Bio - 199 - Elizabeth Taylor: There Is Nothing Like a Dame

by Darwin Porter

  When Nicky’s relationship with Elizabeth became serious enough, he felt it was time to introduce her, along with Sara and Francis, to his own father, Conrad Sr.

  A Hilton limousine carrying Francis and Sara pulled up for dinner at Conrad Hilton’s sixty-four room mansion in Bel Air. “My god,” Francis proclaimed when he emerged from the limo. “We’ve arrived at Shangri-la!”

  Inside, tuxedoed servants raced about, and formally dressed butlers in tails offered drinks. Maids in black uniforms with frilly aprons waited to fulfill every request. “Each of them looks like she should be called Fifi,” Sara said.

  The mansion was like a boutique hotel, with sixteen bedroom suites and twenty-six bathrooms, with fixtures plated with fourteen-karat gold. Along with five kitchens came an equal number of wet bars. Sara was amazed at the dozen marble fireplaces, each in a different pattern or color of marble, ranging from scarlet red to mint green.

  As an art dealer, Francis noted the 18th-century panels painted by the French artist, Jean-Baptiste Hult, and he was awed by Hilton’s collection of Ming vases.

  Nicky showed the Taylors around the house, or at least around a portion of it, promising Elizabeth that he’d take her on a tour of the grounds the following day.

  Tap-dancing Ann Miller was Conrad Sr.’s companion for the evening. The dancer-actress had been having an affair with the hotel magnate, although in her memoirs, she claimed “we were just good friends.”

  “Yeah,” said one maid. “Friends who sleep in suites in the same bed together.”

  Miller recalled that “Connie was a little jealous that his son had acquired a beauty like Elizabeth Taylor. I think he would have preferred to have her for himself.”

  Acting as chaperones, Y. Frank Freeman and his wife drove Elizabeth and Nicky to the Hilton vacation retreat at Lake Arrowhead. Once there, Freeman, although nominally on vacation, conducted business for Paramount on the phone, while Elizabeth and Nicky were left virtually alone. It was here, beside this beautiful lake, that he first made love to her.

  They were assigned adjoining bedrooms with connecting doors. At two o’clock on their first morning there, he opened the doors between their rooms and stood in the dim light, completely nude.

  Elizabeth would later confide to Roddy that as a lover, Nicky was tender and gentle with her, never pressuring her or going too far. “He was so very responsive to my needs, yet so very skilled at bringing me pleasure. It’s easy to fall in love with a man like that. I have truly found my Prince Charming.”

  BE MY GUEST!

  Hilton dynasty patriarch Conrad Hilton (left photo) with (top right) Zsa Zsa Gabor and (lower right) Ann Miller

  Nicky and Elizabeth would often sneak away to the home of his younger brother, Baron Hilton, who was already married. Later, they’d retreat to a wing of his house where they would not be interrupted.

  Elizabeth’s friends noted that a panic seemed to have consumed her, as her romance with Nicky became more serious. She desperately wanted to flee from the protective womb of Sara, yet on the other hand, feared she might become the closely guarded possession of another man.

  Roddy McDowall, meanwhile, had taken a temporary lease on an apartment in The Dakota, the most fabled apartment building in Manhattan. Roddy’s contract at Fox had expired, and his lanky teen years had come to an end. He was trying to rejuvenate his career, hoping to find work on the Broadway stage. On an impulse, she’d accepted an invitation to fly to New York to see him. His roommate was their mutual friend, Merv Griffin.

  Sara wanted to accompany Elizabeth as chaperone, but Elizabeth defied her, rejecting her offer. When Nicky objected to her trip, she decided to defy him, too, traveling there without him.

  In New York, Monty Clift joined Elizabeth, Griffin, and Roddy for nights on the town. They became regulars at Gregory’s, Monty’s favorite bar on Fifty Fourth Street and Lexington Avenue.

  As author Ellis Amburn wrote, “Often joined by a nineteen-year-old, whom Monty was trying to seduce, and Kevin McCarthy, they always huddled in a wooden booth to the right of the bar, chain smoking and drinking. None of the other customers—pimps, winos, a few undergraduates, and middle-aged women nodding over drinks bothered them or even recognized them. One night, Monty flaunted a cute chorus boy in front of Elizabeth.”

