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

by Darwin Porter

  “The bitch blames me for our breakup,” Lamas said. “But when Jungle Boy came into the room, Lana threw herself at him. She danced with him, rubbing her body up against him. When I could stand it no more, I jumped up and confronted her on the dance floor. I told Barker, ‘Why don’t you just take her out into the bushes and fuck her?’”

  “She slapped my face,” Lamas said, “and I called her a fucking cunt. Back at her house, the reason I got violent was because she kicked me in the co-jones.”

  Elizabeth warned him that Turner was in Thau’s office, trying to get him replaced by Montalban.

  “That fucking spick,” Lamas said. “If I get fired from that picture, I want you to promise me one thing. As soon as you dump Wilding’s kid, will you insist that I be your leading man in your next movie, whatever it is?

  “I faithfully promise I’ll do that,” she said.

  “And Liz,” he said, “as soon as the baby comes, and you’re ready for action South of the Border style, you know who to call.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

  Lamas and Elizabeth never mated again, as Arlene Dahl and Esther Williams were waiting to snatch him.

  When Wilding came home that afternoon from MGM, he looked downcast. “I was put on suspension,” he said. Then he sat down with Elizabeth in the living room to tell her what had happened that day in Thau’s office.

  “Lana got her wish,” he said, “but I’m on suspension. Without Pay.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?” she demanded.

  “After Lana’s problem was solved, I told Thau how disappointed I was with the shitty role he was offering me in Latin Lovers. I attacked my role, and told him it wasn’t suitable for an actor of my stature. That’s when he hit the ceiling.”

  “Mikey, you shouldn’t have said that,” she said.

  “I know that now,” he said. “He described my status as something as low as a piss ant. He told me that the only reason I was hired in the first place was because I was married to Elizabeth Taylor—and for no other reason. My paycheck won’t resume until Latin Lovers is wrapped.”

  “You arrogant prick!” she shouted at him. “We desperately need the money, and I’m already on suspension. I practically had to get down on bended nylon and give Thau a Nancy Davis-style blow-job to get the loan for this house!”

  Elizabeth became so furious that Wilding had to flee from the house, driving over to the home of Stewart Granger, where he’d first lived when he came to Hollywood. Granger was still his best friend and part-time lover, and he always turned to him during moments of crisis.

  “As you know, I’m a mild-mannered man, and Elizabeth almost had me fearing for my life, especially when she started throwing things,” Wilding said. “She became a wildcat, intent on devouring a pound of human flesh.”

  “It was our first big fight,” Wilding told Granger. Although he and Elizabeth had moved out of the Granger house into their own home, he later moved back in again for a week. When Elizabeth rages, I’m no match for her.”

  The only way Wilding was accepted back into the house with Elizabeth was when he promised to call Thau and accept the role in Latin Lovers.

  “Too late, you limey prick!” Thau shouted at him. “Yesterday, I contracted with John Lund to play the role.” Then he slammed down the phone.

  Elizabeth warned Wilding to take the next role he was offered by MGM after he went off suspension—“Even if you’re forced to dress in drag.”

  ***

  Before the birth of his son, and with no film work, Wilding had plenty of time to spare when Elizabeth was away during the day at work. His bisexual friend, Robert Taylor, who had starred with Elizabeth in Ivanhoe, had divorced Barbara Stanwyck and was free once again to engage in indiscriminate sex, the way he’d done in the 1930s when he was hailed as “Hollywood’s Pretty Boy.”

  Ever since they’d met in England, Robert Taylor and Michael Wilding had had a strong physical attraction for each other. In October and November of 1952, Taylor invited Wilding on two different hunting trips to Idaho. Taylor liked to hunt and Wilding didn’t, but Elizabeth’s husband did appreciate, however, the wilds of America’s Northwest and he enjoyed exploring it with a companion as charming and handsome as Taylor.

  Beside a campfire one night, Taylor confessed to Wilding that he’d proposed to Elizabeth during the filming of Conspirator, even though she’d been only seventeen at the time.

