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

by Darwin Porter

  Elsa Maxwell was on the return voyage, too. She noticed that Elizabeth looked haggard, having lost twelve pounds. She’d also taken up chain smoking and was drinking more heavily than before.

  In her memoir, Elizabeth Takes Off, she wrote: “By the end of the voyage, it was clear that my husband was having great difficulty in reconciling himself to me, as well as to my celebrity. He became sullen, angry and abusive, physically and mentally. He began drinking. He taunted me in public.”

  French romantic heartthrob Gérard Philipe

  In New York, from her hotel suite, the first person she called was Roddy McDowall, who occupied that rented apartment in The Dakota with Merv Griffin. Roddy was still looking for work.

  He asked about the honeymoon, as he’d heard terrible stories about it from the Continent.

  “At this point,” she said, “all that is needed in the melodrama starring Elizabeth Taylor and Nicky Hilton is for THE END to flash up on the screen.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wild About Wilding

  LOVE IS NOT NECESSARILY BETTER

  THE SECOND TIME AROUND

  Back in New York, Elizabeth seemed overjoyed to be on America’s shores once again. But her happiness would not last long.

  She faced an aggressive press which asked her if a divorce was imminent. “Nicky and I have resolved our problems—call it a period of adjustment. Most couples go through that. I’m going back to Hollywood, where I’ll be a proper wife to him, even at the sacrifice of my career. I’ll even learn to cook. Right now, I’m trying to master the art of frying an egg, and I’m also going to learn the right temperature at which to boil water.”

  That was her public front. What was going on behind the scenes was a different matter. Nicky had booked a two-bedroom suite at the Plaza Hotel. His first night with her was romantic, a cozy candlelit dinner followed by “hot sex,” as she’d describe later to Roddy McDowall.

  She was mildly disturbed that Nicky had placed a loaded pistol on his night-stand beside their bed. Around it, he’d wrapped a rosary. One of his future lovers, Joan Collins, recalled his having such a rosary-wrapped weapon. He told Elizabeth that he wanted the pistol close at hand, as he feared reprisals from some sexual partners he’d mistreated who might seek revenge.

  Roddy met with Elizabeth for dinner the following night. He was appalled at both her mental and physical condition, fearing she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “She was smoking two packages of cigarettes a day and looked gaunt.”

  He told her that he was in the process of reinventing himself after child stardom. “Of all of us movie kids, you’ve been the only one who glided seam-lessly from child star parts into adult roles.” She had heard that many times before.

  She told him that she was having dinner the following night with Monty Clift. Roddy warned her that he was a complete mess. “He drinks everybody under the table. He never meets a pill he doesn’t pop or a drug he doesn’t take. One night, he brought three hustlers back to his apartment and had sex with each of them. Before they left, they beat the shit out of him, and robbed him of all his valuables, even his watch and that ring you gave him.”

  Twenty-four hours later, Elizabeth was spotted dining with Monty at his favorite Italian restaurant, Camillos. She noticed that he was shaking, and she even had to light his cigarettes. “I’m losing it,” he told her. “I feel a cold black night is descending on me, and I have no clothes to protect me from the elements.”

  A call to her from Kevin McCarthy the following morning informed her that he’d had to rush to Bloomingdale’s Department Store to rescue Monty. “I found him there, prostrate and half naked.” Apparently, he’d gone to buy some casual clothes, but faced with crowds of autograph seekers, he experienced a meltdown. Bloomingdale’s management was relieved to see him rescued and removed from their premises without undue publicity.

  The next afternoon, she visited Monty at Regent Hospital, where McCarthy had checked him in the night before. He was going through “cold turkey” withdrawals from all pills, drugs, and booze. He was shaking all over and sweating profusely. She held him in her arms. “Oh, Bessie Mae,” he said, “I think I’m going to die young…very young.”

  She offered him all the comfort she could muster and promised to stand by his side her entire life, regardless of what happened. “I’ll never desert you… never!”

