Elizabeth told Whoopi Goldberg when she appeared on her talk show in September 1992. “People like L. B. Mayer were monsters, actually. If you got pregnant, you were put on suspension. If you didn’t like a script, you were put on suspension. So you had to live Childhood
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your life according to what they wanted you to do, otherwise you couldn’t live because you were paid by the week. If you were a bad girl your pay was cut off. Bad girl meaning if you got pregnant, for instance. I didn’t like having a gun at my head. I didn’t then and I don’t think I ever will. I have tried to behave in my life . . . but it’s not working.”
When she was about fourteen, Elizabeth could no longer contain her feelings about the much-feared studio boss. It’s one of Elizabeth’s oft-told stories: She and her mother were having a meeting with Mayer about a newspaper article that suggested Elizabeth was being considered for a role in a musical. Sara told Mayer she thought Elizabeth would need more singing and dancing lessons. For no reason anyone could think of, Mayer suddenly blew up at her. He began swearing at her, calling her a stupid woman and berating her; every other word from his mouth was a curse word as he reminded her that he had pulled her and her daughter
“from the gutter.” As he went on, Sara just sat before him with her eyes closed, apparently trying to remain centered and calm as her Christian Science background would have dictated during such a crisis. However, Elizabeth couldn’t take it. She stood up and yelled at him, “Don’t you dare speak to my mother like that. You and your studio can just go to hell.” Mayer stood up and shouted, “You can’t talk to me that way, young lady.” She countered with, “I most certainly can. You can take your studio and you know where to put it.” Then she stormed out of the office. Sara stayed behind and tried to smooth things over with Mayer. Later, she was proud of Elizabeth for defending her, but she was also concerned that her daughter had shown her temper in front of the man who controlled just about everything at MGM. She tried to convince her to apologize, but Elizabeth stubbornly refused. She never did apologize and she also never set foot in L. B. Mayer’s office again. It’s amazing, in retrospect, that Mayer continued to give her work.
“He must have needed me badly,” she has said by way of explanation, “very badly.”
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recalls about her “strong sense of self,” she actually did make some important concessions to the studio. First, it should be said that she certainly had what it took in terms of looks to be a movie star, even if her acting wasn’t always the best during these years. As she passed through her teenage years, she became even more beautiful, her dark, brooding looks taking on a sexy, ingénue quality. At 110 curvaceous pounds and with a nineteen-inch waist, she had a killer body. Tom Gates tells a humorous anecdote about Elizabeth’s budding figure and its impact on sister MGM contract player Esther Williams. “I knew that Esther and Elizabeth never worked together and asked Esther if they had ever met,” says Gates. “ ‘Some execs at M-G-M thought it would be a good idea if I taught Elizabeth Taylor, who was about fourteen at the time, to swim,’ she told me. ‘So they trotted her out in a swimsuit to my swimming pool. I took one look at her in that suit and said, ‘I may never teach you to swim but, believe me, you’ll never drown!’ ”
Though just a petite five feet two—Elizabeth fibbed to the press and added two inches to her height—she appeared taller and more willowy onscreen than in person. She also, of course, had the bluest, most expressive eyes, which looked as if they were somehow illuminated from within. They were the focal point of a face that seemed sculpted from marble. Even the mole on her right cheek looked as if it had been applied by design, and this after her mother stopped coloring it in with the eyebrow pencil. The entire picture was framed by dark, luxurious hair. Everywhere she went, heads turned. Photographers fell over themselves trying to snap her picture, and she loved posing for them. That said, no matter how great a beauty a woman was at MGM, L. B. Mayer felt that there was always room for improvement. For instance, when you look at early pictures of Elizabeth, it’s obvious that the studio had begun to pluck her hairline to neaten it. Also, and importantly, they would reshape her eyebrows into what would become the famous “Taylor arch.” Naturally, she was born with rounded eyebrows, like nearly everyone else in the world. It was the studio that created the more sensual look, and it would Childhood
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make a tremendous difference in her appearance. Moreover, though she will never admit to it or confirm it, people who know her well insist that she would have had rhinoplasty surgery—
