How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  Yet it's a fact that most fan-magazine stories contained a glimmer of truth, some thread that led, however tenuously, back to real life. Elizabeth was hard-drinking and foulmouthed, and her practice of motherhood was definitely of the laissez-faire kind—though no one who knew her would ever call her "cold," especially not toward her children, who were petted and fussed over when she saw them. But the fact that she wasn't out being photographed with them constantly in her arms—the way Debbie was with Carrie and Todd—allowed housewives across the country to make their own judgments. It was clear that Elizabeth Taylor was not the kind of involved, children-first mother they believed themselves (and Debbie) to be. And in some ways, they were right.

  A similar strain of truth was spied in another series of fanmagazine pieces that started appearing around this time. Word was seeping out that things weren't all that rosy in the Fisher marriage. HOW MUCH CAN EDDIE TAKE FROM LIZ? blared one headline. Elizabeth was depicted as being embarrassed that her fame outweighed his and was pushing him to become a bigger star. "Must Eddie now take from Liz what he reportedly would not take from Debbie?" the article asked. While the piece may have gotten the specifics wrong, it does capture an underlying reality. Elizabeth was waking up to the fact that Eddie Fisher could never replace Mike Todd—and this couldn't be disguised for long in the fishbowl of Hollywood.

  When they could snare an article or two, Frings and Bill Doll fought back on Elizabeth's behalf. Photoplay was the outlet most likely to be sympathetic. One piece in the autumn of 1960 was clearly a response to the depiction of Elizabeth as being cold. She's showcased as a doting mother who hopes to retire soon from pictures (that old chestnut again) and devote herself entirely to her family. But the images on the screen and in so much of the press didn't match the saccharine sentiment in articles like these. Elizabeth seemed cognizant of this fact of her public image. "I've never been America's sweetheart," she told Art Buchwald, so she could never hope to compete with Debbie on that level. It was best that she didn't try.

  And yet, even with all the negative press, she truly expected to win an Oscar for Suddenly, Last Summer. "My ambition," she told Sidney Skolsky, "is to win an Oscar before I retire." This was her year, many insiders told her, especially after her snub the year before. Reporter James Bacon, long known as Hollywood's shrewdest handicapper of the Oscar race, gave Elizabeth the best odds to win. Joe Mankiewicz was certain as well, urging his star and former lover to attend the awards ceremony on April 4.

  Fortified with this confidence, she once again stepped out of her limo on Hollywood Boulevard to the delight of the fans thronging the red carpet. Her dress had been chosen with the kind of care and strategy that would later become de rigueur for actresses on Oscar night. If she was going to walk up onto the stage and be photographed clutching that gold statuette, she wanted to knock 'em dead around the world. Her original plan to wear a yellow chiffon gown was scrapped at the last minute, no doubt because she wanted to set off the bronze skin she'd earned from lying around her Beverly Hills pool during the strike-induced hiatus from Butterfield 8. Her plan worked. "The crowd ooh'd and aah'd at the striking contrast between Miss Taylor's deep tan and her white gown, which featured a daringly low V-neck," the Associated Press reported.

  But the other part of her plan—winning the award—wasn't achieved quite as easily. When the name of the relatively unknown French actress Simone Signoret was announced as the winner—for a British film, Room at the Top, no less—Elizabeth was crushed. It seemed that her peers had no intention of ever honoring her. No matter how much money she made for them, she would forever be known as the scarlet woman of the fan magazines, unworthy of their accolades or affection.

  Yet if Elizabeth had learned anything from the scandal, it was how to play the game. Once again leaving the Pantages Theatre empty-handed, she resolved to do what a movie star must always do. She decided to rewrite the rules of the game.

  S. Rexford Kennamer, MD, Elizabeth Taylor's personal physician, stepped off the plane from New York at the London airport and was greeted by a somber-faced Eddie Fisher. It was late on the night of November 14, 1960. Less than a week earlier, John F. Kennedy had triumphed over Richard Nixon in the U.S. presidential election. Kennamer had flown clear across the country, and then across the Atlantic, because his star patient, in London to make Cleopatra, had just been rushed to the hospital with a mystery illness. The queen's own physicians were tending her, but Elizabeth wanted Kennamer, whom she considered her personal friend as well as her doctor. After all, Rex had been by her side through the agonies of Mike's death and funeral.

