Stunned by the finality of the announcement, Nicky impulsively decided he wanted her back after all. She refused to see him or accept his urgent phone calls. He bombarded her with yellow roses.
In a telegram, she notified him that, “All the long-stemmed yellow roses in the world will make no difference. You and I are through.”
He telegraphed her back, “The thing between MM and me is over. I found out the tramp is seeing at least eight other men. She must schedule one every hour. Come back to me. I promise to be a good boy from now on, a real family man.”
She wired back, “Your promises have the market value of rat’s piss.”
***
Elizabeth’s lawyers proceeded with her divorce. Two nights before her appearance in court, she met with Janet Leigh, telling her, “My fairytale marriage didn’t even make it past the honeymoon night before the harsh reality set in. I never knew the real Nicky Hilton. He was on his best behavior until he married me. I think he’s psychotic.”
She also told Leigh that Sara wanted her to move back home. “I’m not going to. I’ve rented my own apartment. At the age of eighteen, I’m experiencing a nervous breakdown, probably the first of many I’ll suffer in my life. But going ahead with the divorce is the first grown-up decision I ever made by myself.”
Nicky did not appear at the divorce hearing, although he was represented by two high-priced attorneys. On January 29, 1951, in a Santa Monica court, Elizabeth testified before a judge.
Until the last hour, Sara maintained that the marriage could be saved. She did not want to see Elizabeth “walk away from the Hilton millions.” Elizabeth steadfastly refused to listen, and Sara and Francis opted not to go with her to court.
In a barely audible voice, she told the court that “Mr. Hilton was indifferent to me and used abusive language.”
Since it quickly became clear that she was having great difficulty speaking, her attorney (also her agent), Jules Goldstone, decided to limit his questions to interrogations that would require only an affirmation.
“Mrs. Hilton, starting from the beginning of your marriage, your husband was very argumentative for no apparent reason and would become very violent. That recurred repeatedly during your marriage. In addition, he spent most of his time away from you.”
She uttered a weak “yes.”
“You have a substantial income from your work as a motion picture actress, and I understand you wish to waive any alimony.”
Again, she uttered a weak “yes.” Later, she explained her decision, claiming, “I do not want to be rewarded for failure.”
“And you seek the return of your maiden name?” Goldstone asked. “Henceforth, you want to be known as Elizabeth Taylor, not Elizabeth Hilton?”
Again, another soft “yes.”
On the stand, she could have related a litany of horrors she’d suffered with Nicky, including rape, beatings, and the attack where he kicked her in the stomach and caused a miscarriage. But she chose not to, admitting only the weakest grounds for divorce, claiming he insulted her mother and was rude to her in front of her friends. She didn’t want to cause Nicky any disgrace or to hurt him, she told her friends. “I really don’t like playing the role of the wronged woman.” The judge, Thurmond Clarke, granted the divorce on grounds of mental cruelty, not physical abuse.
Her answers of “yes” became a “no” when Nicky’s lawyers petitioned the court to have the marriage annulled, so that he would be free one day to re-marry in the Catholic church. Defiantly, she refused his request, and the judge denied Nicky’s request.
She covered her face with her white-gloved hands and sobbed. The kindly judge invited her into his chambers to give her a cigarette before facing an aggressive cabal of photographers and reporters gathered outside.
Her marriage to the man she had promised to love “until my dying day” had ended after just seven months and twenty-four days.
Before she left the courthouse, the judge gave her some advice. “Perhaps you should seek a husband who is older and more mature the next go-around.”
Outside the courtyard, as reporters rushed her, Elizabeth turned and faced them defiantly. “I never want to hear anyone mention the name of Nicky Hilton to me again.” Then, with Goldstone, she got into the limousine that MGM had sent to rescue her.
MGM’s final reaction to Elizabeth’s divorce was to demand the return of her $3,500 wedding gown.
In Texas, Conrad Sr. told the press, “My son was not prepared to be married to a movie star, and Elizabeth refused to give up her film career. Nicky could not stand the crowds of adoring fans who demanded autographs while he stood helplessly by. The reporters and photographers followed him wherever he went, and he had not privacy. Nick was resentful, hot tempered, and acted badly under all the pressure. Sometimes his temper really flared, and he stalked out.”
