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

by Darwin Porter

  Wilding immediately called Scotland Yard, which put investigators on the case.

  Chain smoking and visibly shaken, Elizabeth, with Wilding, headed to the airport.

  When she finally reached Hollywood, she confessed to Janet Leigh, “I felt at any moment that I would be assassinated—or else the plane would be bombed.”

  Scotland Yard never tracked down the author of the threat. But for Elizabeth, it was the beginning of her paying the price for fame and notoriety.

  Throughout the rest of her life, she’d be stalked, blackmailed, or threatened with death.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Love Amid the Rubbish

  (OF ELIZABETH’S ALMOST-FORGOTTEN FILMS)

  In Hollywood, Elizabeth barged into Benny Thau’s office at MGM and virtually blackmailed him. Even though she’d signed a contract for seven years, she demanded that he also sign Michael Wilding as a contract player, at least for three years, even though the studio was letting others of its contract players go. “If you don’t, I’ll settle in England with him—and make no more movies for MGM.”

  “Do I have to remind you that I have just let Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Greer Garson, and Mickey Rooney go—to name only a few?” Thau said.

  Nevertheless, Wilding was granted a three-year contract at $3,000 a week, plus a two-year option for $4,000 a week if MGM decided to retain him.

  Wilding told Louella Parsons that, “My greatest ambition in life involves being very, very rich, but not work too hard for the money.”

  When Elizabeth and her new husband spent the weekend with her parents, Sara made what she called “a horrible discovery—he’s wearing a damn toupée. Not only that, he has a weak chin, but everybody can plainly see that. I wonder if we can get a plastic surgeon to give him a chin like Kirk Douglas, complete with dimple.”

  ***

  Once again, Richard Thorpe, to his horror, was assigned to direct Elizabeth in The Girl Who Had Everything (1953), even though he still nursed bitter memories from his experience with her during the shooting of Ivanhoe (1952).

  Based on columnist Adela Rogers St. Johns’ memoir of her father, A Free Soul, originally published in 1927, the 1931 film with the same name had brought early stardom to Clark Gable when he appeared opposite Norma Shearer and Lionel Barrymore. Barrymore had won an Oscar playing a lawyer who defends gangster Gable, only to find that his free-spirited daughter, as played by Shearer, has fallen in love with his street-savvy client.

  In the 1953 remake, the film’s title was changed to The Girl Who Had Everything. Elizabeth was assigned the Shearer role, the role of the charismatic gangster went to Fernando Lamas, and the role of the father assigned to William Powell. Powell would be playing Elizabeth’s father for the second time. He’d last portrayed her daddy onscreen Life With Father (1947).

  In the movie, Elizabeth gives up her dull but amiable boyfriend, Vance Court (Gig Young), and falls for a rakish and dangerous gangster, Victor Ramondi (Fernando Lamas). The heartthrob from Argentina was known as “Hollywood’s leading Latin Lover.” In Buenos Aires he’d had a heated affair with dictator Eva Peron.

  The producer of the film, Armand Deutsch, read the script and told Thau, “Don’t waste a big name star like Elizabeth Taylor in this silly little melodrama. Give it to Gloria DeHaven or Janet Leigh. It’s a B-picture, and we’re not using Elizabeth properly.”

  But Thau claimed that since Elizabeth was pregnant, he had to cast her in a vehicle very quickly that could be shot in a short time. Deutsch’s original judgment had been right. Critics attacked the picture, and it bombed at the box office.

  On the set, Elizabeth knew not to speak too early on any given day to Thorpe, who tended to be very cranky every morning. When she first greeted him with a “good morning,” he yelled at her, “What’s fucking good about it? I’ve got to get this picture made before your belly grows too big. Couldn’t you have refrained from getting deep-dicked? Did you know there’s a way to prevent pregnancy? Frankly, if you want me to, I can arrange an abortion.”

  Sobbing, she ran to her dressing room.

