Bio - 199 - Elizabeth Taylor: There Is Nothing Like a Dame
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“There’s already a Princess Elizabeth,” she said.
“Yes, but not for long. In London, I was told that her father is slowly dying. She’ll soon be known as Queen Elizabeth.”
“Well, we’ll see what chemistry there is between us tomorrow night,” she said. “He might not find me appealing.”
“That, I doubt.”
Before the night ended, she accepted his invitation for a weekend at his château.
“My wife will be there, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t bring your husband. I can’t tell you why at this point.”
At the gangplank, he gave her a sloppy kiss.
During a transatlantic call to her mother the following morning, she raved about Onassis.
“The only drawback is that at the end of one of his dinner parties, he gives you a liver-lipped wet kiss, but that is a small thing to endure for the pleasure of his company. The next time you hear from me, you may have to address me as the Princess of Monaco.”
Before Sara could probe any deeper, Elizabeth had hung up the phone.
***
The following morning over a late breakfast, Nicky was in a foul mood, which had become customary for him. His winning streak at the casino had turned into a losing streak, and he vowed that he would return to the casino over the upcoming weekend “to win back the bundle I lost—and a hell of a lot more than that, too.”
She told him she hoped he wouldn’t object to her spending the weekend “with Mr. and Mrs. Onassis at their château.”
“Frankly, my dear, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, ‘I don’t give a damn.’”
Then he wandered off for the rest of the afternoon as she spent the rest of the day beautifying herself and reading about the Grimaldis before her dinner that night with the prince at his palace.
From reading the popular magazines, she knew that he was a sports-loving outdoors man addicted to fast boats, fast cars, and fast women, with deep-sea diving thrown in as a hobby.
She also learned more about his pedigree, including that the Grimaldis came from the oldest ruling family in Europe. There was much speculation as to when he would marry and produce a male heir. Seemingly none of the Monegasques wanted their little country to return to French control…and French taxes.
As for the Prince, his blood did not run as blue as it seemed. Elizabeth learned that his mother had been born to a woman out of wedlock, and that his grandmother had been a cabaret dancer. Her mother (i.e., Prince Rainier’s great-grandmother) took in laundry for a living.
That night, as Nicky headed for the casino again, the palace sent one of its limousines to retrieve Elizabeth and transport her to her royal dinner.
Inside the palace, she stood for fifteen minutes in a grand reception chamber, waiting for Rainier. As she recalled, “My biggest fear was that I had not worn the proper hat, though my Dior gown was perfect.”
Almost without warning, the Prince appeared, walking toward her. He was better looking than his pictures, with a cleft chin, hair, like Onassis, the color of squid ink, sapphire blue eyes, and a perfectly trimmed mustache that reminded her of Clark Gable’s. He stood only five feet, six inches, and was dressed in a well-tailored navy blue yachting outfit, as he’d been at sea all day.
She curtsied before him, as she had for Princess Elizabeth in London. “Your Highness,” she said.
“How do you do?” he asked her in perfect English, with no French accent, as he’d attended schools in England.
“I am very well,” she said, “and honored to be here.”
“Forgive me for arriving late,” he said. “We had trouble at sea, and it left me no time to change for dinner.”
He showed her around the palace and led her into his private gardens, spotlit at night. He told her he wanted to install a zoo here. “The gardens are at their most beautiful this time of year. Look at those plumes of bougainvillea climbing up the palace walls.”
“I didn’t know that roses came in so many colors,” she said, as she wandered past those flowers to take in the snapdragons, tulips, and carnations.
From the terrace, he showed her his kingdom, beautifully lit at night. He explained that it was divided into four districts, with the capital, Old Monaco, which he called “Monaco Ville,” sitting atop Le Rocher (“The Rock”).
Perhaps because of his military background, he seemed very formal with her, a bit stiff, really. The talk was idle, although he did tell her that he wanted to visit the United States for the first time.