“They never had a chance,” Conrad Sr. continued. “Beauty was the prime cause of the breakup. Elizabeth is a princess who isn’t allowed to lead a normal life, and those near her are affected, too. If she had been a shade less beautiful, if she had been a counter girl at Macy’s instead of a movie star, if Nicky had been older, wiser, less headstrong…who knows?”
In the aftermath of the divorce, Nicky was furious at Elizabeth and at those around her. He told a reporter, “Marriage to her was like life in a goldfish bowl. One time a battery of reporters and photographers invaded our suite—it happened all the time—and one of the buzzards said to me, ‘Hey, Mac, get out of the way. I want to snap a picture of Elizabeth Taylor.’”
Although Elizabeth had waived alimony, Goldstone fought Hilton lawyers for several months over a property settlement. Finally, she won the right to retain all the stock her father-in-law had offered her. She was also granted complete ownership of all the presents given to the couple at their wedding. In today’s market value, an economist estimated that all that loot would be worth two million dollars.
In the next few weeks, the newspapers were full of speculation about who Elizabeth would marry next. The public had begun its life-long fascination with her love life.
Possible candidates included Peter Lawford. It was even suggested that she might marry “the handsome blonde god, Tab Hunter.” At that time, the American public did not know he was a homosexual.
The most speculation centered on a possible marriage to Monty Clift. “They were meant for each other,” Louella Parsons proclaimed over the air, although she surely knew better than that.
Howard Hughes, never one to give up easily, once again came knocking on Elizabeth’s door with the offer of jewelry and, this time, two million dollars— double the amount he’d offered before.
He also made an offer that almost no star in Hollywood would have refused. Knowing that she was reaching the end of her MGM contract, and that the contract was paying her $2,000 a week, he proposed setting up Elizabeth Taylor Productions and agreed to finance her first six films whether they made money or not. She rejected even such a seductive proposal.
On a less frenzied note, the press continued to follow the romances of Nicky Hilton. They included affairs with Joan Collins, Terry Moore, and the blonde starlet Barbara Payton, who later became a drug addict and a hooker. For a while, it was rumored that he was going to marry nineteen-year-old Betsy von Furstenberg, a German countess who wanted to become a film star.
The British temptress, Joan Collins, asserted that Nicky was “a sexual athlete. Between his brother Baron, his father, and himself, those boys possess a yard of cock.”
As Elizabeth watched Nicky date such women as Mamie Van Doren and Jayne Mansfield, Nicky read in magazines about her interactions with a string of men who included Ted Briskin, ex- husband of Betty Hutton; George Stevens, Jr., son of the director of A Place in the Sun; producer Ivan Moffat; and once again her ever faithful Arthur Loew, Jr.
Nicky said, “Every man should have the opportunity of sleeping with Elizabeth Taylor, and at the rate she’s going, every man will.”
He woul
d wait seventeen years after his divorce before he married again, this time to another teenage bride, oil heiress Patricia McClintock. The year was 1958.
Many observers have written that Elizabeth never saw Nicky again, but privately Roddy knew better. In the years after their break-up, Elizabeth and Nicky arranged to spend several weekends together. Twice they met at the Connecticut estate of her rich uncle, Howard Young. Also, on occasion, they arranged a secret rendezvous at the Thunderbird Hotel in Palm Springs where she traveled incognito, registering herself as “Rebecca Jones.”
As she told Roddy, “A girl has a hard time finding a love machine like Nicky. I did see him on occasion whenever I needed a really good fuck. At a time when many uptight American housewives didn’t even know women were supposed to have orgasms, Nicky invented multiple orgasms.”
After a life of dissipation, Nicky died at age forty-two in 1969. The press noted that Elizabeth did not attend the funeral, nor did she send flowers.
However, on the first anniversary of his death, Dick Hanley made arrangements for her to pay a midnight visit to the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Accompanied by two security guards, she placed a wreath of yellow roses on his grave.
