How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  But the stories of struggle and infirmity served a real purpose in the larger narrative of Elizabeth's life. In an article titled "Can Liz Ever Be Cured?" written during the "Malta fever" episode, another writer imagined the glamorous star alone in her hospital room, "a beautiful woman of twenty-eight, rich, famous, loved, idolized." But he was sure, if he listened carefully, that he "could hear her sobbing." He imagined her "lying in a simple, unironed hospital nightgown, in a crude, white cot of a bed in a barren room, clutching a pillow, shaking with emotion and weary from weeping."

  When chronicling the life of a woman who appeared to have it all, such a narrative was necessary as counterbalance. The public seemed to need to believe that there was some hidden misery, that something wasn't perfect for this magnificent goddess. Stories about Elizabeth's propensity for illness indulged that suspicion. There were some, of course, who dismissed her health problems as hypochondria or the behavior of a spoiled, pampered movie star, claiming they were nothing "that a good spanking wouldn't cure." But for the most part, the stories generated sympathy for the "poor little rich girl," for the girl who was "too beautiful" or who "loved too much" for her own good.

  By now, Elizabeth's handlers—and no doubt the star herself—understood how it worked. They knew how the public responded to her illnesses and accidents. They knew how those post-tracheotomy interviews would be received, what effect that bandage on Elizabeth's throat would have on those who saw it. No longer a pariah or a home wrecker, she was a strong, courageous young woman who had returned Lazarus-like from the dead. In Hollywood, fans lined the street waving placards welcoming her home. "This was the ultimate climax," Eddie Fisher said, "the queen rising from her deathbed to receive the love of her court."

  Elizabeth may have said that she planned on doing nothing, but armed guards couldn't have kept her away from the Academy Awards presentation on April 17. "Elizabeth Taylor looks tough to beat," predicted veteran Hollywood scribe Bob Thomas, "and not only because of her recent brush with death. She lifted Butterfield 8 out of the ordinary." But she'd been overlooked three years in a row. Nothing was sure until she held that shiny little gold man in her hands.

  That year, due to renovations at the Pantages Theatre, the Oscar show was moved out of Los Angeles for the first time. The closest venue of sufficient size was the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. But that didn't stop the fans from showing up—twenty-five hundred of them, the largest in Academy history. They congregated along Main Street and Pico Boulevard, waiting for the stars to appear on the red carpet. Many of the nominees and presenters were late, caught in a massive traffic jam that clogged the beachfront city. The curtain had already gone up inside when Elizabeth and Eddie finally arrived. The crowd went wild. Stepping out of the limo in a flowing Dior gown with a mint green bodice and white sheath skirt with a floral pattern, Elizabeth appeared "cool and confident," one reporter observed. But as the clamor around her escalated, she seemed to grow "tense" and gripped Eddie's arm. He escorted her inside, where she composed herself in the lounge before taking her seat.

  When the nominees for Best Actress were read, Elizabeth sat emotionless. Yul Brynner, winner of Best Actor for The King and I in 1956, unsealed the envelope and read her name as the winner. Applause tore through the auditorium. Elizabeth clapped her hands over her mouth and stared straight ahead in astonishment. For several seconds, she didn't move or say a word. Then she turned to Eddie, who helped her stand. She made her way up to the stage slowly and uncertainly. One emotional observer commented: "Near death two months ago, now at the peak of her career ... Miss Taylor's victory was one of the most dramatic moments in Oscar's thirty-three years." Eddie Fisher wondered if the Academy had deliberately seated them in the middle of the auditorium instead of close to the stage just to "prolong the drama."

  For drama there certainly was. Elizabeth stood at the podium trembling perceptibly, looking out at her peers as they got to their feet, offering a standing ovation in her honor. "A coronation," Eddie called it. Those applauding her were people with whom she had lived, worked, and grown up—people who, for the last two years, had seemed to ostracize her. Now, standing there with the scar on her throat visible, everything was forgiven. "I don't really know how to express my gratitude for this and for everything," she whispered into the microphone. "All I can say is thank you with all my heart."