  After she returned from the hospital to her lodgings at the Plaza, Elizabeth faced her own life, which was in turmoil. David Brett, in his biography, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lady, The Lover, The Legend, wrote that Nicky, after his return to New York from his honeymoon, embarked on another sex-and-gambling spree, this time with a well-known actor.”

  The actor, in fact, was more than well known: He was the internationally famous Tyrone Power. The matinee idol had begun an on-again, off-again affair with Nicky, the Hilton heir, during the post-war years.

  The following evening, after visiting Monty in the hospital, Elizabeth returned to the Plaza in a state of uncertainty about where Nicky was. She hadn’t heard from him all day.

  As she entered the suite’s living room, she found Nicky in his briefs, drinking with Power, who had his trousers on, but wore only an undershirt. He had always been on the list of men she considered the most handsome in Hollywood, but because Power worked for 20th Century Fox, and because she was employed by MGM, their paths had not crossed. She had, of course, followed his romantic escapades in the fan magazines, most of which had occurred when he was married to the French actress, known only as Annabelle, his co-star in Suez (1938). He’d been romantically linked to Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Sonja Henie, and Loretta Young, among others. He’d had a tumultuous and widely publicized affair with Lana Turner before he’d dumped her.

  Very few of his fans knew about his bisexuality at the time, but he’d had a history of being one of the “kept boys,” of Howard Hughes, and he’d also had affairs with Laurence Olivier, Noël Coward, Robert Taylor, Errol Flynn, and the film director Edmund Goulding. Powers was also widely known in the Hollywood demi-monde for seducing his best friend, César Romero, and George Sanders, the bisexual husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Nicky’s former mother-inlaw. He’d also had an affair with the Argentine dictator, Eva Peron.

  Elizabeth found Power mesmerizing as she chatted pleasantly with him over glasses of champagne. Perhaps fearing that her presence was unwanted, she excused herself and retreated to her bedroom, locking the door behind her.

  About an hour later, a drunken Nicky pounded on that door when he realized it was locked. Reluctantly, she opened it, finding him standing there completely nude and drunk. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said.

  “What in hell about?” she asked.

  “Ty wants a three-way with us,” he said. “He’s had three-ways with Lana Turner and Howard Hughes, and really enjoys them. How about it? I know you want him. Everybody does.”

  “NO! Forget it!” she said, slamming the door in his face and locking it again. He went away and didn’t bother her for the rest of the night.

  After a troubling pre-dawn, she fell asleep at seven that morning and slept until noon, when the hotel maid woke her up.

  Stumbling into the living room, she found the other bedroom empty. Power and Nicky were nowhere to be seen. On the coffee table, she picked up a hastily scribbled and unsigned message written in pencil—FLYING TO LOS ANGELES.

  Over coffee, she read Dorothy Kilgallen’s column, which informed the world that Lana Turner had arrived in New York and had checked into the Plaza Hotel. On a few occasions, Elizabeth had sat with Turner during early morning make-up sessions at MGM.

  On an impulse, she called Turner, who agreed to meet downstairs for afternoon tea. A few hours later, Turner made a grand entrance into the Palm Court, dressed in an olive green suit with pink accessories.

  After some shared gossip about Louis B. Mayer’s upcoming departure from MGM, Turner got to the point: “I heard Ty visited you and Nicky i
n your suite last night. That must have been fun. I’m still in love with him, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Elizabeth said.

  “He was my only lover who took the time to find out what I was as a human being—not just a pretty face with a shapely body. I call him ‘the man who got away.’ Imagine turning me down for that international trollop, Linda Christian.”

  Publicly, Turner always denied that she ever saw any evidence of homosexuality in Power. Privately, she seemed well aware of his sexual proclivities. “Let’s face it, Elizabeth. I fell in love with a bisexual –and so did you with Nicky Hilton. And in a flash, almost within the hour, Ty could switch from being a hetero to a homosexual. He left me without a word because he can’t stand confrontations. Perhaps Nicky will do the same to you.”

  “I suspect that I will be the one who abandons ship,” Elizabeth said.

  “For your sake, I hope so,” Turner said. “Ty is incapable of making a commitment to another man. He turns to men for physical love, but prefers emotional bonds with women, if that makes sense.”