She told Janet Leigh, “We married much too young. I’m so sorry I hurt him. I think in his own way he did love me very much.”
It was up to Richard Burton to deliver a latter day epitaph to the hotel heir. “Nicky’s life could not have been totally unhappy. After all, he did get to live with Elizabeth for a while.”
***
In the wake of her divorce, Elizabeth moved into a two-story apartment complex covered with ferns at 10600 Wilshire Boulevard. She lived upstairs over newlyweds Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, who were often referred to in the press as “America’s Sweethearts.”
As Leigh recalled in her memoirs, “The building was a hot property, and it was infested with photographers and reporters once it was discovered. No possibility of clandestine operations here. One false move and you would be on the front page.”
The beautiful young MGM star must have been dealing in hyperbole, or else she didn’t have a clue as to what was going on in her apartment building, especially with her sex-crazed bisexual husband.
“I visited Elizabeth Taylor often in her bachelor quarters,” said Dick Hanley. “There was a lot of hanky-panky going on there, mostly from Tony Curtis, who started cheating on Janet even during the first month of their marriage, the first week, perhaps.”
Before his marriage to Leigh, Curtis had double dated on five occasions with Elizabeth and her beau of the moment. She found this “Kid from the Bronx” amusing and enjoyed his frankness. “I spent my first months in Hollywood going around with a lump in my pants chasing after girls,” Tony confessed to Elizabeth.
The inevitable happened: Leigh had to fly to San Francisco for four days, and Elizabeth invited Curtis up for dinner during her absence. Since she had not mastered the art of cooking, she ordered Chinese take-out.
“I was still despondent over my divorce from Nicky and my self-respect was at a low ebb,” she later confessed to Roddy. “For the first time in my life, I was drinking excessively. I know I sound like I’m making excuses, but Tony and I did it. He can be very persuasive when he turns on that charm. It wasn’t my greatest lay, but he was sincere.”
Later, when Curtis was on assignment and away from the apartment complex, Leigh invited Elizabeth downstairs for lunch one early afternoon. In those days, she had compiled a “picture wall” of photographs of herself in the company of various Hollywood personalities. One of the photos depicted Leigh with Lex Barker outfitted as Tarzan. This New York born actor was the first to replace Johnny Weissmuller on the screen as Tarzan the Ape Man.
Half naked and outfitted in a loin cloth, he had visited Leigh when she was filming Holiday Affair (1949) with Robert Mitchum. That afternoon, he’d asked her out on a date, and they went together for about three weeks.
Elizabeth informed Leigh that Barker was her dream man, and she’d love to go out with him. “I can call Lex up. I’m sure he’d like to go out with you. You see, he likes his girls very young.”
Elizabeth said she’d be thrilled. Three days later, Barker called her. When she opened the door, she encountered a handsome giant of a man, standing six feet, four inches. He was dressed in a black suit, and offered to escort her to the Cocoanut Grove night club at the Ambassador Hotel.
“He was no Ape Man,” she told Roddy the next day. “I found that he was well educated, debonair, and sophisticated. It’s a bit of a stretch for him to play Jungle Boy.”
Lex Barker in Tarzan’s Magic Fountain (1949)
He took her out on a number of dates, once inviting her to Malibu to enjoy the beach life, stopping off at his favorite hangout, Malibu Cottage, for drinks.
“I’ve got to keep my emotions in check,” Elizabeth told Roddy. “I could go ape shit—no pun intended—for a guy like Lex. He’s a school girl’s dream fantasy. He is a great lover, not the King of the Jungle, but the Emperor of the Boudoir. He’s never given me the slightest clue that our relationship is anything but physical. But if he proposed marriage tomorrow, I’d go for it.”
Three days later, Roddy called Elizabeth, asking her how her affair with Body Beautiful was going. “He hasn’t called me in several days,” she said. “I fear he’s dropped me. You know, every time a cockroach crosses Hollywood Boulevard. What’s going on here?”
“I didn’t want to tell you this, but Lex has been seeing a lot of Marilyn Monroe.”