  Backstage, she posed for photos with the other winners, Burt Lancaster for Best Actor in Elmer Gantry and Billy Wilder as Best Director for The Apartment. She went cheek-to-cheek with Eddie in a gesture of triumph. But then she skipped out, avoiding the usual post-show interviews. There was nothing more to say. She had won, and on her terms—by playing the game better than anyone else and by rewriting the rules. She didn't yield; Hollywood did.

  Two and a half years earlier, few could have predicted this night. But both of the women who'd been involved in the scandal (which was already being called "quaint" by many) triumphed in the end. Debbie Reynolds, so shrewd, so calculating, would rapidly follow Elizabeth as the second woman to make a million dollars per picture. With her trademark spunk, Debbie elbowed her way right into the box-office top ten. Scandal had been very good for little Debbie.

  But she would never quite claim the same exalted place in the pantheon of Hollywood that Elizabeth had achieved. For if stardom was about reconciling differences, there was never any contradiction to the perky and sweet public image of Debbie Reynolds. So controlling was the actual woman behind the façade that she never allowed the real—and far more fascinating—duality that defined her to be glimpsed by anyone outside her private circle. As a consequence, she would never become a star of the rank of Elizabeth Taylor.

  Elizabeth understood the position that she occupied, and what it meant, and what it had taken to get there. With Max Lerner, her friend and occasional lover, she talked about writing a memoir: "I'll do the recalling, you do the heavy thinking." Growing close again as Elizabeth convalesced from her surgery, they tape-recorded some conversations that eventually led to an article some years later in which Lerner referred to Marilyn Monroe as a "myth"—a creature made and destroyed by Hollywood—but Elizabeth as a "legend." Though Lerner intended the distinction as a compliment, Elizabeth took offense, even if much of it was tongue in cheek. "You have a nerve saying that Marilyn was a myth and I'm just a lousy legend," she told him. When Lerner replied, "Both of you are forces," she let him off the hook.

  "Narcissistic," Lerner called her, looking back. "Self-referential." But that's to be expected; all great stars must be such things. And since Elizabeth's sexuality was the engine of her fame, and Lerner himself admitted that "a good deal of sexuality comes from the concentration on self," it's perhaps fortunate—for Hollywood, for the world—that Elizabeth Taylor was as self-referential as Lerner claimed she was. While she may not have chased fame simply for fame's sake the way so many others did, from Crawford to Hepburn to Reynolds, Elizabeth understood very well the power and position that she had achieved in Hollywood, and, indeed, by 1961, around the world. And it was a distinction that she prized, guarded, and very much enjoyed.

  In the end, the only one who would ever pay any real price for the scandal that had so transfixed the public for two years was its lone male player—poor, luckless Eddie. That July, he opened an act at the legendary Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was to be his big comeback, and Elizabeth's first outing since she'd had plastic surgery on her neck to remove the tracheotomy scar. Rex Kennamer sat solicitously by her side. The whole audience glittered: In attendance were John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas, Danny Thomas, Groucho Marx, Yul Brynner, and Jerry Lewis. And the Rat Pack, with whom Eddie was supposed to be pals: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Law-ford, Sammy Davis Jr., and Joey Bishop.

  Maybe the star-studded crowd intimidated the kid from South Philly, because he forgot the words to several songs. "Come on, Eddie!" Martin shouted from the audience. Sinatra put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Event
ually Eddie dared them to come up onstage if they thought that they could do a better job, and they did, cocktails in hand, singing a couple of songs and bantering jokes back and forth. Retreating to the bandstand, Eddie smiled gamely, but he was clearly embarrassed to be upstaged by the Sinatra "clan." The next day, the reviews of the show were snarky. Eddie Fisher had become a joke, and his wife, his friends, and his public knew it.

  With his television show canceled, his nightclub act withering, and his marriage to the woman of his dreams crumbling before his eyes, Eddie knew only misfortune in the wake of the infamous triangle of 1958. And it would get significantly worse over the next eighteen months when the international spotlight followed him and his wife during the tumultuous filming of Cleopatra.

  But all that was in the future. For the moment, all that mattered to the Fishers was that Elizabeth had regained the respect of the industry and the love of the public. She was supreme, the greatest star in the world. She could do anything she wanted to do now. Anything.

