by Sam Kashner
Clift read the script of Reflections in a Golden Eye and was eager to do it, but when Elizabeth told him that Richard wanted not only to costar but to direct the movie, Clift became upset. He had never cared for Richard’s acting (he called it “reciting”), and the macho Welshman made him feel uneasy. He and Roddy McDowall had often discussed “poor Richard,” as they called him behind his back. He kept it a secret from Elizabeth—“Bessie Mae”—what he really thought of Richard. It was Elizabeth he loved, not “Liz and Dick,” though it must have pained him that Richard’s career had surged alongside Elizabeth’s, while his own had languished.
When Monty and Elizabeth were together, or had long phone conversations, they would compare injuries and illnesses. Clift thought that was funny, and he would come up with a catalog of Elizabeth’s ailments: ruptured spinal disc, bronchitis, phlebitis, ulcerated eye, tracheotomy…They could laugh at themselves. It was a trait Elizabeth shared with Richard, but one that Clift was unwilling to share with Elizabeth’s husband.
But the two men shared something else: their love of Bessie Mae. Both men took her seriously, appreciated her intelligence. Her emotional life meant something to them, and they cared about her as a person. Clift was, according to his biographer Patricia Bosworth, “the first person to take her seriously as a thinking, feeling human being.” Richard was devoted to her in that way as well. But having Elizabeth/Bessie Mae in common did not bring the two men any closer. According to Bosworth, Clift even tried putting his thoughts about Richard into a letter, explaining why it would be impossible for the two men to ever work together. Thanks to Clift’s thoughtful secretary, however, the letter was never sent.
In any case, Richard backed away from Reflections, deciding not to do it, after all. With Elizabeth’s help, he had come a very long way in accepting the homosexual dalliances of his youth. “The world is round, get over it,” she had told him. “You chose me, didn’t you? It’s a choice, and you made yours. I’m the luckier for it.” But perhaps McCullers’s dark tale made Richard feel uncomfortable in the role. Anyway, hadn’t he just torn his heart out as George? Also, in his unacknowledged, maybe even unrecognized, contest for Elizabeth’s affections, Richard didn’t like the role of Major Penderton, that of “a third banana,” as one agent who had read the script described it. So plans were made to film McCullers’s novel—which would be the first time a homosexual character would appear in a major motion picture—with Monty Clift slated to play Elizabeth’s husband.
The Taming of the Shrew, which would put a positive, sexy spin on their new image as “the Battling Burtons,” was filmed in March and April of 1966, in Rome, the city that had first turned them into “Liz and Dick.” As they were often influenced by the roles they were playing, it was a blessing—or a stroke of genius—that they were now able to turn their famous fights into near-slapstick in Shakespeare’s comedy. The public likes to see us fight? We’ll show them! And show them what marriage really means.
Approaching their second wedding anniversary, they were well aware that their private lives were going to be lived in public, no matter what. “The truth is,” Burton told the Daily Mirror, “we live out, for the benefit of the mob, the sort of idiocies they’ve come to expect. We will often pitch a battle purely for the exercise. I will accuse her of being ugly, she will accuse me of being a talentless son of a bitch, and this sort of frightens people…. I love arguing with Elizabeth, except when she is in the nude…” They loudly traded all sorts of silly and insulting endearments, like “Mabel” or “Mabes,” “Lumpy,” “Twit Twaddle,” “Snapshot,” and “One Take” for Elizabeth; and “Fred,” “Charlie Charm,” “Old Shoot,” “Boozed-up, Burned-out Welshman,” and “Pockmarked Welshman” for Richard. And they did it all in public. Elizabeth learned about a couple staying at the Regency Hotel, who took the suite below theirs just so they could eavesdrop on the Burtons’ battles royale. They reportedly climbed up on chairs, placed empty glasses against the ceiling, and listened in. “Well, they got an earful,” said Elizabeth, “but what the poor schmoes didn’t know was that it was a vocal exercise.”