  Elizabeth told Dick Hanley about her first meeting with Lamas on the MGM lot. “What a knockout! I later learned he’d used the same word to describe me. He is tall, handsome, and the color of bronze. When he smiled at me, flashing those pearly whites, I swooned. He wore a sky blue blazer and a buttercup yellow silk scarf. But pink slacks! Yes, pink! A man can be beaten up for wearing pink. Perhaps that outfit is fashionable on the streets of Buenos Aires. His trousers were so tight they made everything obvious. Believe me, there was meat there for the poor.”

  During the shoot, the cantankerous director and his hot-tempered Latin star, Lamas, often became enraged at each other. Dick remembered visiting Elizabeth one afternoon in her dressing room. “I found Lamas wearing only his briefs, lying on her sofa in a fetal position. She was cuddling him in her arms. A fight with Thorpe had led to one of his terrible migraines. I was told that he often developed these splitting headaches when he got angry.”

  “Seeing them in this position, I realized for the first time that Elizabeth was more than a mere sexpot,” Dick claimed. “She was a very loving and nurturing mother, the way she was with her pets. I thought she’d make a great mother when her baby was born. As a side attraction, I was impressed by the mound on display in Lamas’ jockey shorts. Back before it was fashionable, he had his tailor make pants for him that were very tight in the crotch. As he once told me, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it. It turns on the horny women and the gay boys.’”

  In the movie, rich girl Elizabeth and her crooked lawyer father (Powell) are watching a telecast of a Capitol Hill crime commission investigating the illegal rackets of gangster Lamas.

  “What’s he like?” Elizabeth’s character asked her screen father, who plays the gangster’s lawyer. “Is he married?”

  He answers that the gangster, Victor Ramondi, “is an animal.” This does-n’t turn off Elizabeth, but piques her sexual curiosity. The stage is set for the debut of a dangerous romance.

  Two views of Fernando Lamas lower photo: Foreplay with Liz

  At one point, Lamas grabs her on screen and kisses her passionately. “You’re no gentleman,” she says to him. But it’s obvious that she’s excited by the kiss.

  When Thorpe saw the rushes, he knew that to make the film go over at the box office, he needed to direct (within reason) scenes of passionate lovemaking onscreen between Lamas and Elizabeth.

  Thorpe decided to write a scene himself at night, giving his stars their scripts in the morning. For their first passionate love scene, Lamas knocked on Elizabeth’s dressing room door to rehearse with her. She brazenly answered the door in her bra and panties.

  As she would later relay to Dick Hanley, “Fernando practically devoured me when we were pretending to rehearse. Call it gaucho charisma. When he turns on the charm, the sexual dynamic is irresistible. What is a poor little British girl like me to do with the guy’s tongue down my throat and his skilled fingers reaching into my panties? He’s a sex machine. Even a strong-willed woman like Evita Peron could not hold him at bay.”

  Thorpe was so pleased with their love scene, he wrote three more. “Their chemistry exploded on the screen. I predicted that they would become the screen’s new love team—Garbo and Gilbert, Gable and Harlow.”

  The movie was doubly explosive for its time in that Powell treats Elizabeth like his girlfriend instead of like his daughter.

  “Lamas had a keen sense of humor,” Thorpe said. “On the set, he and Liz were always joking around and whispering secrets to each other, acting like two school kids. I was very serious about bringing this movie in on time before she dumped that baby on the set.”

  “The way they were carrying on really pissed me off,” he said. “After all, I wasn’t getting in on the action. They could at least have let me watch, or perhaps film it for my later viewing pleasure.”

  The film was wrapped on August 4, 1952, and Elizabeth went home to awai
t the birth of her baby.

  After editing Elizabeth’s scenes with Lamas, Thorpe at a private screening showed them to Thau. When the lights went on, Thau rose in fury and denounced his director. “What in fuck is wrong with you? You’ve made a blue movie. All these scenes have to be cut.”

  Thorpe was furious, but had no choice. That’s why the film today is only seventy minutes long.

  The third male lead in The Girl Who Had Everything went to Gig Young, who never achieved the major stardom he so longed for, in spite of his good looks and charm. He was known mainly for second leads and supporting roles.

  Thorpe claimed that even though Young was married at the time, “He fell big time for Liz. I think he walked around the set with a perpetual erection.”