  And so she went to Rome and fell in love with Richard Burton.

  Eight

  No Deodorant Like Success

  April 1962–July 1965

  NO MATTER THE STORIES flying across the Atlantic about the scandal on the set of Cleopatra—or maybe, in fact, because of them—George Stevens wanted one actress and one actress only to play Mary Magdalene in his epic production of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Sitting at his desk at Desilu studios in Culver City, he insisted to his associate producers that Elizabeth Taylor was the only one he could see in the role. Thirteen years earlier, planning A Place in the Sun, Stevens had held a similar conviction that no one else could better animate the character he had in mind. Now, planning what he hoped would be his magnum opus, he once again wanted Elizabeth. Who better to play the whore who became a saint, the woman of the streets exalted by the Son of God?

  Of course, the director expected some naysayers. In his files were letters that had flowed in to him after Hedda Hopper had announced the possibility of Elizabeth's casting in September 1960. One woman from Texas had angrily condemned the idea since Elizabeth was now a Jew—apparently forgetting that Mary herself had been Jewish. From Oregon had come this plea: "Surely you can find an actress of good moral character for the part." And a writer from Iowa had exclaimed, "A woman like Liz Taylor in a story of Christ—never, never, never!"

  But then had come Elizabeth's near death in London and the public restoration symbolized by the Academy Award. The letters against her died out. Stevens moved forward with his plan. Elizabeth was intrigued by the idea, but only if the terms were right. Stevens was offering $50,000 a week for five weeks. While that meant a quarter of a million dollars for what was essentially a supporting role, Kurt Frings was not impressed. Elizabeth was now the highest-salaried female star in the world, and would only be satisfied with $3 million at the break-even point. Why not make a film called Mary Magdalene that starred Elizabeth, Frings suggested, instead of "this Jesus picture"?

  Stevens blew his top. His notes reveal that he thought a deal was close until Frings tried to "spike" it. "Cheapskate agent makes a cheapskate out of G.S." the director scrawled across one page. "[Frings] obviously doesn't want any of his clients in my pictures, and I am astonished at the lengths he will go to keep them out."

  His hostility toward the pugnacious agent, however, didn't dampen his enthusiasm for Elizabeth. She remained his first choice for Mary Magdalene even as the filming of Cleopatra seemed to drag on forever. According to his notes, Stevens may have been preparing to offer her 10 percent of the gross. But the scandal with Richard Burton, then exploding in Rome, would eventually change everything.

  The problem was that the lovers hadn't just gone public. They were flaunting their affair, heedless of scandal and seeming to revel in the headlines and round-the-clock publicity. Elizabeth may have developed a new addiction by this point, one that pumped her up even more than vodka or chocolate fudge: the adrenaline-producing rush of public drama. With Eddie Fisher removed from the picture, the front pages of the London and New York tabloids bannered daily developments of what was coming to be known as "Le Scandale." it's Liz or me: wife to burton. Liz, burton romp as sybil waits alone. Liz and burton off to paris. One moment Burton was cabling Sybil in London to say that he had no plans to divorce her; the next he and Elizabeth were sashaying down the Via Veneto in the wee hours, paparazzi in tow, cameras flashing. Strolling arm in arm, they moved from the posh George's restaurant to the raucous nightclub Pipistrello, famed for its "twist" band. Elizabeth, reporters observed, was in "a gay party mood," wearing a low-cut polka-dot dress and a huge Cossack-style fur hat. With Mankiewicz père and fils in tow, the couple ended their night at the Little Bar, knocking back shots until three thirty in the morning. "I can choose any man I like," Elizabeth was reported as boasting to a friend. "I don't see why everyone is making such a fuss."

  But the world was indeed making a fuss. "Probably no news event in modern times has affected so many people personally," Art Buchwald joked, though the truth lay not far underneath his humor. "Nuclear testing, disarmament, Berlin, Viet Nam and the struggle between Russia and China are nothing comparable to the Elizabeth Taylor story."