  Forty years old, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and the son of a federal judge, Kennamer was widely respected in his field of cardiology for his insightful articles in peer-reviewed journals and discerning lectures at universities and medical societies. With his office in Beverly Hills, he was also more commonly known as the "doctor to the stars." In addition to Elizabeth, he treated Joan Crawford, David Janssen, Montgomery Clift, and many others. Elizabeth trusted him completely—even if she did disregard his warnings to stay away from Max Jacobson and his "feel-good" injections. Riding with Eddie to the London Clinic on Harley Street in Marylebone, Rex admitted to being stumped over what could possibly be ailing Elizabeth. Her symptoms seemed to defy diagnosis.

  She had been in a bad mood ever since she, Eddie, and the children had arrived in London on August 31, after a tour of the Mediterranean. Still haggling over the terms of her contract, she also churlishly refused to pose for any press photographs, explaining that she remained in high dudgeon over what she considered the "harsh" treatment by British reporters during Suddenly, Last Summer. When the press hinted that they might boycott her and Cleopatra, she just shrugged. Walter Wanger didn't seem to be worried. "I must say she has a lot of courage," he wrote in his diary. "There are very few actresses with nerve enough to stand up to the British press."

  Wanger was a thoughtful man, one of the rare intellectuals in the Hollywood studios. His films tended to say something, to rise above mere entertainment. Among his early projects were Rudolph Valentino's The Sheik in 1921 and the controversial political drama Gabriel Over the White House in 1933. His recent Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a science fiction metaphor about McCarthyist para noia. He'd also produced Susan Hayward's I Want to Live!—the film that had deprived Elizabeth Taylor of the Oscar that she believed she deserved. But Wanger was perhaps best known for firing a gun at the agent Jennings Lang when he thought that Lang was having an affair with his wife, the actress Joan Bennett. For the crime, Wanger served a four-month sentence.

  Throughout the whole long ordeal of Cleopatra, Wanger displayed tremendous affection for—and patience with—Elizabeth. Even when she was petulant and cross, as she was now. She insisted that Sydney Guilaroff, who'd been her favorite stylist ever since he'd made her that wig in National Velvet, dress her hair for the film. But in October Wanger was forced to tell her that Guilaroff had to depart because Fox had failed to obtain a proper work permit for him. The next day Elizabeth called in sick with a sore throat. Which then became a fever. This went on for nearly two weeks.

  The Daily Mail, perhaps with a bit of revenge in mind, reported that Elizabeth was hiding out because she was too fat to fit into her costumes. Fox issued a stern denial. Meanwhile, the film's director, Rouben Mamoulian, one of the great old-timers of Hollywood who dated back to Garbo and Dietrich, tried to film around Elizabeth, aiming his cameras at Peter Finch, who played Caesar, and Stephen Boyd, who played Antony, and the "million dollars' worth" of temples, galley ships, and Egyptian buildings that had been erected in the English countryside. But that could suffice for only so long.

  By the middle of the month, Elizabeth seemed to be getting better. The problems with Guilaroff had largely been resolved: With Mamoulian's tacit approval, the fussy hairdresser worked his magic in Elizabeth's hotel suite, away from the prying eyes of the British crew. On October 20 the star was feeling well enough to attend the Sophia
Loren–Peter Sellers movie The Millionairess with Wanger. Everyone agreed that November I would be her return-to-work date.

  But Elizabeth remained extremely unhappy with the production. The problems extended beyond those with Guilaroff. She didn't care for Mamoulian's stodginess and was distressed by the lack of organization she saw on the set. "She has been around too long not to be aware when a company is muddling—and we are muddling," Wanger admitted in his diary. "She is getting tired of the press laying the blame for our confusion on her. She is especially irked that [Fox chief] Skouras is using her as the scapegoat with the insurance company."