She exploded in fury. “That blonde bitch! Every time I turn around, that whore is crossing my path. She’d better watch out. One night she might get her tit caught in a wringer, if she fools with me anymore.”
***
One rainy Sunday afternoon, a bored Elizabeth sat in her modest living room, going over a scrapbook Sara had accumulated of her film career so far. Reviewing her past work, she felt, “I have a long way to go,” as she’d told Tony Curtis.
He, too, believed that his greatest work lay ahead of him “once Universal gets me out of these god damn Arabian Nights pantaloons.”
The silence was broken by the ringing of her phone. It was an unexpected call from Tyrone Power. He apologized “for that last damn mix-up in New York. I’m afraid I did not put my best foot forward with you.” He asked her if he could drop by if she weren’t doing anything.
Remembering how attractive he was, she asked him to come over that afternoon. Within an hour, he arrived dripping wet but with a cluster of yellow roses. Nicky must have told him that those were her favorite flower.
Over a late afternoon drink, he made no mention of his affair with her former husband, and she avoided the subject as well. When recounting the evening’s events with Leigh. Elizabeth said, “Some subjects are just too embarrassing to bring up.”
Power’s only reference to Nicky was vague. “The best way to get over a former love affair is with someone new.”
Over dinner, he almost set the agenda of their relationship before it had even begun. “I always warn people not to fall in love with me, because I’m moody and unpredictable. Sometimes I invite people over for drinks and dinner, but tire of them before the evening is over. I retreat to my bedroom until they are gone.”
“At that rate, you’ll never compete with Elsa Maxwell as the world’s greatest host…or hostess.”
Joan Blondell was one of the few stars in Hollywood who learned that Power was dating Elizabeth. She’d had an affair with him when they appeared together in Nightmare Alley in 1947.
She told the author of this book, “Ty just oozed so much charm there should have been a law against it. He virtually seduced every man and woman he went after. His tastes evoked a smörgåsbord. Poor Lana. She never knew what hit her. He was suddenly in her life, making her the happiest woman alive. Then, like a bird in flight, he was gone with the wind.”
“Ty and I had a brief affair when he made that geeky movie,” Blondell recalle
d. “It didn’t last very long. In a few months or so, I heard he was dating Liz Taylor, although I’m sure both of them were seeing other people at the time. Liz, by the way, ended up getting my third and final husband, Mike Todd.”
“If it were 1937,” Blondell continued, “Miss Taylor would not have taken either of those guys from me. After all, George C. Scott said I was the sexiest woman ever to appear on the screen.”
For some reason, Power never invited Elizabeth out to a public restaurant. Sometimes they shared dinners downstairs with Leigh and Curtis. They also took walks along the beach in the early twilight at Malibu and sometimes went on long drives up the Pacific Coast. One weekend, they drove to Big Sur.
“It was the most idyllic weekend of my life,” she told Leigh and Curtis when she came back. “I’ve never been that comfortable with any man before, certainly not with Nicky, who could ignite into a firestorm at any minute. Ty and I spent hours together reading or listening to music on the radio. We could go for hours without speaking, but there seemed to be this bond between us.”
“Together, they were the most beautiful couple I’ve ever seen, except for Janet and me,” Curtis said. “But somehow, I didn’t hear church bells ringing. Not at all.”
Leigh said, “Elizabeth told me she wanted the relationship to go on and on, never to end. She told me, ‘Ty is so stunningly handsome and such a sweet, endearing personality—so unlike Nicky.’”
One of the three or four most handsome men in Hollywood: Tyrone Power
One drunken night, overcome with nostalgia about the family units that might have been, the delicate subject of their respective “lost children” came up. Power confessed that Lana Turner had aborted a child that he had fathered, and Elizabeth tearfully confessed that Nicky had assaulted her in ways that led to a miscarriage when “he performed an Indian War Dance on my stomach.”
Power then made a wild proposal to her. “Let’s make our own baby. With you as his mother—or her mother—and me the father, it will be the world’s most beautiful baby. It’ll probably grow up to become the biggest star in the world. It can become that whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
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