The Burtons knew each other’s vulnerabilities: Richard’s sensitivity over Elizabeth’s higher earning power and top billing, for example. Elizabeth’s sensitivity over her fluctuating weight and her increasing frustration with Richard’s drinking. “I think you should go and take a nap, Old Shoot,” she’d tell him. “You’re drunk again. I mean—the hair of the dog was the whole dog this time!” Often their quarrels were a kind of teasing foreplay, or sheer theatrics meant to entertain themselves and anyone within earshot. But their squabbles could take a darker turn. In the first few months of filming Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth had occasionally found it difficult to shake off the iron grip of Martha. At times, “Martha completely took me over,” she admitted. Though their off-screen life was less tempestuous during the making of Virginia Woolf, there were times when, as Elizabeth recalled, “Richard and I would be out with friends and I’d hear myself saying to him, ‘For Chrissakes, shut up. I’m not finished talking.’ And then the next morning, I would think, ‘That wasn’t me, it was Martha.’ I had to fight to regain myself.”
By the mid-1960s, the institution of marriage was under siege in America, as reflected in movies like Sweet November, in which Sandy Dennis played a “liberated” woman who prefers to spend each month living with a different man rather than look for a life mate, and Guide for the Married Man, a comedy that exploited the phenomenon of “swinging” (i.e., adulterous) married couples in the suburbs.
But—ever ahead of the curve—the Burtons were making married love glamorous and sexy. They had been such notorious, dangerous people in the two years following Cleopatra that they had found themselves shunned by longtime friends, like Rex Harrison and Emlyn Williams. But after Hamlet, Elizabeth noticed, everything changed. “There is no deodorant like success,” she said at the time. She sensed a change in how she and Burton were being regarded. “Richard and I are going through a period now, I feel, in which a lot of people are beginning to realize that we’re not monsters. Some may even like us for being honest. Some may even have an inkling of what bloody hell it was…”
But the tabloid press remained “more interested in illicit love, rather than married love,” she quickly came to realize. With the insatiable hunger for scandal, an addiction that had to be fed, the tabloids and even mainstream publications came out with stories like “Is Liz Legally Wed? (When Richard Touches Me, Nothing Else Matters: Her Own Story).” And when they couldn’t find a sexy angle, the press covered their fights (“Liz Confesses: Burton’s Ruining Me with Liquor” announced Photoplay, and “Richard Burton to Liz: I Love Thee Not” claimed the Saturday Evening Post). The press descended to a new low when, in the lounge of the Lancaster Hotel in Paris, the Burtons were bushwhacked by a photographer and two women. While the photographer snapped pictures, the two women exchanged words in German. It immediately dawned on the Burtons what was going on.
“Is that Maria’s mother?” Elizabeth and Richard both asked, alarmed that the birth mother of their adopted child had been brought in to confront them.
“Yes. I’m a great friend of hers and I’m going to interpret for her,” the younger of the two women said.
“You’re no friend of hers!” Elizabeth shouted. “You’re a journalist. Get out of here before I kill you!” When Richard’s anger boiled over, the woman fled. The Burtons took Maria’s mother aside and tried to comfort her, but she spoke only German. Luckily, the Burtons’ lawyer, Aaron Frosch, who spoke Yiddish and a little German, came by and interpreted for them. They found out that one of the tabloid newspapers had tricked Maria’s mother into coming to Paris, supposedly at the Burtons’ invitation, so she could visit her daughter and come away with some money. They’d been in Paris for a week, waiting to ambush the Burtons. The photographer had also tried to take a picture of Maria in the Burtons’ Rolls-Royce, with Maria’s mother in a tattered coat looking longingly at the daughter she
had given up for adoption. “How cruel to use those poor people in that way,” Elizabeth said about the ugly incident.
The press also made much of Elizabeth’s plans to move permanently to England, the country of her birth. “Elizabeth Taylor Seeks to End U.S. Citizenship” wrote the Los Angeles Times; “Liz Can Slash Taxes as Briton” the Los Angeles Herald Examiner proclaimed erroneously. The New York Times, however, got it right. Elizabeth had dual citizenship and would have had to forswear allegiance to the United States in order to divest herself of her American citizenship. This she declined to do, keeping her American passport (proudly made out in the name of Mrs. Richard Burton). “I love America,” she wrote in her memoir. “I want to do nothing that might seem ungrateful or might hinder my returning here. But I don’t like living in Hollywood.” It’s true that they could live a more private life in England, where they could go to pubs unimpeded, and be greeted by friends, not fans or scolds. More important, Elizabeth knew that Britain was Burton’s home, and she wanted to be wherever Richard was happiest.
