How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  No matter the studio's problems, Elizabeth was a clear winner. With ten cents of every dollar earmarked for her, that meant an additional million and a half by the end of the year. And no matter what the critics thought, the public loved the picture. One opinion poll asked those who had seen Cleopatra to rate it: 53 percent called the film "excellent," 29 percent called it "good," and only 18 percent considered it "fair" or "poor." Once again, public hostility—or the presumption of it—hadn't taken a dime. Elizabeth Taylor was at the height of her fame and power. No star had ever been as big.

  An orange fingernail moon hung low over Banderas Bay, one of the deepest, widest, and bluest bays in the world. From the sprawling white-brick-and-stucco house perched amid the vine-hung foothills rising up from the bay, gas lamps cast a soft golden light onto the papaya trees and the creeping red bougainvillea. The cliff-hanging house with its six bedrooms, six baths, and gleaming white-tiled floors was named Casa Kimberley after a previous owner, but from October 1963 forward, it would be known as the place where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton lived when they were the most notorious unmarried lovers in the world.

  "Here on the lazy west coast of Mexico," one reporter wrote, "the couple who fell in love on the Rome set of Cleopatra—despite prior commitments—are finding a measure of tropical solitude some nineteen months (and no divorces) later." Their notoriety would put the obscure little fishing village of Puerto Vallarta on the map.

  Watching from a chaise lounge as Richard ran lines with John Huston—rehearsing for the film The Night of the Iguana—Elizabeth was aglow. She adored the peace and lush exotic beauty of Puerto Vallarta. "I can live here," she had told Burton soon after they'd arrived, and so Casa Kimberley had become a little love gift. From their terrace, Elizabeth could look down onto the village where men in wide sombreros rode burros over the cobblestone streets. Just past the house she could see the belfry of the village church, modeled after the crown of the Empress Carlota, and beyond that the moonlit bay, which was close enough that the fierce surf could be heard all through the night. Colorful moths fluttered in through the glassless windows while spirited little geckos ran across the beams overhead. Elizabeth was awakened in the morning by bright green macaws announcing the first rays of the sun reflecting against the red tiles of the roof. She was in heaven.

  After the tumult she'd fled, Puerto Vallarta offered a welcome sanctuary. Stopping in Montreal and Toronto on their way from Europe to Mexico, "Liz and Dick" were greeted by a crush of fans and reporters so enthusiastic that Dick Hanley and Jim Benton, Richard's secretary, had to form a protective shield around them as they moved from the plane to the limousine. Richard grabbed a terrified six-year-old Liza Todd and held her above his head to keep her away from the flashing cameras and clutching hands. The Burtons hired a bodyguard for the first time, an ex-boxer named Bobby LaSalle, who, when he wasn't posted at the doorway of Casa Kimberley swatting away mosquitoes, spent his time playing endless games of Ping-Pong with Elizabeth.

  The V.I.P.s was a hit; as Elizabeth and Richard were flying down to Mexico, people were flocking to theaters to see them together in modern dress. The film was fluff, but very attractive and entertaining fluff, with Elizabeth playing a wife toying with the idea of leaving her husband (played by Richard) for a playboy lover (played by Louis Jourdan)—a rather ironic twist that audiences loved. They also adored the jewels and furs that Elizabeth wore in the film. With its sparkling cast—Margaret Rutherford would win an Oscar as the eccentric, scene-stealing Duchess of Brighton—The V.I.P.s proved that MGM, even in its decline, could still turn out glossy crowd-pleasers.