  If Elizabeth thought that she'd endured the height of public scrutiny during the affair with Eddie, she quickly discovered otherwise. On the night of April 15, five hundred torch-bearing university students packed the road outside her villa, chanting for "Liz." Rumors flew that they wanted to kidnap her. A few nights later Elizabeth broke down in tears when the paparazzi cornered her on the Via Veneto. The constant attention, until now so carefully tended and tolerated, had simply become too much for her.

  "Who could really be prepared for that kind of publicity, that level of attention?" Tom Mankiewicz asked. "Not even Elizabeth, who'd grown up with it, who knew better than anybody how to deal with it." Burton, when he wasn't torn by guilt over Sybil and his two daughters, seemed to thoroughly enjoy the ride and the notoriety that it generated for him. He egged Elizabeth along and kept their excursions in front of the cameras. Yet for all their shrewd media manipulation, even "Liz and Dick" didn't fully grasp the powerful response their romance had evoked.

  In the hushed and hallowed halls of the Palace of the Governorate of Vatican City, a sandal-wearing Jesuit priest was handed an official bulletin that had been prepared, debated over, and finally approved by the top leaders of the church. As the morning fog lifted, Vatican Radio echoed across the cobblestone streets, decrying those who would treat marriage as "a game which they start and interrupt with the capricious make-believe of children." A week later L'Osservatore della Domenica, the weekly magazine supplement of the Vatican newspaper, was even more direct. Though it still refrained from mentioning Elizabeth by name (the open letter was addressed to "Madam"), the unnamed writer criticized the star for adopting a child while living a life of "erotic vagrancy." Some sources speculated that the words were those of Pope John himself; at the very least, they had his approval. "Your motive, madam," the writer continued, "is that when a bigger love comes along you kill the smaller love."

  Burton, the "bigger love," laughed off the censure. "He's never been on my party list," he told his brother, referring to the pope. But the Italian papers suddenly found their religion: "We would say that morally she has lost it," declared Il Giornale d'Italia of Elizabeth. Even the magazine that had first published the infamous kissing photo, Lo Specchio, now pronounced Elizabeth "out of style" in Rome: "No one wants to hear anything more about what she's wearing, her adornments, her illnesses, her scar, her food poisoning, her children, her husbands." The American Catholic press followed the lead of its Vatican counterpart, condemning "the nauseating headlines" coming from Rome and lamenting the disappearance of the old studio morals clause. Nowadays, charged the Catholic Transcript, Hollywood rewarded indecency. "Sometimes a star is given the industry's highest honor for portraying a depraved character that calls for hardly any acting at all"—a clear reference to El
izabeth winning the Academy Award for Butterfield 8.

  Almost exactly one year after that triumphant night, Elizabeth's careful rehabilitation of her image now seemed ready to come undone. She stood once again in the crosshairs of public opprobrium, and this time, the harshest attacks weren't confined to the pages of Photoplay. After the Vatican weighed in, the Italian government, in the person of Egidio Ariosto, undersecretary of the interior, warned the star against "self-destruction" due to her "amorous and non-amorous conduct."

  Ariosto's statement came in response to a highly publicized episode on the night of April 24. After the lovers shocked the world by spending Easter weekend together in unwedded bliss in a seaside bungalow at Porto Santo Stefano, Elizabeth turned up at the local doctor with a bloody nose. When the doctor couldn't be found, she hurried back to Rome alone, setting off a flurry of rumors. Had Burton hit her in a violent quarrel? Had she taken another overdose of pills when he refused to divorce Sybil? Once more, headlines raged around the world. The Roman police concluded that Elizabeth had simply bumped her nose when her car had made a quick stop and she was thrown forward. Still it was enough for the conservative Italian paper Il Tempo to declare that her presence in Rome was now "undesirable." Not long afterward, Elizabeth received an anonymous letter threatening her and her four children with death unless she stopped seeing Burton. Roman police began guarding her round-the-clock.

  Over the next few weeks the criticism only escalated from all quarters. In remarks leading up to the dedication of his presidential library in Abilene, Kansas, former president Eisenhower asked: "What has happened to our concept of beauty and decency and morality?" He denounced the "vulgarity, sensuality, indeed, downright filth" that was being used by Hollywood to promote itself. Given the timing of his commentary, he could only have been referring to the scandal in Rome.