  “I was a little drunk and I was half joking, but I shared with her a letter I’d received from a rich woman in Texas who was worth millions. She wrote that Elizabeth and I had the same coloring, that both of us had jet black hair, blue eyes, and were fabulous looking. She wanted us to have a kid together for which she would pay each of us a million dollars. At first, I thought it was a joke, but then I called the woman and talked to her for an hour. She not only had those millions—and a lot more—she was willing to post the money in bond. Along with my marriage proposal to Liz, I told her about the offer. She took it seriously, and maybe I was serious, too. At any rate, she rejected my proposal. I know that you and Liz are strapped for cash. Maybe you can talk her into selling your first born. It would certainly alleviate your financial burden.”

  “You know, I’m British, and we’re a cynical people, cold hearted,” Wilding said. “We love our dogs more than our children. Frankly, if that woman is still around, and if that offer still holds, I’d go for it. But it’s hopeless. Elizabeth would file for divorce immediately. I know her too well.”

  Ironically, Elizabeth in her future would end up buying a baby instead of selling one.

  In addition to Robert Taylor, Wilding was also well-acquainted with another of Hollywood’s fading heartthrobs, Errol Flynn.

  Wilding had been introduced to Flynn at two parties. But their actual friendship began at Le Touquet on the English Channel on the northern coast of France, when Wilding’s boat, which he had named Folie de Grandeur had moored alongside Flynn’s yacht, The Medina.

  Wilding owned the boat jointly with Stewart Granger. Although Wilding hardly knew Flynn at the time, he called out to him, “Hiya, Mike, come aboard.”

  Wilding recalled his inaugural meeting with Flynn in his memoirs, The Wilding Way. “Errol invited me down below to see his all-black bathroom, a first for me, including a black bidet.”

  The two actors spent the rest of the day drinking champagne aboard The Medina. At any rate, an intimate friendship was formed between these two playboys.

  Once he moved to Hollywood, Wilding was eager to resume his friendship with Flynn, and the swashbuckler seemed more than eager to hook up with him again, too.

  At the time of Wilding’s reunion with him, Flynn still owned his hilltop home on Mulholland Drive before his creditors took it away from him. Wilding arrived at twilight, since Elizabeth had announced her intention of spending the evening with Sara. He recalled Flynn taking him into the garden, where he could see the twinkling lights of Hollywood. “From this vantage point, I can piss down on Warners,” Flynn told him.

  Wilding was also invited into Flynn’s private den, its walls covered with photographs of naked women. “I took each of these pictures myself,” Flynn boasted.

  What Wilding left out of his memoirs was that Flynn, shortly before midnight, showed him a “blue movie loop” of him making love to a very young Elizabeth.

  Instead of being outraged, Wilding, as he’d later relay to Granger, was “indulgent” with Flynn, and actually got turned on by the pornographic film.

  Flynn later told actor Bruce Cabot and others, “Where Michael Wilding and Elizabeth Taylor are concerned, I was like Julius Caesar—that is, a husband to every wife and a wife to every husband.”

  During his status as an out-of-work actor in Hollywood, Wilding had a number of other encounters with some of the top stars of Hollywood. He was seen at one point leaving Judy Garland’s suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  “The only break in my lonely day was a lunchtime visit
to Elizabeth at the studio. There, I was surrounded by famous names all in make-up doing a day’s work, while I tagged along as Elizabeth’s side like a tame poodle.”

  One of his most memorable encounters, which he relayed in a highly edited version in his memoirs, involved yet another encounter with Marilyn Monroe. He recalled that he was in the garden of his home on Summitridge painting one afternoon when he heard the doorbell ring. When he opened the door, he was startled to find Monroe standing there.

  In a breathless voice, she told him that her photographer was taking publicity stills of her and wanted to use Elizabeth Taylor’s home as a picturesque background.

  “I need a place to change my outfits,” she told him.

  “Say no more,” Wilding replied. “Welcome to Chez Wilding.” Ushering her inside, he told her that Elizabeth was at the studio and that she could use their bedroom.

  Throughout the rest of the afternoon, Marilyn was running in and out of the house, changing costumes. When the photo shoot was over, he offered her a glass of champagne.

  She smiled at him, “Do you mind if I take my shoes off?”

  “Take off anything you like,” he told her.