when she was in her twenties. There was certainly nothing wrong with her nose, but the powers that be at MGM apparently thought it a little too thick at the bottom, so they took care of it. It’s been said that the surgery was performed by the same doctor who did Natalie Wood’s and Marilyn Monroe’s noses and also gave Monroe a chin implant. One has to wonder what such tinkering does to a young woman’s awareness of herself. She looked perfect in photographs, but there was constant “improvement” going on behind the scenes from her mother and the studio. Some who knew Elizabeth well felt that the constant nagging at her to be and act a certain way did cause a sort of psychological tear in her personality. She began to feel, as she got older, that it was all acting: photography, public appearances, accepting awards . . . her life . . . and not just the part when she was making movies, either. She learned to play at being Elizabeth Taylor, and it was a full-time job Another of the challenges Elizabeth faced at MGM concerned the schooling she received on the lot, where the studio had its own little red schoolhouse for the child stars. It was really the most rudimentary of educations, or, as she recalls it, “a ridiculous way of schooling us. Between takes, you had to study for a minimum of ten minutes.” There have been stories reported about the young thespian’s lack of interest in her studies and her decision, made early in life, that the world of movies was the only one about which she needed to know. It was particularly difficult for her when she was a teenager and was required to attend classes for three hours every day before 3 p.m. or the production she was working on would have to be closed. Later, at sixteen, when she was making Conspirator with Robert Taylor, her teacher would literally pull her out of a romantic scene, grabbing her by the shoulders and telling her to “march” to her lessons. If she had a problem with it, Taylor would remind her that his wife, the great 60
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Barbara Stanwyck, was a true professional and would never balk at anything the studio told her she had to do. Elizabeth, in the interest of being polite to her costar, who was old enough to be her father, would bite her tongue.
Though she was now making a good deal of money, she didn’t know how to keep track of it. So poor was she at mathematics, she had to count by using her fingers when she was seventeen. Her reading and spelling skills were also weak. Still, the studio pushed her along in its school system, passing her from one grade to the next, just to get her through the distraction her “education” was to her movie career. She would always feel inferior about her schooling, and this inferiority complex would come into clearer focus in years to come when she would find herself the wife of the very scholarly Richard Burton.
Despite her great fame and popularity, the young Elizabeth Taylor would become an extremely antisocial teenager, not knowing how to mix and relate to people—mostly adults—who did not make their living in front of movie cameras. She often wondered what it might be like to go to a regular school, to be able to have friends who were not actors, who did not always seem to be performing for cameras even in their personal lives. She also couldn’t help but notice the lack of classmates her own age at the studio school—Margaret O’Brien and Butch Jenkins were five years younger, and Roddy McDowall was four years older. She felt isolated, which probably prompted her interest in animals as pets. MGM certainly made a lot of her fascination with small animals; countless photos were tak
en of Elizabeth with a golden retriever named Monty; a spaniel called Spot; a cocker, Twinkle; a cat she named Jeepers Creepers; not to mention her horses, King Charles and Prince Charming—and even Howard’s horse, Sweetheart. There was also a squirrel in the lot, which had to be given away after it bit Francis! In years to come, there would be speculation that the reason Elizabeth gravitated to her pets was the unconditional love she felt from them. Her friend Michael Jackson, who also feels that his childhood was robbed from him, would have a Childhood
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collection of animals as well—in fact, an exotic zoo at his Neverland Ranch—with whom he says he had better relationships than with the people in his life. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Elizabeth felt that she could better relate to her pets, considering the circumstances of her life at the time. Or . . . perhaps she just liked animals.
Among the menagerie there were also eight chipmunks, the most famous of the bunch in 1946 being one named Nibbles. Elizabeth actually published a popular book, Nibbles and Me, about her friendship with the small animal. The book was telling, too, of her longing for love and companionship, and suggested a deep need for intimacy that, in retrospect, is aching. “Oh, he is so cute,” she wrote of the chipmunk. “He’s gone again, but not before he kissed me. He stands on my neck with his front feet on my chin and stretches himself so that he can reach my mouth. He is happy with me. He keeps showing me that he is—and can you wonder that I love him so much?” Mind you, she was fourteen when she wrote those words, originally as an essay for her teacher at the MGM school.
