How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  But now Hedda wanted very much to interview Elizabeth. She was hoping that it might stem the tide of newspapers dropping her column. From her spartan office, attended now by just one loyal secretary, Hedda placed call after call to Sara Taylor, a pathetic reversal of roles from their original interaction. Hedda knew that she stood no chance of getting through to Dick Hanley, who refused to speak to her. But if Sara could arrange something, she'd be eternally grateful. Hedda had done her part to promote Virginia Woolf, even if she'd found the material abhorrent. Such language! Such situations! Yet dutifully she'd interviewed Nichols and Lehman and printed up a fluff piece laden with accolades. Now she pleaded with Sara to arrange a sit-down with her daughter. But Elizabeth didn't have the time to take Hedda's call.

  Even if they remained in the minority, other columnists weren't as reticent as Hedda to go on the attack. When Elizabeth announced that she would be giving up her U.S. citizenship, there was considerable carping in the American press. Since she'd been born in London, Elizabeth had always had dual British-American nationality. But not since 1959 had she been a permanent resident of the United States; she owned no American real estate. Her decision, she claimed, was based on loyalty to Burton, a British national, and not because she "loved America any less." She just loved her husband more. But cynics thought that tax breaks were her true love. Earlier she'd admitted, "The tax thing is so crippling to Americans living in Europe, especially for those in my bracket." She netted just six cents for every dollar of her phenomenal earnings, she claimed. If she remained a U.S. citizen, those milliondollar salaries would boil down to only sixty thousand. With utter candor she said, "Money is more valuable than citizenship or patriotism. Down in your hearts, you know I'm right."

  For the dwindling but still passionate Elizabeth haters, that was like red meat thrown to a pack of wolves. "A lot of grated parmesan about Elizabeth Taylor's 'loyalty,'" snarled Mike Connolly in the Hollywood Reporter, who pulled a Joe McCarthy by making hay with the fact that Burton had donated to the left-wing Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. "This is loyalty? Let her go, quick, now, the soonest—and Burton with her."

  But for Elizabeth the worst irritant she found back in California was Eddie Fisher, who'd announced that he was suing for custody of Maria. To interviewers, Elizabeth had frequently revised history, insisting that she'd found Maria on her own, cutting Eddie completely out of the picture. But in the beginning, as letters document, Eddie had been considered the girl's adoptive father. "How's the new baby?" writer Paddy Chayefsky asked Eddie in a letter dated January 1962. "Did the cast come off properly? How exciting all this must be for you both." But the fact was, not long after that, Eddie had been removed from Maria's life and all communication between them had ended. His attempt to gain custody of her now was, like Hedda's offensive against Wilding, really a volley aimed at Elizabeth.

  And there were other ongoing legal battles. Elizabeth had sued Fox for failing to pay all the royalties due from Cleopatra. The studio, furious that it was still in the red over the picture while the Burtons made millions from it, launched a countersuit asking for $50 million in damages. The charge: breach of contract. Fox had decided to hit Elizabeth with everything it could. She had not reported for work, or not reported on time, the studio charged; she had not performed "her services with due diligence, care or attention"; she had caused "herself to be held up to scorn, ridicule and unfavorable publicity as a result of her conduct"; she had "become offensive to good taste and morals and [depreciated] the commercial value of Cleopatra."Claims against Burton were similar. In other words, Fox was suing them for their affair—the same thing that had garnered all that unpurchasable publicity and turned Cleopatra into a box-office bonanza. But when the film failed to earn out, the studio figured on balancing its books by taking back some of the monies it had unwisely signed over to Elizabeth and Richard.

  John Springer responded that the suit was "too ludicrous" for comment. But not so ludicrous that the Burtons could avoid giving testimony to a battery of Fox lawyers who grilled them behind closed doors upon their return from Northampton.

  As she was peppered with questions, Elizabeth's beautiful eyes flashed with anger. She did not like being interrogated. She wasn't accustomed to people badgering her in this way. She sat beside her lawyer, Aaron Frosch, one of the shrewdest entertainment lawyers in the biz. Brooklyn born, he'd represented John Gielgud when the actor was being blackmailed over his homosexuality and had served as executor of Marilyn Monroe's estate. Frosch knew how to take care of his clients. He routinely surprised Elizabeth with little gifts of jewelry. But try as he could, he'd been unable to forestall this deposition. He did his best to limit Elizabeth's testimony, but Fox's lawyers were determined to wheedle something, anything, out of her.

