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

by Darwin Porter

  For the rest of her days, Sybil would have only one additional conversation with Burton, a two-minute dialogue about their children.

  Tiring of London, she moved to New York. After her divorce, and after a brief involvement with John Valva, Sybil opened Arthur, “the mother of all discos,” on 54th Street in New York. It quickly became “the disco” of the 1960s, attracting everybody from Bette Davis to Sophia Loren. Jackie Kennedy was seen dancing with Robert Kennedy, who was later caught in a phone booth lip-locked with dancer Rudolf Nureyev. Truman Capote danced with Bette Davis, Princess Margaret, and Andy Warhol.

  Sybil later shocked her fans by marrying Jordan Christopher, the handsome, sexy singer of the house band, “The Wild Ones.” Most of her friends predicted that the marriage would not last. They were wrong. She was still married to the singer at the time of his death in 1996.

  ***

  At The Dorch, Elizabeth constantly complained to Burton about Eddie Fisher’s latest demands during their divorce proceedings. Fisher wanted all the jewelry he’d given to Elizabeth returned, even though he’d bought most of it with her own money.

  When she wasn’t complaining about Fisher, or making love to Burton, she read over film scripts that arrived. To her amazement, she was getting no really good film offers. In contrast, Burton had achieved the international stardom he coveted.

  During one of their fights, she screamed at him in front of Dick, “I made you a star, and I can break you!”

  Of course, that was an idle threat.

  As a bankable movie star, Burton became increasingly demanding about the salary he’d expect for his acting performances. Time declared, “He is a kind of folk hero out of nowhere, with an odd name like Richard instead of Rock, or Rip, or Tab. He has outtabbed, outrocked, and outstripped the lot of them. He is the new Mr. Box Office.”

  It was time to return to America when Burton discovered a script he liked. It was the role of a defrocked priest in Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana. It had been a Broadway play starring Bette Davis in an orange wig.

  Elizabeth read the script and was intrigued by the role of the female lead, although the character who ran a small beachfront hotel in Mexico was “little more than a whore.”

  “I objected to playing a whore in Butterfield 8,” she told Burton, “but I’m ready to do so now.”

  She called her friend Tennessee in Key West only to learn that the role had already been assigned to Ava Gardner.

  “Talk about a whore playing a whore,” Elizabeth said sarcastically.

  “Ava’s not all that bad,” Burton later told her.

  “If I hear you’re fucking her, I’ll tie you up and remove each egg of your testicles…very slowly and very painfully.”

  “Oh, luv, what do I need with a grandmother like Ava when I’ve got fresh quail like you?”

  “Just to make sure, I’m hanging out with you to protect my investment.”

  ***

  “The arrival of the “scandalous” Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Mexico City occurred on September 22, 1963. As mobs descended on the airport, it became an international media event. Elizabeth was accompanying Burton to Mexico, where he’d be filming Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana.

  Losing her purse, part of her wardrobe, and even her shoes, Elizabeth made it through the crowd with the help of strong-armed security guards. “Fuck this!” she shouted at Burton. “They think we’re the Beatles!”

  Even before they left the airport, “The Liz & Dick” show entertained the masses by staging a big fight over a missing case of jewelry, each blaming the other for its disappearance. The box later turned up in a packed suitcase.

  A press conference had been scheduled, but Burton refused to attend. However, he did issue a statement. “This is my first visit to Mexico. I hope it will be my last.”

  In a short time he would change his mind and buy a vacation home there.

  Elizabeth had a different opinion. She told the press, “I have always wanted to come back to fucking Mexico. I like fucking Mexico.” The Mexican reporters printed her remarks but left out the two adjectives.

  Initially, there was a lot of misunderstanding in the press, headlines claiming that Elizabeth, not Ava Gardner, would be the female star of the movie.

  John Huston, the project’s director, had wanted Marlon Brando to play the defrocked priest, but Ray Stark, the producer, favored either Richard Harris or William Holden. Finally, they settled on Burton. Ava Gardner had been their first choice as the notorious innkeeper, but Melina Mercouri was also held out as a replacement.

  For the role of Deborah Kerr’s grandfather, Nonno, Huston wanted Carl Sandburg, America’s most famous playwright, but he was in failing health. The role instead went to Cyril Delevanti.

