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

by Darwin Porter

  Then it was on to New York. Once there, they were seen in all the top restaurants, such as “21,” and in many of the chic nightclubs. The couple was also spotted in jewelry stores along Fifth Avenue. “A girl can never own too many rubies, diamonds, and emeralds,” Elizabeth told the press.

  After the whirlwind activities of New York, Elizabeth and Todd landed in Palm Springs. Her longtime friend, Marion Davies, had given the Todds the use of her desert villa for a month. On several occasions, Frank Sinatra entertained the battling couple. “You remind me of the fights Ava and I used to have,” the singer said.

  Todd invited best friend Eddie Fisher and his increasingly alienated wife, Debbie Reynolds, to visit them in Palm Springs. Fisher was used to witnessing physical violence between Elizabeth and her new husband. But one Saturday night, Reynolds was shocked at what she saw: “Mike knocked her to the floor, really clobbered her. I mean, he really hit her. She screamed but rose to her feet and walloped him right back, He dragged her by the hair as she screamed at him and kicked him. He succeeded in dragging her across the room. I went running after him, jumping on his back to help her. The two of them were slapping each other. My heart was pounding. The next thing I knew, they were wrestling on the floor, kissing and making up. Suddenly, I’m like the cop on the beat in a wife-beating case where the cop gets it. They both got mad at me for interfering. Elizabeth telling me, ‘Debbie, you’re such a little Girl Scout. Grow up!’”

  Leaving their desert lair, Mike and Elizabeth returned to Hollywood for the 1957 Oscar presentations. “I’m a royal princess,” she announced to reporters, wearing a $25,000 diamond tiara he’d pressed to her.

  That night, she was preening proud when Todd walked off with an Oscar for Best Picture for his Around the World in 80 Days. Her husband’s picture was in a neck-to-neck contest with Giant, her own star picture from Warner Brothers. But against her own career interests, she was rooting for 80 Days. Ironically it would be Todd’s picture that would bring her millions to spend—and lots and lots of jewelry.

  Her discarded beau, Kevin McClory, was at the presentation, He went backstage to congratulate Todd and Elizabeth. She turned her back on him, no doubt having heard the vulgar remarks he’d been making about their former love affair.

  McClory had spoken indiscreetly about their boudoir antics, even telling reporters, who could not print his comments, but were voyeuristically interested nonetheless.

  “Elizabeth is great between the sheets,” McClory asserted to reporter James Bacon. “She knows how to manipulate a male penis unlike any bitch I’ve ever known. She has the world’s most skilled fingers and, wow, that succulent mouth of hers. She’s wonderful in bed. She’ll do anything, fulfill any fantasy. Some acts she’ll perform you can’t get a hardened whore to do.”

  After clearing up business matters in Los Angeles, and making arrangements for her children, Elizabeth flew with Todd to New York. Once there, she boarded the Queen Elizabeth with him and headed for Europe.

  As they disembarked at Cherbourg in France, and swathed in champagne-colored mink, she met with reporters. Awaiting her at the pier was a $100,000 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud for touring France. Todd had already familiarized himself with the names and locations of many of the country’s five-star resorts and restaurants for stopovers en route to the French Riviera. The car would later be shipped to Los Angeles.

  He’d taken a three-month lease on Lady Kenmare’s super deluxe Villa Fiorentina, paying $20,000 a month. The villa was positioned in a panoramic spot on the Côte d’Azur in one of its most chic and expensive towns, St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Decades later, at the end of the 20th Century, billionaire Bill Gates would purchase the villa for $100 million.

  Ironically, the first guest Todd invited was Elizabeth’s divorced husband, Michael Wilding. There seemed to be no jealousy between her former and present husbands—in fact, Elizabeth and Wilding had comfortably settled into their brother-and-sister relationship and bonded together as parents of two growing sons.

  Todd liked to invite guests, and he went for the big names, inviting three world-famous actors with links to Grace Kelly who, as Princess of Monaco, lived nearby.

  David Niven arrived first. His friendship with Grace had survived their torrid love affair. His visit was followed by the arrival of Gary Cooper. He told Todd, “Grace looks like she’s a cold dish with a man until you get her pants down, and then she explodes.”