  She had long known that Kevin was Monty’s best male friend, and also that he was one of the most talented actors in New York. Before introducing him to Elizabeth, Monty told her that “Kevin is the love of my life.” He had married Augusta Dabney in 1941. Monty told Elizabeth that in his loneliness, he often went to the McCarthy apartment at night to sleep between the actor and his wife.

  Kevin came from a distinguished family. He was the brother of Mary Mc-Carthy, one of the best known writers in America, and also the cousin of U.S. senator Eugene McCarthy, who ran for President in 1968, challenging Robert Kennedy right before his assassination. Kevin would soon be nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his appearance in the film version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

  Elizabeth soon learned that a movie script was arriving almost daily at Monty’s apartment, but that he didn’t bother reading any of them. He told her, “I’m not doing any more movies for the time being.”

  Elizabeth, Monty, and their friends often ended the evening at Bickford’s an all-night gay cafeteria patronized by hustlers. Sometimes, Monty would approach one of the young men for rent, asking, “Would you like to fuck a movie star?”

  She noted sadly that Monty had become a confirmed alcoholic, whereas she was just launching a lifetime of heavy drinking herself.

  Monty took them to jazz joints like Condon’s, and on one night, Elizabeth went with Kevin and Monty by taxi to Chinatown, later ending the evening walking around the Bowery.

  One of their most raucous evenings was at a restaurant in Greenwich Village. Each of them ordered lemon meringue pie for dessert. Monty put his face down on the table and began to lick the meringue off the top. For a laugh, a drunken Griffin pushed Monty’s face into the pie. A food fight erupted, with Elizabeth joining in.

  Management called the police, but when two studly patrolmen came in and discovered Elizabeth wiping pie off her face, she persuaded them to let them go if she’d give the manager a hundred-dollar bill. He gladly accepted, and the drunken party fled into the night.

  Sometimes, neither Monty nor Roddy were available, so Griffin volunteered as Elizabeth’s escort at such haunts as the Stork Club and 21, a former speakeasy. Word soon got back to Hollywood that Griffin was dating Elizabeth. Columnist Walter Winchell promoted this faux romance in his column, although he obviously knew that the Taylor/Griffin association was platonic. He’d once said, “Merv Griffin is as queer as a three-dollar bill.”

  Griffin didn’t deny the romance, since he led a life in the closet and was always eager to promote publicity that he was heterosexual.

  Although he didn’t tell Elizabeth, Roddy learned that while she was away, Peter Lawford, their mutual friend, supplied the hotel heir with a steady stream of beautiful starlets eager to break into the movies. “Nicky returns the favor by letting Peter occasionally go down on that tree trunk he carries in his trousers,” Roddy told Griffin.

  Both Roddy and Griffin, and especially Monty, felt that Elizabeth should break off her romance with Nicky. Yet they didn’t want to “bad mouth” Nicky in front of her, based on their fear of offending her.

  One night, Roddy and Griffin decided to play matchmakers, hoping to interest Elizabeth in another potential boyfriend.

  “I have an idea,” Griffin said. “I met this sweet kid at RCA Victor. Eddie Fisher. He’s also under contract there. Real cute. Jewish. I bet Elizabeth will go for him. If she doesn’t, maybe Eddie will give me a tumble?”

  “I hear he doesn’t swing that way,” Roddy said.

  “In my case, he might make an exception,” Griffin said.

  “Dream on,” Roddy said. “Let’s invite him. He’s sure to be awed by Elizabe
th, at least.”

  ***

  Merv Griffin arranged tickets to the Broadway Theater where Mae West was appearing in a popularly priced revival of Diamond Lil, which she had written herself and had first performed in April of 1928. In his memoirs, Merv remembered the play as Catherine Was Great, which Mae had brought to Broadway in 1944. Ironically, the original producer of that play back in 1944 had been the flamboyant showman, Mike Todd, who in years to come would marry Elizabeth.

  As Griffin entered with Elizabeth, even though the lights had dimmed and the curtain was about to go up, a murmur was heard from the audience. Word spread quickly that Elizabeth Taylor had entered the theater and was being ushered to her seat. Only the opening of the curtain silenced the crowd.