  It was then that Elizabeth got sick, just as she did at other fortuitous times during similar stressful filmmaking situations. On October 30, the day before she was to resume work, the star reported to the London Clinic with a temperature of 103. Within forty-eight hours, word had spread all over the city that Elizabeth was suffering from "Malta fever"—a highly contagious bacterial disease spread from animals to humans by consuming under-cooked meat or infected milk. The exotic-sounding illness quickly led to headlines around the world. "A tenacious bug that's as hard to shake as it is to diagnose," said the New York Post. Convalescence might take three months, Spyros Skouras was warned. So much for finally getting started on Cleopatra—which by then had already used up $6 million of the studio's money.

  When Elizabeth was once again hospitalized two weeks later, this time by ambulance, there was a free-for-all. Perhaps it wasn't Malta fever, after all; perhaps it was even worse. Word spread that Elizabeth had meningitis. Suddenly the British tabloids had the star fighting for her life. The American press soon picked up the panic. The New York Journal-American ran a three-inch headline across its front page: stricken liz taylor rushed to hospital. She was "suffering from piercing head pains and fever," according to the Los Angeles Times, and was "semi-conscious under sedation." Whipped up by the alarming coverage, several hundred "shrieking fans" crowded around Elizabeth's hotel, and more gathered at the hospital. That's when Rex Kennamer was summoned from California.

  Working with his British counterparts, Kennamer eventually determined that the cause of all of Elizabeth's pain, all her headaches and terrible fevers, was an abscessed tooth. This somehow had led to a low-grade virus that doctors diagnosed not as meningitis, but as meningismus, which was very different. But while they made sure to tell the public—and Fox executives—that she was "still a sick girl," they were also satisfied that her condition was "not serious." A short time later, she was released from the hospital.

  Again, this shouldn't imply that she was faking. The pain was very real. Meningismus can produce the symptoms of meningitis even if none of the spinal membranes are actually infected. It was perhaps fitting that, since meningismus is a virus "more frequently encountered in children than in adults," Elizabeth, still a child in so many ways, was felled by a childhood disease.

  But it was, in fact, more than that. Eddie Fisher would later wonder how much of the illness was brought on by the virus, and how much was the result of the increasing abuse (by both his wife and himself) of drugs and alcohol. "She had become addicted to every pill on the market," he said—and by introducing her to Max Jacobson, he was partly to blame for that. "Pills to help her sleep, pills to keep her awake, pills to dull her pain, pills and more pills." Both of them also drank heavily. "Elizabeth's problems in 1960 were basically the same as they were in 1990," Eddie would later say.

  No matter its specifics or the undeniable truth of her pain, her illness—like the one during Giant six years before—had certain positive outcomes. And perhaps she had counted on that being the case, at least on some level. The situation that she returned to on the Cleopatra set was not the one she had found so intolerable when she had left. With her producers becoming increasingly desperate to finish the picture and stanch the loss of money, she now enjoyed considerably greater clout in getting what she wanted. Skouras agreed to fire Mamoulian if that's what it took for his star to hit the ground running. And who did she want as his replacement? Elizabeth chose Joe Mankiewicz. "I'm here to do whatever you want," Joe said. His star was thrilled.

  Shooting was planned to resume after the new year. But the curse of Cleopatra had only just begun.

  While Elizabeth's illness may have frustrated the Fox brass, over at MGM they were dancing a jig. All that publicity was a bonanza for Butterfield 8, which was released at the height of the hospitalization headlines.

  "It was always going to be a big film," said Hank Moonjean. "But Elizabeth Taylor with all her publicity—that just meant it was going to get even more attention."

  The film's publicity campaign followed the lead of the script, capitalizing on Elizabeth's titillating public image. "Elizabeth Taylor is in a class by herself as a worldwide box-office personality," the Motion Picture Herald astutely observed shortly before the film went into general release. The inclusion of Eddie in the film was a smart move, the paper reflected, since it "made headlines from New York to Tokyo and back." But it was Elizabeth's offscreen reputation as a femme fatale that would give Butterfield 8 "its special status."