  Puerto Vallarta was far, far away, however, from the world of furs and jewels. In the morning, standing in front of her mirror, Elizabeth tied her hair back and slipped into a plain white gauzy dress. The air was humid and the temperature was edging into the nineties. Packing some cold fried chicken and a bottle of tequila into a basket, she followed Burton down to the bay, where they stepped barefoot through the frothy surf to board the yacht that Elizabeth had insisted upon. Michael Wilding, as Burton's agent, had arranged for the yacht, though it may also have been a bit of a thankyou to Elizabeth for her support in the battle against Hedda. Off through the blue waters the yacht sailed, slicing a path across the bay. Their destination was the isolated cove of Mismaloya, south of the village, a den of lizards and insects where Night of the Iguana was being filmed. There were no roads, no phones, no restaurants, no bars. That's why Elizabeth had brought the chicken and the tequila. From the yacht she leapt onto a floating pier, where she and Burton had to wait until the waves brought them closer to shore. Then, basket over her arm, she began the long ascent up the side of the cliff with Burton behind her, climbing the 134 earthen steps to the top where Huston had built his sets.

  Elizabeth had experience filming in remote locations. And, just as in Marfa, Texas, the cast and crew drank a lot to pass the time. Burton quickly finished a case of beer, then started in on the tequila. So did everyone else, including Elizabeth. In addition, they discovered a "paralyzingly potent" local agave liquor called raicilla that Richard said he could feel move into each individual intestine. "That's because they left the cactus needles in it," Huston said.

  The drinking was fun and convivial; Huston was pleased with the way his cast got along. Some had predicted antagonism between Elizabeth and Ava Gardner, one of Burton's three romantic costars (who also included Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon, the nymphet from Lolita). But the two glamorous graduates of the old studio system adored each other, with Elizabeth diverting the press away from Ava so that she could concentrate on her role. "She's fearless," Gardner said gratefully as Elizabeth posed and waved and threw kisses at the assembled newshounds. Huston quipped that there were "more reporters on the site than iguanas." And as fascinating as the rest of the cast was, everyone knew why the press was really there. They were hoping to catch a glimpse of "Liz and Dick" kissing—or, better yet, fighting.

  Reports of trouble in paradise had already reached the gossip columns. Zoe Sallis, Huston's girlfriend and the mother of his son, remembered "a lot of rows" between Elizabeth and Richard. There were numerous reasons for their tension. Together now for nearly two years, the lovers were still prevented from marrying. By continuing to haggle over the terms of their divorce, Eddie Fisher had frustrated Elizabeth's hopes of a picturesque, beachside, Christmastime wedding ceremony in Puerto Vallarta. Yet as furious as she was at Eddie, Elizabeth also blamed Sybil for dragging her feet. And since Richard would truck no criticism of the sainted mother of his daughters, some doozies of fights resulted. All the drinking only exacerbated the tension. Mike Nichols thought that Elizabeth, always a hearty drinker, was imbibing even more than she had in the past simply to keep up with Richard. "It's what she felt she had to do if she was going to be with him," Nichols said.

  On November 23 they were in the midst of shooting when word arrived that President Kennedy had been assassinated the day before in Dallas. Huston said a few words, then called for a short break. "But ... there was nothing we could do," said art director Stephen Grimes. "So we went on shooting."

  They finished sometime in early December, though the Burtons hung around Puerto Vallarta to celebrate the holidays because they had fallen in love with the place. They were a little tired of arroz con pollo, however, so Elizabeth had hamburgers imported from the United States that they grilled on their barbecue. They'd also flown in the wife of their London chauffeur because they adored her roast pork. The woman was thrilled to get an all-expenses-paid Mexican holiday just to cook a meal or two.

  Finally they headed up to Toronto, where Richard was scheduled to begin rehearsals for Hamlet under the direction of John Gielgud. The divorce from Sybil had come through at long last, concluded in a court in Puerto Vallarta, but Eddie was still fighting on, determined not to lose even a penny in the division of profits from the producing company that he'd formed for his wife back in the days when he expected to be piloting her career. Eddie co
ntinued to tell the press that Elizabeth was the only woman he "ever really loved," even though he added quickly, and unconvincingly, "I don't love her anymore, of course."