  Finally, yet a third love from Grace Kelly’s past arrived, William Holden, upon whom Elizabeth had once had a crush. He told both Todd and Elizabeth that Grace had planned to marry him until she learned that he’d had a vasectomy.

  Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds flew in on May 7, 1957 for the European premiere of Around the World in 80 Days at the Cannes Film Festival.

  Arriving at the premiere, Todd bounded from the limousine but Elizabeth, in his opinion, was moving too slowly. In front of all the reporters and paparazzi, he yelled at her, “Come on, fatty, move that pachyderm ass of yours.”

  She immediately raised a finger to give him the “fuck you” sign.

  In Cannes, he rented the Winter Casino on La Croisette, with all its Edwardian-era elegance. There, he staged a sumptuous banquet for a thousand international journalists from all continents of the world. The supper guests devoured “tons” of Beluga caviar, smoked sturgeon, and a sea of Riviera lobsters. A Cannes reporter called it “glitz and gluttony.” While all of this was going on, a mammoth hot air balloon floated over Cannes to evoke his movie.

  In Cannes, the world learned that Elizabeth was pregnant. At some point, she seemed to tire of the premiere and retreated to the bar of the Carlton Hotel to drink by herself. British journalist Leonard Mosley encountered her there. She made an astonishing statement: “I’m only twenty-five years old and already tired of life.”

  The next night, Todd rented a limousine to drive him over to the casino at Monte Carlo, where he’d also been invited to have drinks with Grace Kelly at the palace. “I guess he plans to fuck her Royal Highness, and doesn’t want me along,” Elizabeth told Dick Hanley, who was accompanying Todd on the excursion. Fisher had also been invited to the palace, but because he had agreed to sing three songs in the casino, he couldn’t go.

  Before Dick departed with Todd, Elizabeth handed him a sealed envelope to give to Todd when he reached Monte Carlo. When Todd opened the note two hours later, he passed it to Dick to read:

  “Dear Mike,

  Stay as long as you want in Grace’s boudoir, and don’t worry about me. I have Eddie here to fuck me tonight.

  Love,

  Your devoted wife

  Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd???????”

  Within a few days, Elizabeth had snapped out of her depression. She told Paris-Match “With Mike Todd, I feel we could one day own the world. He will make all of my dreams come true.” She declined to answer exactly what those dreams were.

  After Cannes, Todd and Elizabeth, with Dick, drove to Paris in the Silver Rolls. The producer had booked them into the Presidential Suite at the Ritz Hotel overlooking the majestic symmetry of the Place Vendôme. On his first day in Paris, Todd went to see Alexandre de Paris, the most celebrated coiffeur in France, who gave him a crewcut. Elizabeth liked it so much that she, too, visited Alexandre, who became a friend and would design many coiffures for her in the years to come.

  The haut monde of Paris fêted the famous couple. Marie-Hélène de Rothschild staged a gala for them, introducing them to the flotsam and jetsam of international society, as Elsa Maxwell had done during her marriage to Nicky Hilton.

  Haute fashion czarina Diana Vreeland

  Mostly, Elizabeth attended the houses of the famous couturiers of Paris, including expensive visits to the showrooms of Yves St.-Laurent, Givenchy, Balenciaga, and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior. She arranged for Bohan to design a ruby-red chiffon gown for her to wear to the Paris premiere of Around the World in 80 Days.

  Ruby earrings dangled from her ears, and she wore
a matching ruby diadem. Bohan told the press, “Let’s be honest. Miss Taylor does not have a mannequin figure. But she has a fabulous face—simply fab—and those shattering violet eyes, made even more so with all that ruby flash.”

  James Galanos (right figure, above), an authority on E.T.’s “avoirdupois”

  Elizabeth’s fascination with the House of Dior did not always meet with acclaim among fashion critics. A London-based fashion writer, Herb Dorsay, wrote, “She looks dreadful in Dior, like a call girl trying to impersonate a princess. Nothing seems to fit her right.”

  Diana Vreeland, America’s reigning fashion diva, earned Elizabeth’s lifelong animosity when she referred to her as “the worst-dressed actress in America since Mae West. Taylor lacks taste, which you either have or don’t have.” James Galanos, a Los Angeles fashion designer, claimed, “Her avoirdupois has always been a problem,” a grand way of referring to her weight.