  MGM's ad campaign played that up to the hilt. Her sexy image, once again showcased in provocative clothing, dominated newspaper advertisements and illustrated the key ad line: "The most desirable woman in town and the easiest to find ... just call BUtterfield 8." In Life magazine, a full-page ad was created out of two adjacent half-pages in the center fold—a novel format that generated considerable industry buzz. That was the goal. In a world where audiences now had many other choices for entertainment, Metro understood that they needed new, innovative ways of drawing attention to its product.

  Nowhere was this more important than in distribution. The old formula for the release of an important picture—big premieres in Los Angeles and New York, then general release to the rest of the country a month or so later—was scrapped for Butterfield 8. Instead, there were a dozen early openings in Chicago and Washington and other places, then roughly thirty in more provincial cit ies like Cincinnati and Hartford during the Thanksgiving holiday—since, it was reasoned, people would have more free time to see a movie that weekend. Today such holiday strategy is taken for granted. But in 1960 it was radical. And it's no coincidence that one of the first pictures to utilize such a wide initial release starred Elizabeth Taylor, whose already formidable box-office appeal was only enhanced by the current headlines about her health.

  The old studio system was coming to an end; Lana Turner, one of the last MGM contract stars, described her last days there as "working amid the ruins." The fabled wardrobe and prop departments were thinning out, and hundreds of studio workers lost their jobs. The old publicity department, with its constantly ringing telephones and whirring mimeograph machines, fell silent. But with Butterfield 8, studio execs showed that they might still have one last hurrah—courtesy of freelance press agents, the heirs of the old studio publicists. These agents were put in charge of various parts of the country to coordinate local campaigns—not so different from what Todd had done with Around the World in Eighty Days. Full-size cardboard cutouts of Elizabeth wearing a mink coat over a formfitting slip were distributed to theaters for lobby displays. Radio disc jockeys were coerced into airing "Salutes to Eddie Fisher" with promises of tickets to special screenings of the film for their listeners.

  Perhaps the most creative promotion involved the phone company; the film's title, after all, was a phone number. Special telephones were installed in theaters, reachable by dialing BU-8 "no matter what the actual exchange destinations may be." Persuading Ma Bell to go along with the scheme was easy because the company was offered the opportunity to publicize its newest phone equipment in theaters. The scheme was brilliant and simple. Ads in local papers featured Elizabeth in her sexy pose next to an enticement to call BU-8. Curious members of the public would call in, and theater employees would answer with a studio-prepared script describing "Gloria, the most desirable woman in town." The Motion Picture Herald was right
ly impressed with this "useful ex ploitation hook." These creative efforts, so successful with Butterfield 8 and other big pictures like Ben-Hur, would anticipate and inspire today's precisely orchestrated promotional campaigns, with their ubiquitous ad placements and broad merchandising tie-ins.

  Not surprisingly, Butterfield 8 was yet another colossal box-office hit for Elizabeth Taylor. And this time she carried the picture entirely on her own. There was no Montgomery Clift or Rock Hudson or Paul Newman or Katharine Hepburn or Tennessee Williams to help her along. Butterfield 8 was Elizabeth's picture all the way—a throwback to the kind of woman-centered film that Hepburn or Bette Davis or Joan Crawford once made.

  And despite her loathing of the script, Elizabeth is exceedingly good. The scene where she describes being sexually abused as a teenager is remarkable. Her coiled emotion bursts forth with just the right amount of horror and shame; it could easily have been a melodramatic moment, but it's not. The beginning of the film is a delight and feels honest—Elizabeth is very good at throwing out bitchy lines. Only with the sappy ending does she turn maudlin and, as a consequence, not as believable.

  Still, was it enough to finally win her that Oscar? To win over the bluenoses in the public? It remained to be seen. But change was definitely in the air.

  Time magazine scribe Ezra Goodman thought that by the time of Butterfield 8 more people were taking "long-range stock" of the scandal. He noticed that the fan magazines were "warming up to Liz again." One publication actually scolded its readers: "The true love that exists between Liz and Eddie is the only thing that can make her find forgiveness in her heart for the fans who didn't stick by her when she needed them most." Columnist Earl Wilson observed that Elizabeth's experience set a precedent for the emerging new Hollywood: "It seemed the thing to do ... was to create such an outlandish personality for yourself that the public had to grant your every exigency. Eventually you would get away with holy hell."