“Please let me be your guide,” she volunteered. She felt nervous around him, afraid of committing some faux pas. In the years ahead, she would dine and even sleep with royalty, but at this point, as a late teenager, she was insecure in such an august presence.
At the end of their evening together, he escorted her to the entrance of the palace, where he personally opened the door to a limousine and guided her inside. Before departing, he said, “Please give my regards to your husband. Perhaps his father would consider opening a Hilton in Monaco one day.”
As the car drove her back to the Hotel de Paris and an empty bridal suite, she feared she had not made a good impression on Prince Rainier. After all, according to his reputation, he was used to seducing the most sophisticated and beautiful women in France, including the gamine-faced French actress, Gisèle Pascal.
The next morning, she telephoned Onassis aboard his yacht to arrange the details of her upcoming weekend visit. “I don’t think I broke through to Prince Charming,” she said. “I tried to storm the walls of the Grimaldi Palace, but it was too steep for ‘lil ol’ me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he told her. “Over the centuries, European royals have learned to conceal personal emotions.”
After an early morning “rape” from Nicky, she was driven by Onassis’ driver to the Château de la Croe in Cap d’Antibes. Set on 14 acres of prime ocean fronting land in one of the Riviera’s most expensive municiplities, it had been built in 1927 by a British newspaper magnate and later owned by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. A vision in magenta, she stepped out of the limousine, and was greeted by Onassis and his young wife, Tina. In contrast to Elizabeth’s dress, Tina wore a simple white silk blouse and black slacks with leather sandals.
Accustomed to greeting royalty and the titans of industry, Tina was a gracious hostess and an amusing storyteller. Over late morning tea, she sat alone with Elizabeth. “Before I met Ari, I was dating a man closer to my own age. But I found Ari so charming and so romantic that I fell for him.”
“With such a wealthy father, you must have lived a life far more luxurious than a mere princess,” Elizabeth said.
“My father, Stavros Livanos, owns a great shipping empire, but he’s tight-fisted with money. He pays his Greek sailors one British pound a month. When they complain, he reminds them that if they work a thousand months, they will have saved a thousand pounds. Of course, he doesn’t take into consideration what they might live on in the meantime. His idea of being extravagant involves bringing us a paper bag filled with chestnuts for roasting. He walks five miles to avoid paying a taxi fare.”
“When Ari started dating me, I was so young, my father accused him of being a child molester,” Tina said. She told Elizabeth that her family came from the eastern Aegean island of Chios (aka Hios or Khios), the legendary birthplace of Homer.
Tina was only three years older than Elizabeth, and the two women bonded, discovering that each of them had a love of horses. Tina promised to take Elizabeth riding in the morning along the Riviera’s coastline.
After a lavish Greek dinner, Tina and Onassis were ready to retire, but after Tina left, Onassis called Elizabeth aside. “I have a very important guest arriving at around eleven o’clock, a person most anxious to see you. Would you wait in the library and greet this special guest?”
“Of course,” she said. “Since you are friends with everybody, it might be anybody from Winston Churchill to Greta Garbo.”
At around eleven,
the butler knocked on the door and admitted the mysterious guest. It was Prince Rainier.
She curtsied before him. “Your Highness, we meet again.”
“A double pleasure in so short a time,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it tenderly.
She realized at once that the Prince had come for what her future friend, Michael Jackson, would define as “a sleep-over.”
Athina Mary “Tina” Livanos Niarchos (1926-1974) with her first husband, Aristotle Onassis
The next morning, Onassis took the Prince and Elizabeth on a tour of his grounds, pointing out the gazelles, a gift from the King of Saudi Arabia.
After she returned to the United States, Elizabeth was very close-mouthed about her midnight tryst with the Prince of Monaco, even supplying her best friend, Roddy McDowall, with few details.
She did admit, however, that she’d had her first “waterbourne fuck.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“On Sunday morning, we had a bubble bath in this huge gold-plated, swan-shaped tub with gold-plated fixtures shaped like fish,” she said. “It once was in the suite of the Ritz Hotel in Paris and before its reinstallment in the Château de la Croe, it was used by the corpulent Edward VII—you know, Queen Victoria’s son. He got stuck in one of the smaller tubs, so the Ritz had this big tub specially designed for the King. Rainier and I put it to good use.”