In 1964 and 1965, they continued to inspire a cottage industry of quickly written books about their lives and lifestyle: Ruth Waterbury, former editor of Photoplay and founder of Silver Screen, brought out two paperbacks—Elizabeth Taylor, Her Life, Her Loves, Her Future, followed quickly by Richard Burton, His Intimate Story. Taylor’s own book helped to set the record straight on a number of things, and Burton was delighted to have his first short story published in 1964—the Dylan Thomas–inspired, highly autobiographical tale of his early childhood in Wales, called A Christmas Story. And his charming essay about meeting Elizabeth, “Meeting Mrs. Jenkins,” which first appeared in Vogue (“Burton Writes of Taylor”), was brought out in a hardcover edition in 1965.
The Taming of the Shrew would be the Burtons’ first coproduction, which was made for Columbia Pictures. Actually, perhaps, it was their second, according to Richard: “The marriage,” he told a Life magazine reporter, “was our first.” Also named as coproducer was their film director Franco Zeffirelli, who had made his reputation as a designer of opulent opera sets, especially his lush, oversize productions of La Bohème and La Traviata. He would also have been known to Burton for directing two memorable Shakespearean productions at the Old Vic—one notable for its artistic achievement and popularity (Romeo and Juliet), the other notably misguided (Othello, with John Gielgud). Later in his film career, Zeffirelli would direct two more visually stunning, crowd-pleasing film adaptations of Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet with Mel Gibson.
While in Dublin, where Richard was filming The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the Burtons met with Zeffirelli, who had flown in to discuss the prospect of casting them as Petruchio and Katharina (Kate). Though he’d originally thought of Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni for the leads, he had heard from an intermediary that Burton was eager to take on another Shakespearean role.
When the Italian director arrived at their hotel in Dublin, he found their household in a not-unusual state of near chaos. Elizabeth had taken in a new pet—a tiny, leaping African primate known as a “bush baby.” God knows where she’d picked it up, but it was wreaking havoc in the luxurious suite, ripping up cushions and curtains and overturning lamps. It had retreated to the bathroom, clinging to the hot-water pipes, while Elizabeth yelled at Richard to come immediately to rescue it. But Burton was deep in conversation with Zeffirelli on the proposed Shakespearean production.
“Will you please stop talking about your damned Shakespeare and give me a hand!” Elizabeth shrieked.
Burton, nursing a drink, yelled, “Will you please stop this bloody nonsense with that horrendous little monster and come and talk to this man? He’s a superb Shakespearean director and you might be lucky enough to work with him one day. Can’t you be more pleasant to him?”
“I don’t care what he thinks of me,” Elizabeth retorted. “All I want is some help for my bush baby.”
Zeffirelli claims that the only reason he was able to get Elizabeth onboard to play Kate was that he was able to go into the bathroom and rescue the little bush baby, which by now was exhausted and allowed itself to be removed from the hot-water pipes and placed in Elizabeth’s arms. That did the trick. Later, the Burtons flew Zeffirelli to Elizabeth’s home in Gstaad, where they further discussed the film, and Burton suggested that the director contact his old mentor, his adopted father Philip Burton.
“I wondered if I was going to find myself arguing with some sort of dusty Welsh bookworm with petty notions of how the Bard should be preserved,” Zeffirelli recalled. Luckily, the director found Philip Burton “a charming, well-informed gentleman, only too happy to listen to my ideas and quite entranced by everything we were planning to do.” Plans went ahead despite an apparent lack of interest on Elizabeth’s part, fueling more squabbles. Zeffirelli remembered one such spat when Richard referred to Elizabeth as “a Hollywood baby.”
“A golden baby,” she shot back.
“Well, you certainly like gold and you’re as plump as a baby.”
“There are countries where they like women with a little meat on them,” Elizabeth retorted. “If they hadn’t banned my films because I’m pro-Israel, those Arabs would be drooling over me. Just take care I don’t meet a rich sheik.”
But they decided to take on the film, and coproduce it, waiving their own salaries. (“We had invested $2 million in this venture and I didn’t want another Cleopatra,” Burton confided in his notebooks.) Once the Burton-Zeffirelli production got underway, filmed entirely on created sets in Rome, the Burtons’ star magnitude did much to elevate Zeffirelli’s status.