  In addition to paying for her wardrobe, Todd continued to spend all the money from royalties from 80 Days as fast as it came in.

  While she was in Paris, he purchased three paintings for her—a Degas, a Vuillard, and a Utrillo—for a combined price of $75,000, from the Prince Aly Khan.

  He also flew Wilding in from London to stay with them at their three-bedroom suite at the Ritz. “In Paris, that raised only a few eyebrows,” Dick said. “The French naturally suspected a ménage à trois and let it go at that. After all, these were the people who invented the term.”

  ***

  “We took our road show to England in July of 1957,” Elizabeth recalled. “In London, Mike seemed to generate more publicity than the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.”

  “I wanted the world to know that there is another famous woman occupying the planet named Elizabeth,” said Todd. “She may not be Queen Elizabeth, but I’m sure that one day, she’ll at least be Dame Elizabeth.”

  How right he was in his forecast.

  ***

  In London, Elizabth was told by John Gielgud that there was only one woman in England “who could equal your beauty—Princess Alexandra (aka The Honourable Lady Ogilvie), the cousin of Queen Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth told Todd “I want to meet this alleged beauty.” Consequently, he threw a lavish reception at Claridges for Princess Alexandra, who arrived with her mother, the Duchess of Kent (aka Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark).

  As Elizabeth chatted with Princess Alexandra, she did indeed realize that she was a stunning beauty. But she could hardly have imagined that one day she would be engaged in a battle with that princess for the charms of Richard Burton.

  Standing beside the princess, Marina, the Duchess of Kent, asked Elizabeth, “Are you expecting a boy or a girl?”

  “A girl,” Elizabeth answered. “The world is not ready for another Mike Todd.”

  ***

  When Tony Curtis was in London with Janet Leigh, Todd threw yet another party, this time honoring the wedding anniversary of a couple which had previously been widely recognized as “America’s Sweethearts.” America’s more recent “sweethearts, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, also showed up for the event. Fisher was also in London at the time for the opening of his act at the London Palladium.

  At the time, Curtis sported a beard as one of the accessories associated with his role in The Vikings with Kirk Douglas, who also appeared bearded at the party. When he spotted Curtis, Noël Coward, in front of Elizabeth, rushed up to him. “Come to me, you bearded beauty.”

  As Elizabeth looked on, Coward kissed Curtis passionately…with tongue.

  Coward later huddled with Elizabeth, telling her he wanted her to attend the opening of Wilding in his stage production of Nude With Violin. “I’m rehearsing him now,” Coward said. “He stumbles and stammers and gets into an increasing frizz at rehearsals. But then he throws me a good fuck at the end of the night and all is forgiven. I know why you were attracted to him.”

  “Oh, such a sweet memory to share with me,” Elizabeth said. “You’re such a darling.” She walked away from him and sought out Wilding.

  “I must introduce you to this charming lady,” Elizabeth told her former husband. She took his arm and walked with him across the room and introduced him to the heiress Susan Nell, a prominent London socialite.

  “Liz almost had me married by proxy,” Wilding recalled. “She raved about what a wonderful personality Susan was, so much charm, so affectionate, the perfect mate for a lonely divorced man such as myself. Liz also told me that Miss Nell ‘was a millionairess in her own right.’”

  After meeting Nell, Wilding began dating and eventually married her. “For a while she made me the maître d’ of a seafood restaurant she owned in Brighton, but she soon tired of me,” Wilding claimed. “We got a divorce.”

  At that same party, Elizabeth got a dose of Gallic charm when Louis Jourdan, once voted “the world’s most handsome man,” appeared. When Todd ducked out to check his stockpile of champagne, Elizabeth kissed the French actor. “One day, we’ll do love scenes in a movie together,” she promised him.

  And so it came to be. Jourdan played the role of her lover in MGM’s 1963 film The V.I.P.s, with Richard Burton as their co-star.

  On July 2, 1957, Todd staged “a night of jubilation,” to celebrate the London premiere of Around the World in 80 Days. He rented Battersea Gardens, a Thames-bordering park with a small-scale games arcade and amusement park.