  All thoughts of Elizabeth vanished as a usually blasé New York audience greeted Mae’s appearances with applause and huzzahs lasting five minutes. In this mixture of comedy and melodrama, Mae seemed to take delight in reviving her “classic,” still getting laughs from such now-familiar lines as “I’m one of the finest women who ever walked the streets.”

  Reviewers still critiqued the play as “pure trash . . . or rather impure trash,” but through it all the buxom, blonde Mae prevailed in her Gay Nineties garb. She still maintained her reputation as “the world’s wickedest woman.” Ironically, in years to come, Elizabeth herself would be dubbed as such in the hate press.

  Out of courtesy, Griffin and Elizabeth went backstage to pay their respects to the star of the show. She was engaged in a noisy fight with producer George Brandt, and was furious that some critic had written of the “dromedary dip with which she walks,” and she was demanding a retraction. The producer was patiently trying to explain to her that she couldn’t force a reviewer to retract something like that.

  Seeing Elizabeth, Mae, who had changed into a white satin robe, became all smiles. She was introduced to Griffin, but apparently had never heard of him.

  Elizabeth complimented Mae on her wisecracks. “You were wonderful. You are so Americana. You’re in the great tradition of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields.”

  “Please!” Mae protested. “Don’t mention that old drunkard Fields to me. He once stuck his filthy paw up my dress to see if those stories about me were true. He learned I’m a real woman down there. Not a transvestite!”

  The aging sex diva invited them back to her dressing room, which Griffin later asserted had more flowers than the funeral of a head of state. He remembered her “looking like a pagan love goddess, getting ready for the mating season.”

  After arranging herself, Mae advised Elizabeth to “stick to the movies— don’t go on the wicked stage. The damn producers, when they go on the road, will try to book you into an outhouse and try to ruin your play, washing it right down the tur-let.” Elizabeth was surprised that she still spoke in pure Brooklynese.

  Mae liked to give advice, and she had plenty of it for Elizabeth. “I know everything worth knowing about show business,” Mae said. “First, you’ve got to insist to a director that at least one redheaded actor be hired. Redheads are good omens. I’ve got one appearing in this play with me. I run my fingers through his red hair every night before going on. Second, you’ve got to surround yourself with a real swish, maybe two. A woman always looks more feminine when she’s got a swish hovering over her, doing her hair, her nails, tightening her dress.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Miss West,” Elizabeth said.

  “Now the important part,” Mae confided in a confessional tone. Before facing the camera or going on stage in front of an audience, select the husky of the crew. Demand that he give you an orgasm if he wants to keep his job. When I was doing Catherine Was Great for that God damn bricklayer, Mike Todd, I had this sri, who not only supervised my yoga lessons, but could give me an orgasm in thirty seconds. Some men can’t do that after sweating over a woman’s body all night. After orgasm, a woman looks more beautiful, more regal than ever. Don’t you agree, Griffin?” She looked him up and down skeptically, as if seeing him for the first time. “On second thought, you’re not a man to answer such a question.”

  Vaudevillian / Love Goddess Mae West

  About fifteen minutes later, Griffin escorted Elizabeth out of Mae’s dressing room. The blonde goddess stood at her door. Ignoring him, she gazed into Elizabeth’s violet eyes. Mae was no longer impersonating herself but looked like a real woman for the first time that night—not a caricature. She also appeared fifteen years older.

  She took Elizabeth’s hand. “There was a time, dearie, when I was as beautiful a woman as you are tonight.”

  * * *

  After their exit from Mae’s dressing room, Griffin put Elizabeth in a taxi to haul her to the Broadway hangout, Lindy’s, whose patrons looked like a cast of characters released from Guys and Dolls. All the comedians hung out here—even Bob Hope, who dropped in whenever he flew in from California. On any given night you could see Jack E. Leonard trading insults with Jack Carter or Joey Bishop. Milton Berle was a regular.

  As Griffin entered Lindy’s with his “arm candy,” even this rather sophisticated Broadway crowd stopped eating and started rubber-necking. Martha Raye they were used to, not Elizabeth Taylor, the screen goddess. One awe-struck young waiter, an aspiring actor, almost spilled a double order of matzo ball soup onto Mary Martin’s table.