Actor Robert Wagner is two years older than Elizabeth but was a friend of hers when they were children. He recalls, “The business she was in could be very disillusioning. She would be needed for a picture, and all efforts would be made for just her. Everybody would be delighted to have her there because they knew she was going to perform; she was going to be that star for them. They would become like a family, in a sense, the cast and crew. But really it was an illusion because when the movie was over . . . forget it. Those people would scatter to the winds. She would never see a lot of them again. That’s just the nature of the business, but if you are doing as many films as she was doing, it hurts—especially for a kid. It puts you in a place where you never really feel secure, you start thinking everyone is a big phony, their interest and even affection is not real, and they are just kissing your butt to get the job done. And, in fact, they usually are doing just that.”
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adult, either. She was stuck in a weird netherworld, and would therefore always feel like a misfit. But, really, if one looks at it objectively, she had been living in such a world for years before she even got to MGM. After all, it was Sara Taylor who had begun shaping Elizabeth into a young woman back when she was about two, so to be fair, one can’t hold MGM or L. B. Mayer solely responsible for any damage to Elizabeth’s psyche. Nothing became more important to Elizabeth Taylor than her career, because it was all she had, and all she felt that distinguished her. A note to her mother written when the actress was a teenager illustrates this point. As the story goes—and it was Sara who started this particular legend, maybe in reaction to rumors that she was a difficult stage mother—Sara was concerned about the overwhelming impact show business was having on her daughter, and she suggested that perhaps the whole family should
“go back to our old life in England.” Even in Sara’s telling of it, it sounds more like a threat than a helpful suggestion—and it doesn’t stretch credulity to think that it may have come as a consequence of a mother-daughter disagreement. Such a conclusion is even more plausible given Elizabeth’s response, in a private letter to her mother that—surprisingly enough—Sara made public by quoting in one of her many personally penned features about life with her daughter for a women’s magazine. “I’ve done a lot of thinking,” Elizabeth wrote, “and I realize that my whole life is being in motion pictures. For me to quit would be like cutting away the roots of a tree—I’d soon wilt and become dead and useless. I also like to think maybe I have brought a little happiness to a few people—in my way—but more than anything I would like to have made you happy. But I’m afraid I haven’t succeeded very well. I’m not going to stop trying, though.”
It was only natural that Elizabeth and Sara would begin to butt heads as Elizabeth got older, each mirroring the other’s stubborn nature. Elizabeth, for instance, wanted to essay older roles, while Sara, despite her daughter’s growing physical maturity, insisted that she be a child onscreen for as long as possible. She managed Childhood
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to keep Elizabeth in children’s parts until she was about fifteen. A Date with Judy was the 1948 film that marked the first time Elizabeth, now sixteen, wore makeup onscreen and had, as she puts it,
“a leading man who wasn’t four-legged.” Robert Stack, twelve years her senior, played her love interest in that film and gave her the first “adult” onscreen kiss—not a polite peck on the lips, as given her by Jimmy Lyndon in Cynthia the prior year. “I think in real life I got my own first kiss about two weeks before, she once told Barbara Walters. “Oh, I was in a panic, that I’d be kissed on the screen before I was kissed in real life, and that would have been such a terrible humiliation.”
Though she enjoyed her career, Elizabeth would be conflicted about it for years to come. From time to time, she would feel resentment toward her mother for having made her the breadwinner of the family. But in some ways, their mutual affection and understanding made what might have been a very difficult and complicated working situation for many other mothers and daughters a winning one for them. They gave color and depth to each other’s lives, basking in Elizabeth’s achievements, sharing her great success because they’d earned it as a mother-daughter team. However, their relationship was as complex as Sara herself. Studio executives described Sara’s ability to manipulate others as
“stellar.” L. B. Mayer once told Hedda Hopper, “Sara Taylor could talk you into a bank heist over a telephone line.” Elizabeth would sometimes want to scream out in vexation at the chokehold her mother had on her during her important, formative years. She couldn’t even go to the restroom at MGM without someone following her, at Sara’s and also at the studio’s direction. While Sara’s ability to steer her daughter’s interests and desires was viewed by some people as ingenious and others as destructive, her husband’s opinion of it had not been altered over the years: He absolutely didn’t like it. It’s interesting that when Francis first met Sara he found endearing her skill for guiding those around her down the path she thought best. However, with Elizabeth, he was much less appreciative of her penchant toward manipulation. By 64
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the end of the decade, it had caused many marital difficulties for the Taylors. In fact, earlier, in November 1946, the two had even separated for a time.