  According to Dick Hanley, who accompanied the famous pair, Elizabeth arrived “pissed off” at director John Huston. In fact, by the second day, she was already lambasting him as “an ugly, old, mean, withering fart,” charging that he had mentally abused her friend Monty Clift during the filming of both The Misfits (1961) and Freud (1962).

  In retribution, the director rather ungallantly chose to bring up the subject of how Elizabeth was “shameless” in stealing Mike Todd from Huston’s former wife, Evelyn Keyes.

  Zoe Sallis showed up in Puerto Vallarta. It was common knowledge that she was Huston’s mistress.

  In 1963, Puerto Vallarta was a seedy little fishing village lying three hundred miles north of Acapulco. Tacky and not very well known, it became instantly famous when Elizabeth and Burton arrived and put it on the international tourist map.

  The actual shooting of Iguana took place on the isolated peninsula of Mismaloya, which had no road access to the mainland and could be reached only by boat. The only inhabitants on Mismaloya were Indians who lived in thatched huts and survived on fishing.

  Elizabeth and Burton and all their massive amounts of luggage were taken to Puerto Vallarta and delivered to “Gringo Gulch,” an upmarket section where Americans had purchased a number of vacation homes. Locals had another name for it, referring to it as La Casa de Zoplotes (the House of the Buzzards) because it lay near a garbage dump.

  Whereas Burton had an actual part in the filming, Elizabeth was on site to see that he didn’t go astray in the arms of any of his female co-stars, who included man-eating Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon.

  Elizabeth also had to keep her eye out for at least fifty whores, some of them diseased, who had arrived from Mexico City to service the film crew. At least half of that number of male hustlers had also come to Puerto Vallarta to service homosexual members of the crew.

  Arriving at the port, Elizabeth feared she’d be assigned to some shack, but was delighted by Casa Kimberley, the villa provided for her. In fact, she liked it so much she bought it for $40,000.

  Burton liked the ramshackle port, too, and he eventually built a villa across the street, connecting the two properties with a footbridge that linked the two buildings. It was inspired by the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. “I can run across the bridge and escape from Liz when she becomes a raging harridan,” Burton told Michael Wilding, who was all too familiar with her rages.

  It would take almost a novel to untangle the past and present romantic entanglements that whirled around the cast and crew of Iguana. Before it was over, Kerr told the press, “I’m the only one here not shacked up with somebody.”

  She left out the fact that she was accompanied by her husband, Peter Vier-tel, the scriptwriter who had previously worked with Huston on The African Queen (1951) with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Viertel had also been the former lover of Ava Gardner.

  There were other sexual embarrassments unfolding. Huston had a reunion with Gardner, with whom he’d once had a torrid affair. Huston had also once pursued Kerr.

  Elizabeth knew the Kerr had had a sexual tryst years before with Stewart Granger, but she was not certain if Burton had had an affair with her in Britain.

&nb
sp; Elizabeth experienced her own walks down memory lane when Michael Wilding arrived in Puerto Vallarta. Her former husband was now the assistant to Burton’s agent, Hugh French. Relationships between Burton and Wilding were still friendly, and Elizabeth had no animosity toward him. It had not been a bitter divorce. They were both involved in the rearing of their two sons, and both of them loved their boys very much, even though neither of them would ever win any awards for parenting.

  Puerto Vallarta: The Burton villas and their interconnecting bridge

  Wilding was no longer lusting for Elizabeth. He showed up with a beautiful Swedish actress, Karen von Unge. She recalled, “Michael was a dear, sensitive man who should have been a great painter. Here he was, carrying suitcases of chili for Elizabeth from Chasen’s in Los Angeles because she asked for them. She simply asked, and men did—it was that simple.”

  Huston looked upon Wilding as “a pathetic figure. He was once a big star in England, but he gave it up for Elizabeth. What did it get him? Now he serves her drinks and picks up dog poop for her. He’s like the Erich von Stroheim character in Sunset Blvd.. Formerly married to Gloria Swanson in the movie, he becomes her butler.”

  Anticipating feuds, Huston passed out derringers to key members of his cast. These were the kind of small pistols that card sharps used to wear up their sleeves. With the pistols, he gave each person a silver bullet with a name etched onto it. Even though she was not a member of the cast, the derringer he gave Elizabeth was gold-plated.