  Although he left his readers dangling at this point in his memoirs, apparently Monroe pulled off everything and stood before him. “Please make me feel like a pulled-together woman and not like a cracked egg. That is, my face all coming apart—you know, my eyes pointing in two directions and two noses like a Picasso painting.”

  From his later reports to Granger, it was determined that Wilding, “Like the staunch Englishman I am, I did my duty for Queen and Country.”

  In a few short years, he mourned the early deaths of his friends, Flynn and Robert Taylor, and also the demise of Monroe, asserting, “She died so tragically young.”

  ***

  Back in Hollywood, Monty called Elizabeth to tell he that he was making pictures again. “I want to see you, of course, but my main reason for doing so is to feel your belly. I want to know how big it is.”

  She agreed to meet him at his favorite dive in Malibu, Mary’s, which was popular with gay couples. Cozy and intimate, it had only eight tables and was run by a friend of Monty’s, Betsy Jane Elkin, recently from Georgia. She operated the place entirely by herself, including doing the cooking and waiting on tables. Sometimes Monty was behind the bar, mixing drinks for her customers.

  Monty told Elizabeth that he was attracted to Betsy Jane because she managed all the chores with a wooden leg.

  Within the cozy bistro, Elizabeth gorged herself, ordering two bowls of pasta (lasagna and tortellini). Monty had never seen her this fat. “I’m eating for two people,” she said.

  At table, with Betsy Jane providing the food and friendly service, Elizabeth and Monty talked and talked…and then talked some more. “It was one of our marathon gabfests,” she later recalled.

  Regarding her disastrous marriage to Nicky Hilton, he wanted to known, “How is Life With Father?” He was referring to both her 1947 film and also to her new life with Wilding.

  “There are problems,” she said. “He doesn’t like being Mr. Elizabeth Taylor. In London, he was a big deal in films. Here, he’s on suspension. Mostly he’s a housewife—somebody’s got to do it. You know me, the biggest slob in the world.”

  “When is the baby due?” he asked.

  “In January,” she said. “I was thinking of making you the godfather.”

  “Oh, Bessie Mae, I can’t even look after myself, much less take care of your child, if you and Michael were killed in an accident.”

  It was three o’clock in the morning when Betsy Jane served their last round of drinks. Closing time was usually at midnight. “I’ve got to paint this little bistro of mine before I open tomorrow night, and I’ve got to start now.”

  Elizabeth later asserted that she and Monty joined in. “It was a lot of fun. We painted the walls until eight o’clock that morning. Betsy Jane and Monty got up on a ladder. Because of my condition, I painted the lower part.”

  When she finally got home, it was nine o’clock in the morning. Wilding was in a nervous state, fearing something had happened to her since she had not bothered to phone. When he discovered that she’d been out all night with Monty, he became enraged. “So you’ve been out fucking the man you’re really in love with and wanted to marry.”

  “Like hell, I have!” she said. “You stand a better chance of fucking Monty than I do. I’m going to bed and don’t wake me until two o’clock this afternoon. Then I’ll want breakfast in bed.”

  She saw Monty on three other occasions before he had to fly to Rome for the filming of Terminal Station (1953) for David O. Selznick. It was later retitled Indiscretion of an American Housewife. Selznick had cast his wife, Jennifer Jones, in the lead role of this picture directed by Vittorio de Sica.

  Elizabeth later learned that Jones fell madly in love with Monty during the filming. When she discovered that he was a homosexual, she became hysterical and had to be sedated.

  When Monty returned to Hollywood, Elizabeth noted that he’d lost weight, which he could not afford to do. “You can borrow some extra pounds from me,” she volunteered.

  On his first night back, they dined at Mary’s again, admiring the new paint job. He told her that he’d signed to play one of the key roles in the filming of the James Jones bestseller, From Here to Eternity, set on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl harbor. The other stars included Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, with Frank Sinatra in a supporting role.

  Before her dinner with Monty, Elizabeth had received an urgent phone call from “my first flame,” John Derek. He told her that Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures, wanted him to play the role of the renegade boxer, Prewitt, in the film, but that the director, Fred Zinnemann, was holding out for Monty.