  The divorce finally came through on March 5. Elizabeth and Richard were on a plane to Montreal almost immediately, since, unlike Ontario, the province of Quebec didn't quibble over such things as the validities of Mexican divorces. It was there that they were married on March 15, 1964, by a Unitarian minister in Suite 810 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Sara and Francis Taylor flew in to witness their daughter's fifth marriage, the climax of a redhot, two-year romance that had left two continents scorched in its wake. The beaming bride, her hair braided with white Roman hyacinths, wore a gown of yellow chiffon designed by Irene Sharaff, who'd done her costumes for Cleopatra. The previous month, Burton had presented Elizabeth with diamond-and-emerald drop earrings for her thirty-second birthday; now, to her eye-popping delight, he gave her a stunning matching necklace. They planned to repeat their vows at a synagogue in New York, but somehow the plans never materialized. Richard had Hamlet to do, after all.

  Then it was on to Boston, where fans waited for hours to catch a glimpse of the newly married pair. As the Burtons' Trans-Canada airplane touched down at Logan Airport on March 23, a crowd of people suddenly burst through a line of state troopers and scrambled out onto the tarmac. Despite the efforts of the vastly outnumbered police, the fans swarmed around the plane. Burton peered out from a window and told Elizabeth to sit tight. Along with Alfred Drake, who was playing Claudius to his Hamlet, Burton disembarked from the plane and pushed through the frantic crowd to a waiting limousine. After he had driven off, the fans began chanting "Liz, Liz." Mothers held babies up in their arms, as if asking for her blessing. The police were finally able to part the crowd to allow a truck to move in and tow the plane across the tarmac to an airport hangar. But the throng followed, storming the hangar doors. The police had to use force to push the crowd back and secure the area. Only then was a shaken Elizabeth able to depart from the plane.

  But the ordeal wasn't over. As their limousine pulled up to the Sheraton Plaza Hotel in Copley Square, the Burtons were greeted by another thousand screaming fans. Of course, all these people hadn't just materialized. They—and their counterparts at the airport—had been alerted to the arrival of "Liz and Dick" well in advance by regular press releases printed in newspapers and read on radios, as well as by colorful flyers pinned to telephone poles (and preserved today in archives). It was all part of an aggressive campaign by John Springer, the Burtons' new press agent.

  At forty-eight, Springer was already something of a legend in the world of entertainment. In the 1940s he'd labored as a publicist at RKO and Fox. In the late 1950s he'd followed the trend and opened his own agency, quickly assembling one of the most stellar client lists in Hollywood: Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Joan Crawford. A master of discretion, Springer was able to work for Elizabeth and Richard while representing Debbie Reynolds and Sybil Burton at the same time. Few publicists were better at selling Hollywood than Springer. Much of the frenzy in Boston was whipped up by his canny crew in an effort to boost the box office of Hamlet—with the ancillary benefit of demonstrating that the Burtons, even when respectably married, could still stir up the crowds. "[Springer] was one of the best," said Dick Clayton, a contemporary. "Getting crowds like that was considered a big success."

  Boston police would later complain that the Burtons had encouraged the fans' frenzy by driving around the hotel three times, waving and smiling at the crowd. Finally the limousine pulled up to the hotel and Richard and Elizabeth stepped out of the car. A riot broke out as soon as their feet touched the ground. The crowd surged, pushing their idols into the lobby of the hotel. Elizabeth screamed. Hands were everywhere, pulling at her clothes. Someone yanked her hair as others cried, "See if it's a wig." Separated from Burton, Elizabeth was thrust up against a wall, her neck twisted and bolts of pain shooting down her sensitive spine. It was several minutes before the Burtons were rescued by the hotel manager and guided safely into the elevator. A photo of Elizabeth in a white fur coat, her white gloves pressed to her face in terror, was splashed across the front pages of dozens of newspapers the next day.

  As harrowing as the experience had been for his clients, Springer had also gotten them tremendous publicity, positioning the Burtons as the most popular stars in the world. "Why, I used to handle Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe," Springer made it a point to tell the press, "and I never saw anything like this." Yet his outrage at the lack of police protection was largely manufactured. While comparisons to Dietrich and Monroe were fine, it was four considerably younger celebrities to whom Springer most hoped to draw parallels. In the last month, the country had been riveted by the unprecedented public reaction to the Beatles, four mop-topped youths from Liverpool, England, who had arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport on February 7 to the shrieks of three thousand fans. Police barricades had to be erected to keep the hordes of teenagers from reaching their idols. Everywhere the Beatles went, they drew huge crowds who screamed and cried and grabbed at their clothes and hair. An appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 was intercut with shots of hysterical fans sobbing and clutching the air. It's no surprise that Springer would estimate the number of fans at the airport to be five thousand— two thousand more than what the lads from Liverpool had managed to draw. And he was also quick to describe the composition of the crowds as equally divided between teenagers and adults.