  “I lost out to Lamas both on the screen and in real life,” Young recalled. “She flirted with me and was the ultimate prick teaser. Even so, we became friends.”

  When Elizabeth met Young, he had divorced his second wife, Sophie Rosenstein, in 1952, and had not remarried. In 1956, he wed Elizabeth Montgomery. “I was a bachelor-at-large and raring to go when Elizabeth walked onto the set,” he recalled. “We had four ‘official’ dates but not a lot came from it. We were just out for fun, nothing too serious.”

  “I’m not going to say if we did it or not, as it’s nobody’s god damn business. She always had a boyfriend and a husband stashed away somewhere. She warned me about my excessive drinking, but then, she wasn’t one to point fingers.”

  “Our relationship finally devolved into phone calls, but she was also supportive and encouraged me,” Young said. “She gave me a little party when I won the Oscar.”

  In 1969, Young appeared in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, starring Jane Fonda. His Academy Award was for Best Supporting Actor in that film.

  [Elizabeth was horrified to learn of her co-star’s death in 1978. His career was in decline because of his alcoholism. That same year, he’d married a 21-year-old German woman, Kim Schmidt. On October 19, three weeks into his marriage, the police found the newly married couple dead in their Manhattan apartment. Young had shot his wife and then shot himself in a murder/suicide. The motive for the killings has never been made clear.

  Elizabeth had her own speculation. “Gig had a dark side to him, and that is one of the reasons I never got too involved with him. One night in my car— he was too drunk to drive—we were heading up the coast to Malibu with me at the wheel. He kept urging me to go faster, and I refused. At one point, he pressed down on my foot with his big left foot. The accelerator was pressed against the floor. I screamed that I was losing control of the car since I was not the world’ greatest driver. I almost crashed head-on into an oncoming truck. At that speed we would have been killed instantly. At the last minute, he took his foot off mine, and I brought the car under control. I never went out with him again.”

  Elizabeth told Roddy McDowall that the last time she’d talked to Young, he complained bitterly that he’d become impotent. He cited that as the reason for his wanting to marry a girl the age Elizabeth was when he first worked with her.

  “He was very despondent, and he seemed to have plunged deeper and deeper into the bottle,” Elizabeth said. “Obviously, the marriage to that girl didn’t work out as he planned. He had a lot of pride. Maybe she said things to him and mocked him as a man. We’ll never know.”]

  ***

  Elizabeth was pregnant throughout most of the shoot, and her weight really ballooned at the very end, going from 112 pounds to 155 pounds before term. She was no longer capable, with any believable continuity, of facing the camera, and MGM put her on a limited suspension, lowering her salary back to $2,000 a week until she could face the cameras once again after childbirth.

  Gig Young, in happier times

  When she was placed on suspension, Elizabeth had some choice words for Thau and Dore Schary—“Shitassed motherfucking faggot cock-suckers.” At least that is what her friend, author Truman Capote, later attributed to her.

  Setting out on a house hunt, Elizabeth announced, “I need a nest in which to hatch the egg.”

  Her friend, George MacLean, was a talented architect, and he designed a home in Beverly Hills especially for her. It was surrounded by a wall and had a locked gate which was electronically controlled from inside the house as a means of blocking out overeager fans.

  “The architecture and landscape were perfectly integrated,” she later wrote. “Both house and garden seemed enchanted, like a scene from a fairy tale. Michael and I scraped the money together and bought the place.”

  Elizabeth also got Thau to advance her $50,000 as the down payment on her dream house. To make the full nut, she withdrew all the money set aside for her in bonds under the Jackie Coogan law for child stars. The bonds she cashed brought in $47,000. Any money left over went for the payment of pediatric bills.

  In the spring of 1952, the Wildings bought the house at 1771 Summitridge in Beverly Hills. Even though she’d been married twice, Elizabeth had enough clout to get Thau to grant her mother a contract paying $300 a week, designating Sara as her “chaperone,” a position usually reserved for child stars.

  Elizabeth and Michael moved into the house before it was fully furnished. He wanted to ship over some of his English antiques, which had been in storage in London, but she demanded that everything be modern.