  Since she’d already eaten a big dinner, Elizabeth had come here for one reason, and that was to sample Lindy’s celebrated cheesecake. Frank Sinatra had recommended it as a “must” on her visit to New York, although he claimed his mother could make a better one.

  As Elizabeth dug into her cheesecake, Griffin looked up to see “Uncle Miltie” heading for their table. Milton Berle usually ignored Griffin, but tonight greeted him like his best friend. “Baby, I’ve missed you. We’ve got to get together. After all, you’re my favorite band singer.”

  Griffin knew that this effusive greeting was just staged so that he would introduce him to Elizabeth. After being introduced to the “King of Comedy,” Elizabeth merely smiled before digging back into a large dab of her cheese-cake.

  Knowing all eyes were on him, Berle sat down in their booth and attempted in vain to engage Elizabeth in conversation. She just wanted to eat the cheese-cake and get out the door. Looking disappointed, he finally got up and left, returning to his own table.

  “Why did you snub Uncle Miltie?” Merv asked.

  “Never heard of him,” she said.

  “Don’t you watch television?” he asked.

  “Never,” she said. “It bores me.”

  “But he’s one of the most famous entertainers in the business, the King of Comedy.”

  “Since when did he dethrone Bob Hope?”

  Soon after, Griffin excused himself “to go to the little boy’s room.”

  Standing at the urinal, he was surprised to see Berle enter and take a position beside him. He reached in and pulled out what looked like a foot-long cock, one of the biggest Griffin had ever seen.

  Milton Berle

  “What’s with that stuck-up little bitch you’re dating tonight?” Berle asked. He shook his penis. “She needs for me to stick this whopper up her cunt. I’ll have her screaming all night for more.”

  Griffin quickly zipped up and headed back to Elizabeth, who was surrounded by fans complimenting her on her fur coat.

  As he was shepherding her into a taxi, she said, “Women usually compliment my beauty, not my fur. I’ll have to get rid of it. No woman should have her apparel detract from her looks.”

  As she snuggled into the fur for the ride back to her hotel, she said, “That was the best fucking cheesecake I’ve ever had in my life.”

  * * *

  When Roddy and Griffin learned that Jane Powell was going to be in New York, they decided to throw a joint party for both Elizabeth and Jane at their sublet at the Dakota. In his memoirs, Griffin claimed that the party took place at his suite at the Hotel Meurice, but Eddie Fisher accurately remembered in his autobiograp
hy that the venue was The Dakota.

  Perhaps the ever-closeted Griffin did not want his public to know that he was rooming with one of Hollywood’s best-known homosexuals, Roddy Mc-Dowall. Griffin especially wanted to conceal from the public that they were sometimes lovers.

  Ever since he’d met Eddie Fisher at RCAVictor studios, Griffin had wanted to get to know him better. Using Elizabeth as bait, he decided to call Eddie and invite him to the party.

  Griffin was jealous of Eddie’s success as a singer, and knew that their recording studio was predicting big success for him. Yet he also had a secret crush on Eddie, even though Roddy assured him that “You’ll strike out with him. I know Eddie. He’s a connoisseur of beautiful women.”

  “So is Nicky Hilton, and he puts out for men,” Griffin said.

  “Regardless of what people say, lightning doesn’t strike twice,” Roddy warned.

  When Griffin called Eddie, the singer at first didn’t believe that Elizabeth would actually be at the party, but he agreed to come over anyway. Although the invitation was for two o’clock, he arrived at 1:45pm.

  “Oh, yeah, right,” Eddie said skeptically, once he was inside the apartment. “I’m sure Elizabeth Taylor is going to show up at any minute.”

  “Actually,” Griffin said, “she’s already here.” He led Eddie into the bedroom which he shared with Roddy. Seated on a padded stool in front of a vanity mirror, she was applying the finishing touches to her makeup. Unlike Milton Berle, she knew who Eddie was. She gracefully turned and smiled at him. At first he didn’t know what to say.

  He later recalled the moment. “I was awestruck by her extraordinary beauty. I mean, by that point I had been around a lot of beautiful women, but I’d never met anyone like her. I fell in love with her that afternoon. I can still close my eyes and see her sitting there.”