kennedy, with whom she was so often compared in these years, pulling up her collar, wrapping a scarf around her face, and donning oversized sunglasses so that she wouldn't be recognized. For Elizabeth, recognition was a fact of her existence, "the air she breathed," said Mike Nichols. Sometimes it was fun. Sometimes it was a nuisance. Mostly it just was.
And then one night she grew tired of eating fettuccine from cardboard boxes and decided that she wanted to play on the Via Veneto. "They want pictures," she suddenly announced, her famous eyes blazing, "so let's give them pictures!" Donning her leopard-print fur coat and a matching hat, she took Burton by the arm and headed into the city. The paparazzi went berserk. Stepping out of her sleek black Cadillac, Elizabeth faced them head-on, smiling broadly. The crush of photographers grew so intense that the police had to call in reinforcements; within moments, a jeepload of Carabinieri—the Italian military police—came screeching to a stop beside the couple. Leaping onto the sidewalk, the gendarmes shouted to the crowd to back off, allowing Taylor and Burton to stroll arm in arm down the street.
This was always Elizabeth's way. "Nothing stood in her path when she decided she wanted to go out and have some fun," said Hank Moonjean. If Ava Gardner could do it, why couldn't she? Striding down the Via Veneto on Burton's arm with a pack of hungry photographers at her heels, Elizabeth was a woman liberated.
With the aromas of hot brioche and espresso wafting along the street, the stars held their heads high and didn't blink in the glare of the flashcubes. Passing cars slowed down to gawk at the famous pair. Unlike most of Rome's narrow, twisting roads, the Via Veneto is a wide boulevard; the author Ennio Flaiano described it like being at the beach, with the cars serving as gondolas and conversations at sidewalk cafes "baroque and jocular." This night, all talk ceased as everyone turned to stare at Liz and Dick.
Once more, their destination was Bricktop's. The hostess herself, cigar in hand and orange hair glowing like fire in the smoky club, welcomed them. Bricktop could be counted on for support. In the past, she'd tossed out tourists and darkened the lights so that the couple could "nuzzle over their vino." This night, when t
he photographer Umberto Spagna tried to enter, Bricktop confiscated his camera. But Spagna was still able to report back to his editors what he'd glimpsed inside: "Miss Taylor and Burton kissing each other many times." Gilberto Petrucci was, as usual, luckier than most, managing to slip into the joint with his trusty Rolleiflex under his coat. Approaching the stars' table, Petrucci asked Burton if he could take a picture. Perhaps eager to make amends for his assault on the young man, Richard looked over at Elizabeth, who just smiled enigmatically. "Yes," Burton told Petrucci. "You may take one picture."
They want pictures, so let's give them pictures.
Elizabeth Taylor knew how to be famous. By 1962 she was routinely called "America's queen," the sexy, glamorous counterpoint to that other Elizabeth across the Atlantic. Like authentic royalty, Taylor was expected to live in palatial homes amid riches and splendor that set her apart from common people—and she didn't disappoint. But like real kings and queens, she was also expected to show herself from time to time. Elizabeth understood this. At this particular moment the people needed to see her, and so out into the limelight she strode in her leopard-print fur coat. Yes, she'd give them pictures—but always in her way. When she'd had enough, she'd flip the photographers the finger, ruining their shots.
She knew how to end a publicity session. In 1962 there were still some pictures that would never be allowed in print.
She might not have jumped in the Trevi Fountain the way Anita Ekberg did in La Dolce Vita, but she might as well have. Elizabeth and Richard partied at Bricktop's until 3 A.M., causing another round of pandemonium as they left. The next day newspapers around the world splashed photos of the couple across their front pages. LIZ AND BURTON FROLIC IN ROME; KISS, DANCE, bannered the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. "How did I know the woman was so fucking famous?" an astonished Burton asked. "She knocks Khrushchev off the front page!"
It was the kind of coverage publicists live for—yet Jack Brodsky was still unsure how the Taylor-Burton stroll along the Via Veneto would play with the public. As Cleopatra's publicist, he'd been forewarned about their plans; he'd wired his assistant in New York the day before: "Burton, Taylor going out in public for first time. Get under the desk. Am terrified." So were the Fox higherups. But they seemed to agree that it was time to make a move, take a chance. But it was essential that Elizabeth and Richard not appear out of control. So Brodsky made sure every reporter got the memo that the two stars, despite their late hours, had arrived on time in the morning, ready to go to work.
That weekend brought more of the same. "Elizabeth Taylor and her three children piled into Richard Burton's black and white Lincoln today and they all went off to the beach," Reynolds Packard reported in the New York Daily News, "with photographers on motor scooters swarming around them like flies at a picnic." Burton was able to shake them off along the winding roads leading out of the city, but the happy family-to-be was caught later that day at Corsetti's restaurant at Torvaianica. Seated around a large table, Elizabeth, Richard, and the children were eating seafood cocktail and lobster. Afterward Elizabeth insisted on topping off the meal with a lavish dessert, a sweet concoction of ice cream, strawberries, pineapple, and Chartreuse, a liqueur made by Carthusian monks.
When she was finished, she patted her stomach and declared herself "quite satisfied all around."
That night Kurt Frings, the former pugilist who'd strong-armed Fox into agreeing to Elizabeth's groundbreaking salary, arrived in New York from Rome. He was carrying a "personal message" from Elizabeth to Eddie Fisher—as if all the publicity with Burton hadn't been message enough. Fisher was finally forced to face facts. On April 2, the day after Elizabeth and Richard's beach outing, Louis Nizer, the attorney for both Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, announced that the couple would be seeking a divorce in a release that one news report compared to "an official military or diplomatic conference communiqué."