Roddy pressed her for more details, but she told him, “case closed.”
“Please tell me more,” he said. “You know I’m a size queen. I want to know how many princely inches, girl.”
“Okay, but that’s all I’m telling you,” she said. “A princely six, and not a centimeter more.”
After her departure from Monaco, Elizabeth continued her on-again, off-again affair with Prince Rainier, even though, in 1956, he married the blonde goddess Grace Kelly.
On several occasions, Elizabeth was seen entering the Prince’s private address in Paris. One reason she was so secretive about their affair was that she wanted to maintain at least a surface friendship with Grace Kelly. Had Kelly remained in Hollywood and continued with her movie career, she would almost surely have clashed with Elizabeth, as they’d have competed for the same roles.
“Let’s face it,” Clark Gable once said, “By the mid-1950s, there were only three goddesses left in Hollywood—Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly. The others were getting a bit long in the tooth—forgive me, Ava.” [Ava Gardner, though still a beautiful woman in spite of her constant heavy drinking, was ten years older than Elizabeth.]
Originally, the lead female role in Giant had been offered to Kelly, with her lover, William Holden, as her co-star. But eventually, the parts, of course, went to Elizabeth and Rock Hudson. Kelly was also offered the lead role as Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. When Elizabeth took it over, a reporter asked her if she minded “taking over Grace Kelly’s sloppy seconds.”
“I’ve spent a lifetime taking the sloppy seconds of other women,” Elizabeth quipped. In the tamer 1950s, such a comment was not printed.
Historically speaking, however, it was Kelly who took Elizabeth’s sloppy seconds, since Elizabeth had seduced Prince Rainier first.
[As the years passed, the Rainiers were often seen with Elizabeth at galas and charity events, including the 1974 premiere of her film, Identikit (a.k.a. The Driver’s Seat), based on a 1970 novella by Muriel Spark. Its premiere was staged as part of a benefit for the Red Cross in Monaco.
In the film, Elizabeth played a psychotic German housewife who flies to Rome in search of the ideal lover, but finds the perfect murderer instead.
Critics, including Elizabeth herself, have denounced The Driver’s Seat as the worst movie she ever made. Andy Warhol had a cameo role within it. In later years, his estate would make millions off his lithographs of Elizabeth.
The Taylor/Rainier passion for each other was still flaming as late as 1981, when the Prince and Princess Grace attended the Broadway opening of The Little Foxes, a revival of a play by Lillian Hellman, in which Tallulah Bankhead had enjoyed a triumph in 1939.
In C. David Heymann’s book, entitled Liz, he quoted Felice Quinto, the backstage photographer for the Broadway run of The Little Foxes. Quinto claimed that both of the Rainiers came backstage to congratulate Elizabeth for her performance.
“Somehow, he left Grace behind for a private talk with Elizabeth,” Quinto claimed. “Rainier was worse than John F. Kennedy. He dragged Elizabeth into a dark corner, and they kissed—more than just kissing in a friendly manner— for three or four minutes. They were literally all over each other.”]
***
In Rome, the honeymooning Nicky Hilton had compiled a list of the six most deluxe bordellos in the city, with the intention of visiting many of them, without telling Elizabeth where he’d be going.
Fortunately for her, Monty Clift was in town to attend the Roman premiere of The Heiress. At their reunion dinner in a hard-to-find restaurant off the beaten track near the Colosseum, he told her he’d just attended the London premiere of his film. On that occasion, he’d also been presented to Queen Elizabeth.
“After the presentation, I was invited to dinner at the Café Royal by Laurence Olivier, Monty said. “He called me ‘darling boy’ and propositioned me.”
“I won’t ask you if you accepted his invitation,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t really want to know.”
“The next night I had supper with Noël Coward, who told me I was the world’s most beautiful man.”