  “Oh, John, I’d love to help you, but I have no say in casting at Columbia. Hell, I don’t even have any influence over who’s cast in my own pictures.”

  “Monty listens to you, and if you try really hard, you can get him to drop out—I know you can,” Derek asserted. “Don’t you see, my career is going nowhere. This is going to be a big picture. I could win an Oscar, be taken seriously as an actor. It would be a new beginning.”

  “The only thing I can promise is that I’ll talk it over with Monty,” she said.

  “Elizabeth…” He hesitated, as if reluctant to say what he was going to. “You know I’m called the best looking guy in Hollywood, and I don’t have to tell you I’ve got a big dick. It can all be yours again if you’ll do this for me.”

  She was insulted by such an offer, but, according to Dick Hanley, Elizabeth confessed that she “covered up my feelings and promised John that I’d get back to him.” Of course, she never did, and Monty kept the role in spite of Cohn’s objections.

  After dinner at Mary’s, Elizabeth and Monty retreated to the Beverly Hills home of Oscar Levant. There, the pianist played Cole Porter tunes for them, as they sat on his sofa, holding hands and occasionally kissing. Sometimes, he’d feel her baby bump, telling her that one day he hoped to become a father himself.

  She remembered the night at Levant’s as “one of the most tranquil and relaxing of my life. It’s what could have been between Monty and me.”

  Elizabeth remained out of touch with Monty, still her best friend, during his shooting of scenes for From Here to Eternity in Hawaii.

  After the filming was over in Hawaii, director Zinnemann ordered the cast and crew back to Hollywood, where the final interiors would be shot at Columbia. For a brief time, Monty, along with Frank Sinatra and Merv Griffin, were staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. For many months, Monty had been a roommate of Griffin’s.

  Before seeing either Sinatra or Monty, Elizabeth was invited to lunch with Griffin at the Brown Derby. He warned her that Sinatra and Monty had been in such bad shape that it was a miracle they’d gotten through the picture at all. “Monty paid for me to fly down there,” Griffin said. “I had nothing to do but be the
nursemaid for those guys. They didn’t just drink. Both of them poured it down their throats. It was frightening. They seemed to want to drink themselves into oblivion.”

  “Monty has his usual demons,” Griffin told her. “And although Frank is at the nadir of his career and owes $150,000 in back taxes, Harry Cohn at Columbia is paying him only $8,000 for his role in the film. That hardly covers Frank’s bar tab.”

  She told him that she was scheduled to see Monty for dinner that night.

  “He’s in real bad shape,” Griffin said. “Sometimes, at three o’clock in the morning, he hangs dangerously out of the hotel window, tooting his bugle. The manager is threatening to kick us out.”

  “Frank is in even worse shape,” Griffin told her. “His vocal cords have hemorrhaged, MCA [his theatrical agent] has dropped him. There are no more movie deals. And Ava is off fucking other guys.”

  “The other night, I woke up early in the morning and discovered Frank nude on the bathroom floor, an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside him,” Griffin said. “He appeared to be dead. But we called an ambulance and got him to the hospital on time. He told me he’d learned that Ava had flown to London to have their baby aborted.”

  That night at dinner, Elizabeth saw firsthand that Griffin had not exaggerated. Monty had lost weight, was chain smoking and drinking excessively, and at times, was seized by a condition where his entire body trembled nervously.

  She tried to reassure him, telling him that she’d heart reports from Zinne-mann that his role in From Here to Eternity was going to win him an Oscar.

  “Big fucking deal,” he said. “I’ll use the bare-assed statue for a doorstop.”

  A week later, Elizabeth received an urgent phone call from Griffin, pleading with her to come to their suite at the Roosevelt Hotel.

  Once there, she found that Monty had been severely beaten. Like a nurturing mother, she held him in her arms and comforted him.

  From Griffin, she learned what had happened: Since Hawaii, Sinatra and Monty had been sleeping nude in the same bed together after more than one of their drunken nights. But apparently, Monty had finally confessed to Sinatra that he was in love with him. Up to then, theirs had not been a sexual relationship, but was what in later years might be described as a “bromance.”