  It was all rather humorous. Frederick W. R. Pride, Fox's legal counsel, was a very serious inquisitor. A Harvard man, Pride was well known in New York society; his daughter had been presented at the debutante cotillion at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1955. Phrasing and rephrasing his questions to Elizabeth, he never cracked a smile. He wanted to know where she'd been on certain days during the making of Cleopatra, and where Burton had been. Without any sense of irony or bemusement, he asked questions about where trysts had taken place, and when, and for how long. Much unfolding of maps ensued. When Pride asked Elizabeth to point out where her villa had been in relation to Burton's, she just gave him a withering look, adding that she couldn't read maps. Of course she couldn't.

  But Pride was not deterred. "These two defendants," he said, "by their irresponsible, illicit conduct during the production of this picture directly and indirectly brought down upon this company expenses of millions of dollars." He recalled the time when they "sneaked away from Rome to a hideaway over Easter weekend and what happens? This principal character in this picture, Elizabeth Taylor, comes back with a black eye, a cut nose, and becomes unphotographable for two weeks." With her salary and living expenses, Pride charged, "whether the picture went forward or didn't was of no concern to her; the longer it lasted the more weeks she earned this princely amount."

  Elizabeth seemed to enjoy making Pride's job as difficult as possible. She repeatedly said she couldn't remember dates, even when Pride showed her pictures of her hairstyles to help jog her memory. When he asked her about where she lived at certain times, she was evasive. She wasn't going to say anything that could be used against her, either by Fox or the Internal Revenue Service. When Pride pressed her on where she had resided in 1961, she said that she didn't remember if it was New York or Rome or London or California. When he asked about January 1963, she had to admit she was in London; it was a matter of public record.

  "And you were not in New York at that time, is that correct?" Pride asked.

  Looking at him with utter contempt, Elizabeth said, "Well, I couldn't very well be if I was in London."

  When Pride asked if she held any mortgages, Elizabeth turned to her lawyers and asked, "Do my houses have mortgages?" She had no idea about such things.

  At times the deposition sounded like an Abbott and Costello routine. Pressed if she had any visas that might show her residency, Elizabeth replied with another question: "Don't you have to have an entry permit to go to Italy?" Pride: "I'm asking that." Elizabeth: "I don't know. I'm asking you."

  "Obviously, Mr. Pride," Elizabeth's lawyer chimed in, "Mrs. Burton is not aware of what she does or doesn't have along these lines. These things are taken care of by others." Of course they were.

  She was deliciously sarcastic. Asked if the Regency was a transient hotel, she replied, "I imagine most hotels are." Questioned about whether she had business interests in California, she quipped, "I haven't any business interests, period." After admitting to living for several months in Switzerland, she was pushed to define "several." She said that she didn't know the definition. When asked again, she said, "Sweetheart, I said I don't know." "She doesn't know," her counsel echoed, just in case Pride hadn't gotten it.

  Frederi
ck W. R. Pride was unable to break down Elizabeth Taylor. He left without getting anything incriminating on her. But the Fox lawsuit wasn't the only legal hassle she faced. A number of exhibitors' groups had also sued the Burtons for turning Cleopatra into an "inferior attraction" due to their disregard of "good taste and morals." It didn't help Fox's case against the Burtons that the exhibitors had sued the studio as well, claiming that it shared some of the blame. All of this was merely evidence of yet another precedent Elizabeth Taylor was setting for celebrities in poststudio Hollywood. If one is famous enough, one will be sued. It would become an unavoidable by-product of fame.

  Thankfully, she had the final wrap-up of Virginia Woolf to distract her. She and Richard agreed to work the two final weeks free of charge. "This picture is too important to Elizabeth and me for anything to happen to it that might interfere with its quality," Burton said. At the eleventh hour, Elizabeth had to reshoot a scene where Nichols felt she'd gone too far emotionally. He feared that it would make her last scene—the crucial moment where she says, "I am, George. I am"—anticlimactic. Elizabeth was "tight-lipped but thoroughly professional" during the retake.