  As a means of attracting maximum press coverage, he staged the event as a charity for the Newspaper Fund, inviting some 1,500 guests, including journalists and some of the top names of tout London. Guests, including the Duchess of Argyll, were ferried across the Thames to its less-frequented, less stylish riverbank in ferryboats. Todd invited Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, but the monarch cabled her regrets.

  Elizabeth was the belle of the ball, appearing at Battersea in a red velvet Dior gown with a plunging décolletage and a ruby necklace from Van Cleef & Arpels. Todd had paid $350,000 for the necklace. “It would have been the envy of Marie Antoinette had she been able to afford it,” Elizabeth claimed.

  As the evening deepened, and as more and more of the Fleet Street reporters became intoxicated, a journalist from the Daily Mail stepped on Elizabeth’s gown, causing it to rip. Todd bodily picked up the reporter and tossed him into the Thames. Fortunately, the reporter wasn’t too drunk to swim.

  Prince Aly Khan showed up with his French mistress, a model known as “Bettina.” Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh were seen at the event riding pink and purple circus horses. Debbie Reynolds danced the rhumba with Baron Shawcross. Shawcross had led the British team of lawyers at the Nürnberg trials for Nazi war criminals.

  At one point during the evening, Dick Hanley brought Aly Khan over for “an audience” with Elizabeth. He whispered in her ear, “I should have married you instead of Rita Hayworth.”

  As entertainment, Todd had hired six bands and dressed the cigarette girls as can-can dancers from the Moulin Rouge in Paris.

  Guests consumed some 500 “Methuselah-sized” magnums of champagne. The producer also provided gold-painted buckets stuffed with florins and shillings for guests to play the slot machines he’d imported onto the site.

  Elizabeth received a proposition that evening from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who promised her, “I can show you what drove Joan Crawford up the wall if you’ll call on me later in my suite at the Dorchester.”

  Lord Dalkeith was seen swinging on one of the swings designed for kindergarten children, and Mrs. Gerald Legge proved to be the Annie Oakley of the night, an all-time sharpshooter winner in the park’s amusement arcades.

  A reporter for The Times approached Elizabeth. “Please say something I can print in a family newspaper.”

  Slightly tipsy from too much champagne, she looked up at him. “You can tell your readers that Mike Todd is my greatest lover…perhaps the greatest lover of all time. The first time he made love to me, my heart almost stopped beating.”

  To feed the roili
ng masses assembled at Battersea, bear meat was flown in from Colorado; huge prawns from Hong Kong; chocolate-covered giant ants from Africa; curried dishes from India; homemade pastas in thirty varieties from Italy; sweet potatoes from North Carolina; egg rolls from China, and strawberries and Devonshire cream from England itself.

  A dozen bars were granted one-night liquor licenses. Amazingly, many Londoners from the press ignored the champagne and guzzled pint after pint of lager, which was dispensed until dawn. Time magazine later wrote, “Mike Todd would pass out salted nuts at his own hanging if he owned the beer concession.”

  The next day, the press raved about the food. Todd had arranged with the fishmongers of Billingsgate for an array of fish and chips served in replica copies of The Times, dated 1893, the year the character of Phineas Fogg in 80 Days had embarked on his trip around the world. For those who didn’t want such ordinary fare, Todd had arranged a mammoth display of the most succu-lent oysters, lobsters, shrimp, and crab. “Elizabeth, revealing what a low-class English girl she was, went for the whelks,” Todd claimed.

  That morning, Elizabeth announced to Todd that she’d lost their passports. In an amazing feat, he got the American Embassy to open up on a holiday, July 4, and issue them temporary replacements. “You know I’m a big man in New York, a big man in Hollywood,” he told her. “Now, after that Battersea event, I’m a big man in London. I bet the Queen wishes she’d attended.”

  With Dick Hanley opening the doors for them, Todd and Elizabeth were last seen departing London in their Silver Rolls, heading for Southampton and home.

  ***

  On July 4, 1957, Todd and a pregnant Elizabeth set sail aboard the SS Liberté, heading for the port of New York. On their first night aboard, over caviar and champagne, he spoke of all the big plans he had for them “over the next forty years.” Of course, he had no way of knowing he had only eight months to live.