  Unlike the others, Elizabeth received five bullets, each with a name on it— Richard Burton, Sue Lyon, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr. The director also included one with the name of John Huston.

  On seeing Elizabeth again over drinks, Gardner said, “Dear heart, you and Richard are the Frank and Ava of the 1960s.”

  Evelyn Keyes, though not in Mexico, was present at least in memory. Elizabeth had stolen Mike Todd from her following her divorce from John Huston. Keyes was now married to Artie Shaw, who had been Gardner’s former husband.

  The plot thickened when Budd Schulberg, author of the Hollywood novel, What Makes Sammy Run? and the screenplay for On the Waterfront, arrived to seduce Gardner. Viertel had once been married to Schulberg’s former wife, Virginia Ray.

  In a talk one day at the beach with Elizabeth and Dick Hanley, Viertel confessed that he had abandoned his pregnant wife to run away with Bettina, arguably the most famous French model of the 1950s. “She later dumped me for Aly Khan.”

  “I know Bettina,” Elizabeth said. “I know Aly Khan, too. Oh do I know Aly Khan!”

  Deborah Kerr with Peter Viertel

  “Huston tried to console me when I lost Bettina, Viertel said. “He told me ‘Aly Khan is one swell guy.’ Then, when Aly Khan fucked Huston’s wife, Evelyn Keyes, I told him, ‘It’s okay, John, Aly is one swell guy.’ He punched me in the mouth. I love John, though. He’s fucked everybody from Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Asphalt Jungle to Truman Capote on the set of Beat the Devil when they shared a double bed. He even screwed a neo-Nazi woman in London who gave him syphilis—something he later referred to as ‘the Hitler clap.’”

  When Viertel left to return to the set, he, as a man of the world, kissed both Elizabeth and Dick on the lips before departing.

  When he’d gone, Elizabeth turned to Dick: “Put some suntan lotion on my back, honey love.” She watched Viertel head to the waterfront to board a small ferry. “If he weren’t married to Deborah, and if I wasn’t messing up my mouth with Richard, I could go for that. Ava told me he’s great in bed. I still might go for him if Richard ever gets out of line. Mark Peter down on that list I’m compiling—MEN I PLAN TO SEDUCE BEFORE I DIE.”

  Tennessee arrived in the small town with Frederick Nicklaus, a young recent graduate of Ohio State University. Tennessee told Huston, “Frederick is the world’s greatest living poet, though not discovered as of yet.”

  Tom Shaw, Huston’s assistant director, detested the volatile personality of Tennessee. In his bulldog manner, he said, “I hated the mean son of a bitch. I was having a drink at the bar, and he was berating the shit out of this poor Mexican bartender. At the time, I didn’t recognize who he was. I said to myself, ‘Who is this asshole?’ He was a vicious kind of faggot.”

  One night over drinks, the key players were asked by Herb Caen, the San Francisco columnist, what they most wanted in life. Huston said, “Interest.” Gardner wished for “Health.” Burton opted for “Adventure,” Viertel for “Success,” and Deborah Kerr “Happiness.” Elizabeth chose “Wealth.”

  James Bacon, the veteran Hollywood reporter who’d once seduced Marilyn Monroe, arrived on the scene. “I’m from Hollywood, and I knew John Barrymore and Errol Flynn, but I’d never seen such heavy drinking. One night in a tavern, Burton downed twenty-five straight shots of tequila, using Carta Blanca beer as a chaser.”

  The cast and crew were constantly besieged by reporters, Elizabeth claiming, “There are more press guys and paparazzi here than fucking iguanas.”

  Reporters from California relished writing about the heavy drinking and the behind-the-scenes romances, but the Mexican newspaper Siempre denounced the entire cast and crew of The Night of the Iguana. It attacked the “sex, drinking, drugs, vice, and carnal bestiality of this gringo garbage that has descended on our country.” Siempre also cited “gangsters, nymphomaniacs, and heroin-taking blondes.”

  The local Catholic priest attacked Elizabeth as a “wanton Jezebel” and called on the President of Mexico to deport her as an undesirable alien.