  The final scene was shot on December 13. Elizabeth was overjoyed when Lehman presented her with the gift she'd been asking for: a turquoise and gold pendant with a pearl and platinum chain.

  It wasn't the only perk she took away from the shoot. Because delays had kept the Burtons from getting back to Europe in time for Christmas, they had to bring the family to Los Angeles, and Warners agreed to reimburse the costs. Michael and Christopher, their nanny, Richard's brother, his sister, and sister-in-law all flew in from England, at a cost to the studio of $5,688.65. Plus there was the $3,000 evening gown that Elizabeth had worn to a dinner in honor of Princess Margaret, because Frosch argued that she'd only gone as "part of her efforts to publicize Virginia Woolf."

  At least it had taken her mind off the lawsuits. But now Eddie was harassing her again, claiming that their Mexican divorce wasn't valid and her marriage to Burton wasn't legal. He also was asking for visitation rights to see Liza—not even Maria, but Liza! Elizabeth was beside herself with rage at the man for whom she'd once jeopardized her career. Any compassion she once may have felt for him over what had happened in Rome evaporated. Eddie was a nightmare that just wouldn't go away. This is why Eddie Fisher would always be the lone target of Elizabeth's venom among her numerous former husbands, why even more than three decades later, when asked what she thought of him, she replied: "I wouldn't put it in print. I don't even want to mention his name."

  But there was one old adversary she no longer had to worry about. Ten months after the humiliating settlement with Michael Wilding, Hedda Hopper died of double pneumonia on February i, 1966, at the age of eighty. "The passing of an era," the Los Angeles Times proclaimed. Indeed. Movies were no longer the kind of commodities that Hedda had once sold; stars weren't the kind of objects that she'd been able to build and tear down. It could be argued that Hedda's obsessive campaign to topple Elizabeth Taylor had contributed to her own decline. "The Wilding lawsuit kind of finished her off," said Robert Shaw. "She was never the same after that." Her spirit broken, her reputation in tatters, her health rapidly declining, Hedda soldiered on, but she was an anachronism, and she knew it. Her funeral, for all her storied reputation, was sparsely attended. After cremation, Robert Shaw and those few friends who were left sent her "back home to Altoona in a box."

  Tossing a vase at her husband and letting out a scream, Elizabeth seemed to be releasing all the pent-up rage and frustration from her long sojourn in America. Richard artfully dodged the vase, and Franco Zeffirelli called "cut."

  They were back in Rome, filming The Taming of the Shrew. Elizabeth felt liberated, grateful to be out of the country that seemed only to oppress her these days. Richard had long fancied doing Shakespeare with his wife, envisioning her as Lady Macbeth. But Elizabeth had just laughed and asked, "Wouldn't it be better typecasting for me to do The Taming of the Shrew?" Indeed it was—and everyone on the set, including Zeffirelli, was amazed at the intelligence and vitality that she brought to the part. She was a force of nature, wild, untamed, and perfectly at ease with the Shakespearean dialogue.

  Even after the exertions of Virginia Woolf, there was still no thought of coasting. After Shrew, there would be a version of Doctor Faustus for Richard's mentor Nevill Coghill and the Oxford University Dramatic Society, in which Elizabeth would essay the nonspeaking part of Helen of Troy. There were also plans to reunite with Montgomery Clift on a film based on Carson McCullers's novel Reflections in a Golden Eye. And Ernest Lehman was seriously pursuing her to star in the film version of Hello, Dolly! "Why not?" Richard cracked to his wife. "You're fat and you're Jewish." Elizabeth adored the idea ("I could play it with a real Brooklyn accent") though she worried that Carol Channing, the original Dolly on Broadway, would be "very angry" with her. But somehow no one else saw her in the role.

  What everyone was waiting for was Martha. On June 24, 1966, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened at the Criterion Theatre in New York. Two thousand people pushed through the doors to watch the Burtons spit, snarl, and scrape at each other. At first, the Production Code Administration had refused to grant the film a seal of approval, but then Jack Valenti, the new president of the Motion Picture Association of America, had pressured the group to change its mind. But many theaters, including the Criterion, would allow those under eighteen to attend only with a parent or guardian.