The Burtons flew to the Eternal City to begin work on The Taming of the Shrew, where, on March 15, 1966, they would celebrate their second wedding anniversary. After the harrowing debacle of filming Cleopatra, they had sworn off Rome. Nonetheless, they moved into another luxurious villa, on Via Appia Antica, the Old Appian Way, with full entourage (Dick Hanley and John Lee, Bob and Sally Wilson, Elizabeth’s makeup expert Ron Berkeley, their chauffeur Gaston Sanz, their usual bodyguard Bobby LaSalle, plus a tutor, a governess, and a nurse for Maria—all paid for by Burton). They settled in with their family (“four children, dogs, cats, goldfish, tortoises, a rabbit, and a bird”), and, according to one source, eight additional bodyguards. They were living like royalty, and royalty were now their only peers. They socialized with Princess Grace (formerly Grace Kelly, now a real princess) and her husband, Prince Rainier of Monaco; Baron and Baroness Guy de Rothschild; the fetching Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia; and that other scandalously married couple, now safely past middle-age and beyond scandal—the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
The Burtons still felt the taste of ashes from Le Scandale in their mouths, but the atmosphere had changed. Where once they had been hounded by the paparazzi, the fire had died down—somewhat—now that they were respectably married. They were still followed by photographers, but it was less frenzied. The press still managed to get under Burton’s skin by baiting him as “Mr. Taylor No. 5.”
A visual genius, the charming, blue-eyed Zeffirelli knew exactly how he wanted his production of Shrew to look, down to the opulently dressed extras (many of whom, incidentally, were Zeffirelli’s own cousins, uncles, and aunts). In 1958, he had traveled to England to direct Joan Sutherland in Lucia di Lammermoor at Covent Garden. When he met the diva, bundled up against the English cold, the first words out of his mouth were, “Where are the bosoms?” And that’s how he wanted his actresses—especially Elizabeth—to look: overflowing décolletage in fabulous costumes. And to emphasize Petruchio’s manliness and mastery, he wanted his costumes to be outsized, larger than life. But in this he ran into trouble with Irene Sharaff, Elizabeth’s friend and preferred costume designer whom she’d hired for the production. Sharaff had something more modest in mind for Burton. Noting Richard’s rather large head and narrow shoulders (Claire Bloom had once described him as looking like Caliban), Zeffirelli insisted on doing it his way. Elizabeth wou
ldn’t have Irene fired (she was nothing if not loyal to her friends and employees), so they compromised: Sharaff designed Elizabeth’s costumes and Danilo Donati designed Richard’s.
As for Burton, he told the director that he “didn’t give a damn” about the costume as long as “it’s light to wear,” but when he showed up on set in Donati’s magnificent, capaciously sleeved costume, he roared, “Good! I feel like a lion.” Shearing off nearly half of the play’s dialogue, Zeffirelli set about to make this the most rollicking, comic, opulent, and enjoyable Shrew ever filmed. “It was all very Douglas Fairbanks, with lots of athletic action, yet [we] never lost sight of its classical origins,” Zeffirelli wrote in his autobiography. Purists, however, like the veteran stage actor Cyril Cusack, who played Petruchio’s servant, Grumio, in the film, would mock the production as “Shakespeare-elli.”
This would be Zeffirelli’s first film, and Elizabeth’s first Shakespearean role, about which she had considerable misgivings. Just as she had been the only actress in Virginia Woolf without stage training, she would be taking on the Bard in a company of mostly veteran Shakespearean actors—Burton, of course; Cyril Cusack; Victor Spinetti; young Michael York; and Michael Hordern (who had appeared with them in The V.I.P.s and with Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold). “Why can’t we take on one death-defying risk at a time?” she’d complained, mock-seriously, to Burton.
“Elizabeth was very shy to play Shakespeare to begin with,” remembered Zeffirelli, “but she brought a marvelous devotion. On the first day, I remember, she was like a girl coming to her marriage too young; she had extreme concern and humility. That day, she was really enchanting…I consider that Elizabeth, with no Shakespearean background, gave the more interesting performance because she invented the part from scratch.”