No word from Sybil. Richard had not yet assured Elizabeth that he, too, would leave his spouse. But that didn't stop "Liz and Dick" from continuing to frolic—and sell lots of newspapers. They became the talk of two continents now more than ever, setting the stage for scandal. Hedda Hopper wasn't the only one sharpening her claws. Gossip columnist Suzy was the first to weigh in. "Elizabeth Taylor is going to have her cake and eat it, too," she wrote. "And if she wants your cake—watch out. Because she's going to get it. She got Debbie Reynolds' cake. Frosting and all. And she licked her ruby lips over every last crumb. Now she's after Sybil Burton's cake ... Such a rich diet, no matter how strong a girl's stomach, can sometimes give her indigestion. I think Miss Taylor is going to get indigestion."
Elizabeth understood what she faced. Columnists like Suzy and Hopper were declaring that her career was over. A harried Dick Hanley was taking messages at all hours from studio executives worried that the publicity would tip against them. And though Elizabeth wouldn't learn of it for a few more weeks, her actions had even inspired passionate debate in the corridors of power—the Vatican and the United States Congress—over what to do about this moral "vagrant."
Some years later the poet Philip Larkin would famously opine that sexual intercourse was invented in 1963—a metaphorical observation of changing cultural mores—yet, in fact, Larkin seems to have been a year off. For it was in April 1962 that an adulterous couple first stared defiantly into the cameras and flaunted their "sin" without apology. It's hard to imagine today, with marriage being largely irrelevant among celebrity couples, how incendiary such behavior was once considered. But the last star who had so transgressed, Ingrid Bergman (who'd borne a child out of wedlock with the director Roberto Rossellini in 1950), had found herself persona non grata (at least in the United States) for nearly a decade. Elizabeth, by refusing to hide her affair with Burton, was confronting similar public standards. Yet she seemed to be betting that the world had evolved since Bergman's troubles. And if it hadn't, she was prepared to nudge it along.
Elizabeth Taylor knew what worked. She had been out there a long time and could sense the climate. Heading out with Richard once again along the Via Veneto, she wore her Egyptian eye makeup and hoop earrings from that day's shoot. Studio-generated press releases, run nearly verbatim in newspaper fashion sections, had been proclaiming for weeks that Cleopatra's "fantastic, exotic" beauty was the latest trend for women. The cover of Look featured Elizabeth's exotic face and asked, "Will her new Cleopatra look change your hairdo and makeup?" Society hairstylist Michel Kazan had developed a special Cleopatra hairstyle; Kurlash had launched a new line of false eyelashes called "Egyptian Eyes." Syndicated fashion columnist Tobe advised readers to copy Elizabeth's look if they wanted "to be first with the newest."
Elizabeth was fully conscious of her ability to set the vogue. Sitting beside Burton in the front seat of her Cadillac, her chin held high, her exotic Egyptian eyes undisturbed by the popping of flashcubes all around her, she looked every inch the queen.
And she knew very well that tomorrow morning millions of newspapers would be sold because she had decided to venture out onto the street. She was also just as confident about Cleopatra; hadn't every film in which she'd starred been a hit so far? Who could resist seeing Taylor and Burton together on the screen after all this?
Of course, she couldn't be certain about everything. She didn't know just how brutal the battle with Hedda and her cronies might become. She didn't know if the script Joe Mankiewicz was rewriting every night would turn out to be any good. She didn't know if Eddie would drag her name through the mud, or if he'd attempt to take Maria from her. And she certainly didn't know if Richard would ever divorce his wife.
But as she stepped out of the Cadillac and into the glare of the flashing cameras, she knew one thing and she knew it very well.
She knew how to be a movie star.
Two
Educating a Movie Star
Spring 1943–Fall 1945
SARA SOTHERN TAYLOR had just one thing on her mind that morning in the spring of 1943 as her driver steered her Chrysler down Washi
ngton Boulevard past the long stucco wall separating Lot One from the street: making her eleven-year-old daughter Elizabeth, seated demurely beside her, a star.
At the studio gates her driver rolled down his window to signal a turn as Sara and her daughter gazed up at the tall Corinthian columns guarding the entrance. It was here at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that Elizabeth Taylor learned her first lessons in how to be a movie star. As they drove onto the lot, Elizabeth kept her eyes on the white marble Thalberg Memorial Building with its central tower. Her mother had carefully explained that inside were the offices of Louis B. Mayer, the studio head who figured more prominently in Sara's cosmos than any deity.
Their driver let them out on the wide avenue that ran down the center of the main lot. Regular players affectionately called it "the alley." Elizabeth had been working at MGM for several months now, making $100 a week just to come in every morning even if she wasn't needed for a film. In fact, she'd made just two pictures in that time, one for the studio and one as a loan-out to Fox; both had been small parts that, while showy, had done little to promote the career of the dark-haired, blue-eyed girl. Sara was tired of it. Her daughter's future was her job, she believed. Wasn't MGM paying her an additional hundred a week for "coaching and chaperoning services"?
Not wasting a second, Sara spotted the director Clarence Brown, set to helm National Velvet, the story of a little English girl who masquerades as a boy and rides her horse to victory in the Grand National. Sara took hold of her daughter's hand, and Brown's quiet morning walk by himself was suddenly ended.
"Two diminutive but formidable females," as Brown described them, blocked his way down the alley where actors and extras in full-dress costume were making their way to the soundstages. Brown looked askance at mother and daughter, who spoke simultaneously.
"She's the right actress to portray Velvet Brown," Sara insisted.
How to Be a Movie Star Page 5