“I’m sure Coward also called you ‘darling boy,’ too,” she said.
The next night, Monty and Elizabeth dined with Tennessee Williams and his Sicilian-American lover, Frank Merlo. Monty told the playwright and his companion that in Rome, he was indulging in “a fuckathon with gorgeous Italian hustlers. I could live in this Eternal City eternally,” he said.
Williams later claimed that he got “the spark of an idea” for his novel about Italian gigolos, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, from listening to Monty talk about the hustling scene in Rome.
At his home in Key West years later, shortly after Monty and Elizabeth had co-starred in the film version of his drama, Suddenly, Last Summer, Williams recalled that long-ago evening in Rome.
“Here I was, dining with what the press called the most beautiful man and the most beautiful woman in the world. If only their fans could see them in real life: Monty ordered raw ground beef, really bloody, which he proceeded to eat with his fingers. Blood ran down his lips. Elizabeth ordered two big pasta dishes. My dear Frank here has a foul mouth, but Elizabeth topped him. Fortunately, we dined in a trattoria in Trastevere, and in those days, no one spoke English, so they didn’t know what she was saying.”
“Monty was a farter. It was awful. He said it was a medical condition, some bug he had picked up in Mexico. At the end of each course, Elizabeth let out a loud belch. Frankie and I at that meal had to endure a poison gas attack that evoked the trenches of World War I.”
Monty had to cut short his Roman adventure to rush back to New York. His close friend and mentor, Libby Holman, had called him to tell him that her seventeen-year-old son, Christopher Reynolds, had died in a climbing accident during his ascent of Mount Whitney.
At one point, Elizabeth ran away from Nicky and hid out while working as an extra on MGM’s ancient Roman epic, Quo Vadis?. Nicky had become enraged and smashed a room filled with 16th-century antiques at their rented villa. Conrad Sr. spent thousands of dollars in replacement costs.
Nicky spent his last night in Rome with Elizabeth, during which she was brutally raped by her new young husband.
The next morning, she flew with him to Berlin to christen the newly constructed Berlin Hilton. She was horrified to find much of the city still in ruins. She told Nicky that the city evoked that romantic Marlene Dietrich movie, A Foreign Affair (1948). “Was Marlene a former girlfriend, or is she a current girlfriend, for all I know?” Elizabeth asked him.
At the end of their stay in Berlin, Nicky and Elizabeth flew to Paris once again. Both had been invited to a lavish Paris ball, the social event of the season. For her farewell to Europe, she wanted to make a dazzling appearance. She spent a small fortune, the equivalent of about $60,000 in today’s coinage, for her appearance in a Balmain gown. She also made an arrangement with a Parisian jeweler on the Place Vendôme to wear $150,000 worth of diamonds.
After only an hour at the ball, Nicky told her he was going out gambling, as he’d heard of this town house in the 17th arrondissement where gambling flourished. She pleaded with him not to leave her stranded at the ball.
He raised his voice to her, and she shouted back at him, introducing some of the ballroom guests to English-language expletives they’d never heard before. Photographers were there from the Paris newspapers, and their pictures were snapped, appearing the next day on the frontpages of the morning tabloids.
It could be said that the Hilton/Taylor honeymoon ended in a knockout punch when he struck her in front of many witnesses, sending her sprawling to the marble floor.
After Nicky stormed out of the building, Elizabeth looked up to stare into the handsome face of Gérard Philipe, the charismatic young actor she’d met through Elsa Maxwell.
“We meet again,” he said, gallantly. “If your leg isn’t broken, would you dance with me? After that, we’ll watch the sun come up over Paris.”
“You’re on,” she said. “My father told me that if you get knocked down in life, pick yourself up and start again.”
“And so we shall,” he said, as she was lifted from the floor into his muscular arms.
***
In September of 1950, a grim-faced Nicky was photographed at Cherbourg boarding the Queen Elizabeth for his trip back to the port of New York. Elizabeth had purchased a French poodle, naming him “Bianco.” She held him tenderly in her arms.