  Keeping the Burtons relevant when the prevailing youth culture was admonishing its followers not to trust anyone over thirty would take a bit of work, especially now that Elizabeth and Richard were no longer illicit lovers. But at every stop during Richard's tour of Hamlet, Springer made sure that the public knew where and when Mr. and Mrs. Burton would appear, and the crowds never failed to show up. The street outside the stage door of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York was packed with people after every show, with Elizabeth and Richard always appearing at some point to be hustled into a car, a sparkle of diamonds shining from Elizabeth's throat or hair. Onlookers watched as if "rooted to the spot by some strange, felt presence of history," observed Stanley Elkin, a writer for Esquire who moved among the crowd one night. Richard enjoyed the hubbub, the slow inching of their limousine through the crowds as they headed back to their hotel. He laughed at the people pressing their faces to the glass. Elizabeth, more accustomed to it all, was more blasé. "For God's sake, Richard," she said, "don't you realize the only reason this is happening is because they think we're sinners and freaks?"

  They could have gone on just being freaks—drawing crowds because of who they were, more famous than nearly anybody else on the planet, more envied and more desired. A play or a movie premiere wasn't needed to draw out their fans. John Springer could just send a press release about their next shopping trip or restaurant visit. Many celebrities today have mastered the art of attracting attention based on nothing more than their own "freakishness"—fame based on fame itself. But in 1964 there was a very different understanding of stardom. "You had to give something back," said Gavin Lambert. "You had to do something, act in something, or push yourself somehow in your craft. Otherwise you'd be seen as just one of the Gabor sisters."

  Elizabeth and Richard, said one person very close to them, understood that their extraordinary fame was "part of an exchange with the public ... It didn't come without expectations." Never was there a sense among the Burtons or their entourage that they might merely coast by on sensational headlines. "That's the difference between stars then and now," said Lambert. "Back then, it was understood that they had to give the public something in return for the privilege of being a star."

  And so Elizabeth appeared for the first time on stage in June, reciting poetry with her husband as a benefit for Philip Burton's drama school, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She was terrified, stumbling at first and feeling her armpits dampen her blue silk dress. Then she steeled herself, as she k
new how to do so well, feeling "daring [and] audacious," proceeding from Dorothy Parker to D. H. Lawrence to Frost, Eliot, and Yeats. Even if poetry snobs insisted that she didn't understand what she was reading, she finished the night to a roar of applause. "Rarely has poetry drawn such a crowd," observed the New York Times. Once again, however, Elizabeth was realistic: "I knew that eighty-five percent of them had come and spent a great deal of money for me to fall flat on my face." But where she'd never been excessively proud of her films, she admitted, "I was proud of myself at that poetry reading."

  In October it was once more back to MGM. The Burtons flew first to Big Sur, California, and then to Paris to make The Sandpiper for Vincente Minnelli, who'd directed Elizabeth fourteen years earlier in Father of the Bride. Elizabeth considered the film "a pile of crap," and insisted that she and Richard were making it only for the money. But it's hard not to see The Sandpiper as a kind of coda to Le Scandale. Richard plays a minister who, despite a deep respect for his virtuous wife, cannot resist falling in love with the beautiful, free-thinking artist played by Elizabeth. At one point, she says that society might consider their love to be wrong, but questions how it could be wrong when their feelings were so true and so pure. "I never knew it could be like this," she gushes during one of their secret trysts, and the audience is left feeling that Elizabeth might have said something similar during those early days in Rome. "Being with you is like having the whole world in my arms." If that didn't explain why Taylor and Burton had moved heaven and earth to be together, what could?