  “You could well be describing my friend, Monty Clift,” Elizabeth responded. “It makes perfect sense. I think Nicky is the same way.”

  “Ty was the most sensitive and gentle man I’ve ever known,” Turner said. “I don’t think I’ll find anyone like him again.”

  “Nicky is the most violent and destructive man I’ve ever known,” she said.

  “Then you must leave him,” Lana said. “Otherwise, he might do something that will permanently mar your face. It’s not worth it. Put your career first, not some man. I know that makes me sound like a heartless vamp—and I’m not. I would never get involved with a person who might threaten me or even kill me.”

  Ironically, when Turner said that, the gangster Johnny Stompanato lay in her future.

  Before leaving, Turner said, “I’ve always thought of you as a child star. But I can see you’re very grown-up. I fear that in the future, you and I may have conflicts over certain men and over certain film contracts. I just learned that MGM is considering making a movie called The Queen of Sheba. Guess who is being considered for the female lead? Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, and this upstart whore, Marilyn Monroe, who is sucking every cock in Hollywood that’s unzipped for her. It’s one way to get ahead in the film business, I guess.”

  Elizabeth’s competition: Lana Turne depicted above in August,1946

  Then, as an afterthought, Lana said, “By the way, in the future, let’s both deny that Mickey Rooney ever fucked us.”

  ***

  To avoid the press, MGM used one of its New York publicists to arrange the transport of Elizabeth and her massive quantities of luggage back to California. It was falsely announced that she’d be flying directly to Los Angeles. Instead, she boarded an airplane headed to L.A. with a scheduled layover in Chicago.

  To her surprise, Nicky had learned of her ploy, and was waiting for her at the Chicago airport. In the back of a limousine hauling them to the Blackstone Hotel, he begged for her forgiveness of his past indiscretions, and pleaded with her to give him another chance. Before they reached the hotel, she was madly kissing him back. As the driver later reported to the Chicago Tribune, “Elizabeth Taylor was all over Mr. Hilton.”

  A day or two later, along with her trunks filled with designer clothing, she flew onward, with Nicky, to Los Angeles, where they checked into a five-room suite at the Bel Air Hotel. At the time, he owned forty-one percent of the stock of this supremely prestigious hotel.

  Two nights later, Jane Powell hosted a welcome home party for Elizabeth and Nicky, inviting young friends who included Dick Hanley.

  “Nicky was clearly bored,” Dick recalled. “With sarcasm, he even attacked Jane for serving a buffet supper where the guests were expected to sit on the floor. He told me that even in Texas, Jane’s party would be viewed as pure corn-pone.”

  In the aftermath of that party, Nicky fled to Las Vegas for three nights, hitting the casinos and running up gambling debts. Seemingly, he had forgotten everything he’d said to Elizabeth in Chicago, about “I can’t go on without you.”

  Years later, she learned what actually happened during his trip to Vegas. He’d flown there with Marilyn Monroe and installed her in a sprawling suite, giving her a pair of diamond earrings. Between September and December of 1950, he would spend three more off-the-record weekends with Monroe in Palm Springs.

  Back in Hollywood at MGM, Elizabeth was filming Father’s Little Dividend, the sequel to Father of the Bride. The sequel followed a predictable pattern within young marriages: Petty quarrels and reconciliations preceding the eventual hysteria surrounding the arrival of a first-born in the house.

  Don Taylor once again was her less than dynamic screen husband, and for the second time, Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett played her screen parents.

  Producer Pandro S. Berman recalled visiting Elizabeth on the set of Father’s Little Dividend. “She looked weary and forlorn. I remembered her for having a sharp tongue and a keen sense of humor. But she no longer thought anything was funny. She didn’t laugh. She complained of pains in her stomach. Because she was drinking and chain smoking, she had lost the fresh-faced beauty she’d shown in Father of the Bride.”