  In their new kitchen, she explained the new diet that would be in effect if he expected her to cook. “I can pop corn, make fudge, and cook bacon and eggs. Sometimes I burn the bacon, though. But my specialty, a never-fail dish, is sliced tomatoes and capers fried in bacon grease.”

  During Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Wilding decided he much preferred the life of a painter instead of that of an actor. He practiced his painting by drawing faces on her distended stomach. She’d bought a dozen maternity blouses in rainbow-hued colors, and at parties she’d lift the garment to show off, not only her belly, but Wilding’s latest artistic endeavors.

  A pregnant Elizabeth and Wilding were asleep in their bedroom when they heard an urgent ringing of their doorbell. Someone had obviously circumvented their locked gated. “Who in hell is it at this hour?” a drowsy Elizabeth asked.

  “I’ll see,” he said, before going downstairs. She heard voices in the hallway. Wilding seemed to be talking to some hysterical woman. In about ten minutes, he called up the stairs for Elizabeth: “It’s Lana!,” he shouted at her. “Come on down.”

  In the living room, Elizabeth encountered Lana Turner sitting on her sofa, nervously smoking a cigarette and belting down a glass of vodka.

  A turban crowned her head, and her bruised face was not made up. On seeing Elizabeth, she burst into tears. Elizabeth sat beside her on the sofa and embraced her; “What is it, darling?”

  “It’s too horrible,” Turner said.

  At first, Elizabeth was horrified, thinking that somehow Turner had learned about her studio romance with her boyfriend, Lamas, on the set of The Girl Who Had Everything, and that she’d come to raise hell about it. But that was not the case.

  Wilding was already well acquainted with Lamas, since he’d starred with Greer Garson and him in The Law and the Lady (1951). He filled Elizabeth in on what had occurred the night before, telling her what Turner had just confided to him.

  Turner and her live-in lover, Lamas, had been a guest at a party thrown by Marion Davies in Santa Monica. The mistress of William Randolph Hearst was known for her fabulous parties.

  When Lex Barker, the screen’s Tarzan, came into the party, Turner did not suppress her immense attraction to the handsome hulk. Unknown to Turner, Elizabeth had already sampled the wares of this astonishingly attractive male, and she couldn’t blame Turner for her response to his immense sex appeal.

  “Apparently, Lamas went into a jealous rage when Lana here was dancing too close to Barker,” Wilding said. “They had a public row. Shouting, threats, face slapping—the works.”

  “We fought all the way back to my house,” Turner said, regainin
g her composure. “Once we got inside my hallway, Lamas attacked me. I fell on the floor, and he kicked me in the ribs. He pounded my face, threatening to destroy my beauty. I screamed and tried to protect my face from the blows of this hot-tempered jerk. I threatened to call the police and I ordered him out of my house… forever.”

  Elizabeth was well aware that Wilding was set to appear in his first MGM film, Latin Lovers, with Turner and Lamas.

  “I can’t work with the bastard now,” Turner said. “I need Michael’s support. I want him to take me to Benny Thau’s office this morning. Latin Lovers is about to go before the cameras, and I refuse to do the picture with Lamas.”

  “Michael, get dressed, and I’ll get Lana some coffee,” Elizabeth said. Then she turned to Lana. “You look in bad shape. You can’t face the cameras today.”

  Over coffee, Elizabeth told Turner that Wilding had serious reservations about his own role in Latin Lovers. He’d been cast as the second male lead. “Your meeting with Thau will give Michael a chance to air his own grievances.”

  “There’s an obvious replacement for Lamas,” Turner told her. “Ricardo Montalban.”

  “There’s irony here,” Elizabeth said. “The Argentine beefsteak was imported to Hollywood to replace Ricardo. But if Thau goes for it, Ricardo could indeed replace Lamas.”

  “Lamas told me that the difference between Latin and Anglo-Saxon men is that a Latin will give you a little more of everything—more headaches, more temper, more tenderness.” Turner said, ruefully. “I got the temper and the headaches.”

  An hour after Wilding left to drive Turner to MGM, Lamas placed a call to Elizabeth. She reported to him what had just transpired in her living room.