  The seal proved irrelevant. By refusing to change a line of the script, Nichols, Lehman, and Warner Bros. had accomplished something tremendous: They had effectively ended three decades of the Production Code's draconian rule. "The Code is dead," the trade paper Motion Picture Daily editorialized the week after Virginia Woolf's premiere. Indeed, the PCA was soon obsolete, replaced by the ratings system that would dominate for the next thirty years.

  The legacy of Virginia Woolf would be a new era, one that, as Vincent Canby described it in the New York Times, allowed "the public morality in film to reflect more accurately the state of private morality." Once again, it was Elizabeth Taylor at the center of a moral contest, and once again, she was on the winning side.

  In fact, she won more than that. From coast to coast and across the Atlantic, critics were swooning over her bold portrayal of Martha. "The finest performance of her career," crowed the Motion Pic- ture Herald. The New York Times agreed, calling Elizabeth's work "sustained and urgent...[charged] with the utmost of her powers." Variety thought she'd earned "every penny of her million plus," and Time declared that she was "loud, sexy, vulgar [and] pungent" while still achieving "moments of astonishing tenderness." Indeed, "astonishing" is the best way to sum up her performance. She slashes her way so fiercely through the film that we can almost see the rips in the celluloid made by her fingernails. She's cruel and cunning, and yet we root for her, too. She inspires compassion as much as revulsion, perhaps even more so. At the end of the picture, one sits back out of breath, heart pounding. It is a remarkable cinematic achievement. The widespread consensus among critics was that the little girl who had started out making pictures with Lassie had surpassed all expectations that anyone ever had for her.

  Elizabeth was flabbergasted. She'd expected to be skewered by the critics. As the picture wrapped, she'd told Lehman that reviewers always blasted her. He suggested that maybe she should have someone screen her reviews for her, but she wouldn't hear of it. "I'm not a masochist," she said, "but I do want to read everything that they say about me, even if it's bad." This time, she was pleasantly surprised and deeply gratified.

  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would be the third biggest movie of 1966. Elizabeth was perched atop the list of box-office stars once more, with Julie Andrews her only female rival. So it was with some cockiness that she sauntered onto the set of Reflections in a Golden Eye to begin work. When presented with the idea of shooting a television documentary on the set as a promotion for the film, Elizabeth refused out of ha
nd, defending her decision to her furious producer, Ray Stark, by saying, "I am told by a recent report from the motion picture trade papers that none of my pictures have ever lost money. These pictures were made without the benefit of a television documentary." (Cleopatra had finally reached its break-even point a few months earlier.)

  Despite shooting in Rome and being directed by John Huston, Elizabeth didn't enjoy making Reflections. For the first time in four years, she didn't have Richard as a costar. He made sure to stick close by, however, bowing out of Goodbye, Mr. Chips in case his wife needed his help. If she'd had her way, Elizabeth would never have made another film without Richard at her side. He pooh-poohed the idea: "We don't want to be seen as Laurel and Hardy." Elizabeth countered, "What's so bad about Laurel and Hardy?"

  In many ways, her role in Reflections was an old familiar one: the beautiful woman left unfulfilled by a repressed, tormented homosexual. But this time Elizabeth's character acts out on her own, engaging in her own affair and scheming against her husband. It was a tricky part to make sympathetic, and despite Huston's best attempts to direct her, she never really found her way. Part of the problem was that she'd expected to be working opposite Monty. But her old friend had been found dead in his home in July—a personal loss for Elizabeth that was made even worse by the casting of Marlon Brando to replace him. Although she liked her costar personally, Elizabeth found Brando's habit of continually blowing his lines, sometimes on purpose, terribly irritating; it recalled the "Method" madness inflicted on her by James Dean a decade earlier.

  On top of that, she resented playing second fiddle to Brando's character. It was enough of a conflict that Stark penned a private memo to Huston: "Please let's at least write in enough scenes for Elizabeth so there can be no doubt about it being the best of co-starring parts. We can always either not shoot them or cut them out later."