It’s been reported by several Elizabeth Taylor biographers that Sara was at this time having some kind of romantic involvement with Michael Curtiz, director of Elizabeth’s movie Life with Father, and that it spurred a separation from Francis. Stefan Verkaufen, the Viennese art dealer who was very close to the Taylors, had by this time moved to Los Angeles. He says, “If you knew Sara, you knew how preposterous it was to think that she was having an affair with anyone in 1946. She simply would never have done it once Elizabeth was a star. She would have been too concerned about the damage it might have caused Elizabeth’s career if it was discovered. Image—not just Elizabeth’s but her own—was everything to Sara, and it was a concern that most certainly trumped any desire she may have had to have an affair. She was very fearful of L. B. Mayer’s reaction to her personal life and endeavored to make sure he never knew of Francis’s alcoholism, for example. She lived in fear that a personal scandal would ruin everything she had worked to achieve.
“However, there had been whisperings about Sara and Curtiz. When a photograph turned up in a m
agazine of the two of them at a beach, it did upset Francis. I don’t think it was the reason for the separation, though. I think it was Francis’s enragement over Sara’s constant nagging of Elizabeth. He was quite unhappy about it, especially when Elizabeth started acting in a very bratty and spoiled manner. As she started making more films, she became more superior-acting, and Francis hated it. So, yes, he and Sara split up. Sara tried to smooth things over because she certainly did not want a separation, but in the end she and Elizabeth moved to a beach house in Malibu, while Francis and Howard stayed behind at the home in Beverly Hills. However, I also remember Sara saying, ‘There will never be a divorce in this family. I can assure you of that.’ ”
Predictably—and much to Sara’s disconcertment—the studio Childhood
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was concerned about the estrangement of Elizabeth’s parents. The news made the papers, as expected considering the famous daughter. “Maybe they loved me too much,” Elizabeth later said. “They had no life of their own, especially my mother.” (Her comment foreshadows a similar observation that she would make almost thirty years later when announcing the end of her first marriage to Richard Burton: “Maybe we loved each other too much.”) L. B. Mayer gave Sara a check, which he called a bonus, and told her to take Elizabeth and leave the country. So off they went to England on the Queen Mary, in the last week of July 1947. At the same time, Howard Young took Francis and little Howard on a long fishing trip, ostensibly to forget their troubles. Elizabeth and Sara spent about two months in the Southampton area before they received a telegram from L. B. Mayer telling them to return for a new movie, A Date with Judy.
Within about a year, the couple would reconcile and be living together again, but Francis remained unhappy with Sara’s decisions concerning Elizabeth. But the pattern had been set in stone years earlier. While Francis’s responsibility was Howard, Sara’s was Elizabeth, and her attitude about their talented daughter remained unchanged: hands off. Francis once told Stefan Verkaufen that during the production of A Date with Judy Elizabeth complained to him that she was exhausted from all of the hours she had been working on the set. It was her first musical, and she was worn down by the rigorous rehearsals. “Mummy won’t listen,” she told him. It was rare for Elizabeth to go to Francis with her problems. It practically never happened. She must truly be desperate, he reasoned, or she never would have come to him. He decided not to waste his time talking to Sara about it, instead going straight to the movie’s director, Richard Thorpe. Thorpe told him that he should take up the matter with Sara, that it was she, not him, who was pushing Elizabeth too hard. It’s not known if Francis did mention it to Sara, but if he did the matter still remained unresolved. Then, late one night Elizabeth approached both her parents as they were preparing for bed. She complained that she 66
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