  A drunken Elizabeth was asked by a reporter one night how she’d describe the three women in the cast. She obliged: “Gardner is lushly ripe for a middle-aged woman; Kerr is refined and ladylike until you get her in bed, or so I’m told; and Lyon is…well, let’s just say nubile. No wonder James Mason had the hots for her. When making Lolita, he temporarily gave up his interest in boys.”

  The reporter sent her remarks back to The Hollywood Reporter, whose editor chose not to print them.

  When Tennessee, in a Puerto Vallarta tavern known as the Casablanca Bar, was asked for his opinion of the Taylor/Burton romance, he said, “They are artists on a special pedestal and therefore the rules of bourgeois morality do not apply to them.”

  Burton was sitting with Tennessee when he made that pronouncement. When Burton himself was asked for a comment, he said, “I am bewitched by the cunt of Elizabeth Taylor and her cunning ways. Cunt and cunning—that’s what the attraction is.”

  Graham Jenkins, Burton’s brother, was also in Puerto Vallarta, and he had a more sensitive view of the Taylor/Burton affair. “Richard discovered how much he really needed Elizabeth, and his surrender to her was total. Of course, they still fought like cats and dogs. Each of them was mercurial. But they truly loved each other, and that was so evident. That did not mean that each of them could no longer see with their roving eye. Rich especially would always have that.”

  Iguana Games: Two views of Ava Gardner lower photo: with Richard Burton

  For the most part, Burton was pleased with his role, telling Huston, “After this film is released, those boys in the press will stop calling me Mr. Cleopatra.”

  The one thing Elizabeth liked about the script of Iguana was the dialogue. “It contained some of the most bitch wit ever recorded.”

  Over a private drink she had with Huston, she told him, “Believe me, no one adores Ava Gardner more than I do. Such a fine actress, if the role isn’t too challenging. I think you’ll make a good picture. Regrettably, if you’d chosen me for the role of Maxine, it would have been a great picture, and I would win another Oscar to give the one I have company.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, my dear,” Huston said. “Right on target. Forgive my mistake in casting.”

  ***

  In October, Tennessee kissed both Burton and Elizabeth goodbye before returning to New York. He told Elizabeth, “Please show up on the set every day, take Richard his lunch, and look after him. We don’t want h
im to get so drunk he can’t remember his lines.”

  She left her villa in late morning to go to the set, wading through chickens, naked children, and mange-encrusted mongrel dogs. Carrying a picnic basket with bottles of wine, Dick Hanley accompanied her. Both of them boarded a barge to take them to the remote peninsula where filming was occurring. Once there, reaching the set involved a sweaty and difficult climb up a steep hill.

  One morning, Huston launched his day with five Bloody Marys. A reporter asked what he thought of having Elizabeth on the set, even though she wasn’t in the movie. He said, “It’s understandable. She and Burton are infamously cohabiting.”

  Elizabeth made it a point to show up on any day that Burton was shooting a steamy scene with Gardner. On those days, Elizabeth looked as sexy as possible, wearing form-fitting slacks in rainbow-hued colors, blouses that exposed at least three-quarters of her still firm breasts, and plenty of diamonds.

  Her outfits on the set looked outrageous to Burton. He told Gardner, “She resembles a French tart working Place Clichy.”

  Huston’s secretary, Thelma Victor, kept a diary relating details about the shooting of Iguana. In it, she claimed that Elizabeth arrived in Mexico with forty designer bikinis from Paris. “She was packing on the pounds around her middle and spent many an afternoon on the beach. She often was seen picking at her navel with her fingernail.”

  Thelma’s entry for October 24, 1963 read:

  “Elizabeth arrived on the set wearing a loose top and a bikini bottom of sheer white batiste trimmed with red embroidery. She had no bra on and you literally could see the complete upper structure of her tits. Imposing. She was also wearing a magnificent gold ring loaded with pearls and what looked like either pink diamonds or rubies. She said the King of Indonesia gave it to her. Richard said, ‘She’s seducing me again.’

  “She turned to Burton, kissing him on the lips. ‘I was dead when I encountered Richard again on the set of Cleopatra. It was a case of Prince Charming kissing the Sleeping Princess who’d slept through four years of marriage to that fucking schmuck, Eddie Fisher.’”