  As the filming neared its end, Elizabeth discovered that she was pregnant in real life and not just on the screen. Privately, she revealed to both Dick and Roddy that she didn’t know if Nicky was the father. “Perhaps it was Rubirosa’s. If the kid comes out of me with the longest baby dick in the world, I’ll know it belongs to Rubi. If it pops out of my womb speaking French, then it belongs to Gérard Philipe. I had unprotected sex with both of them.”

  One Monday, after one of his weekend disappearances in Palm Springs with Monroe, Nicky came home angry and drunk. Elizabeth might have been acclaimed for having the most beautiful face in the world, but he told her, “I’m god damn tired of looking at that face of yours.” He called her “a fucking bore,” and told her that he’d changed his mind. “I want a divorce after all.”

  Their fight occurred at the Pacific Palisades home he’d rented. He admitted that he’d been having an affair with Monroe and that she wanted to marry him. “She’s a real woman, not a hairy ape like you. The only hair on her body is on her pussy, where it belongs.”

  Elizabeth struck him in the face, and he responded by knocking her down onto the floor. Then he kicked her several times in the stomach.

  As she’d later claim, “He literally kicked my baby out of me.” Then he rushed out the door, ignoring her screams of pain. Crawling to the nearest phone in agony, she called Sara, who summoned an ambulance.

  Elizabeth was rushed to the Cedars-Sinai Hospital where the doctor confirmed that she’d had a miscarriage. She rested for two days, but was not physically harmed in any other significant way.

  Later, she told Sara, Francis, and her friends, “I realized at this point that there could be no reconciliation between Nicky and me. It was not like those silly screen spats Don Taylor and I were having when we filmed Father’s Little Dividend.”

  When Dore Schary at MGM heard of the impending divorce, he said, “Perhaps we should follow Father’s Little Dividend with yet another sequel entitled Father’s Darling Divorcée.”

  At around midnight, she received an urgent call from Conrad Sr. in Houston. He refused to describe the reason for his urgency, but insisted that he had to speak to his son—“a matter of life or death.”

  She telephoned the Bel Air Hotel and learned that Nicky was in his suite, but that he was not answering the phone or the urgent knocks on his door.

  Getting dressed, Elizabeth drove to the hotel, fearing that Nicky might be incapacitated and perhaps needed to be rushed to a hospital.

  Letting herself into the suite with her own key, she entered the darkened living room. There was a light shining from the bedroom. She heard voices, one of them a woman giggling. She stopped at the door and looked in horror at Nicky and Monroe fornicating. She yelled at him
. “Your father wants you to call him at once. Why not tell the blonde trollop you’ll fuck her later?” Then she turned and headed back to the suite’s entrance. He did not pursue her.

  Monroe, however, with a towel wrapped around her otherwise nude body, came after Elizabeth, following her into the living room. “I’m sorry, Miss Taylor, for taking your husband away from you. He prefers me to you. You’re beautiful and I’m sure you’ll find another man. Somewhere, someone out there must find you desirable.”

  “Get out of my sight, you brazen little tart,” Elizabeth shouted at her. “You can have Nicky Hilton.”

  As Elizabeth headed into the hall, Monroe stood at the door, calling to her. “Miss Taylor, I loved seeing you in the movies when I was a little girl.”

  In fury, Elizabeth stood before the elevator doors. Actually, Monroe was six years older than she was, which made that parting remark from her all the more infuriating.

  Leaving the hotel, Elizabeth drove to Beverly Hills to spend the night with her parents. Only Sara was home. In addition to Elizabeth’s mental anguish— or perhaps because of it—she was suffering from another bout of colitis and another ulcer. Her mother put her on a diet of Gerber’s Baby Food.

  The next day, Sara, with two hired assistants, drove two vans to the Hilton’s rented home in Pacific Palisades and removed all of her daughter’s possessions.

  After seven months of orchestrating publicity about a “made in heaven” marriage, MGM released a statement to the press, presumably from Elizabeth, although it had been written by Howard Strickling in MGM’s publicity department.

  “I am sorry that Nick and I are unable to adjust our differences, and that we have come to a final parting of the ways. We both regret that decision, but after personal discussion, we realize that there is no possibility for a reconciliation.”

  Hitting on a Hilton: Marilyn Monroe