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Taylor, after just two boyfriends, had become a good deal less sentimental and a little more detached from true, genuine emotion. There was another suitor still on the horizon. It was in the fall of 1949 when the very wealthy and eccentric Howard Hughes became a customer of Francis’s Beverly Hills art gallery. Hughes, owner of the successful Hughes Aircraft Company and a stockholder in TWA, had just recently acquired RKO Studios and was anxious to carve out a niche in the film industry. In his mid-forties at the time, he was a lothario who had already had a number of older famous women in his bed, such as Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Katharine Hepburn. He wasn’t well, though, with a myriad of health problems. Though regarded as handsome, he was six feet three and weighed just 150 pounds. Francis wasn’t fond of him at all, and found him cold and calculating. However, he obviously had deep pockets and was a good customer, so Sara encouraged Francis to tolerate him.
“Hughes was staying in one of the bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel,” recalled Stefan Verkaufen. “He was reclusive, very strange. One day he came into the gallery, purchased some very expensive paintings, and asked Francis to have dozens more shipped to Los Angeles from Europe. Then he mentioned that he had seen Elizabeth coming into the gallery, and wanted to meet her. He invited the Taylors to Reno for a weekend getaway at one of his hotels there. ‘And bring your daughter,’ he said. Francis told him that they would talk to Elizabeth about going, but that she probably wouldn’t consent to it. He also mentioned that she was studying the script to a new movie she was just about ready to start filming, A Place in the Sun. It was the first time I had heard about that film, so I remember it specifically. Howard smiled and said,
‘Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask.’ ”
When Francis asked Elizabeth to go to Reno at Hughes’s behest, she declined the invitation. It became a point of contention between mother and daughter, as one might imagine given recent events. Still, this was Howard Hughes, and, knowing how Sara was, could anyone blame her for at least trying one more time to 78
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orchestrate what could have been one of the biggest PR stunts ever? In the end, it seems that the only reason she didn’t force Elizabeth to go was because she came down with a bad cold—she really could will herself to be ill, or at least that’s how it often seemed. So the Taylors went without her, and took four other friends, including Stefan Verkaufen.
After Francis, Sara, Stefan, and the others got to Reno, Howard took the Taylor parents aside and made them an offer. According to what Francis later told Stefan, Hughes said that if the Taylors persuaded Elizabeth to marry him, he would finance a movie studio for her. It was over the top, but such was Hughes’s way. Sara was more excited by these prospects than anyone had seen her in some time. “She telephoned Elizabeth and told her to get to Reno immediately, and she didn’t care how sick she was or what script she was reviewing,” says Verkaufen. “Time was of the essence. ‘I can’t believe that this is our life,’ Sara said later. ‘I feel as if I’m dreaming.’ ” It’s telling of Elizabeth’s evolving personality that not only was she was becoming more annoyed by Sara with each passing day, but she had also come not to feel restricted in expressing her opinion about it. It was at around this time that she said of Sara, “She’s a large pain in the ass.”
When Elizabeth arrived in Reno the next day, Sara told her about Howard’s offer. “Absolutely not,” Elizabeth immediately decided. “I don’t want anything to do with him. I don’t care how much money he has.” Her position seemed unreasonable. After all, she didn’t even know Hughes well enough to have an opinion of him, and it felt to observers like the real problem was between her and her mother rather than with him. “Or,” offered Stefan Verkaufen, “maybe she was just afraid of him because Howard was a bit on the frightening side.” For whatever reason, Elizabeth had made up her mind, and even Sara could not convince her to, in a sense, prostitute herself for Howard Hughes. Francis—who was said to be secretly happy about his daughter’s decision—broke the news to Hughes. Still, Hughes insisted upon meeting Elizabeth Finding Her Way
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anyway, hosting a cocktail party for her. She attended, but reluctantly. Nicky Hilton
A s a suitor, men didn’t come much better than Nicky Hilton, or at least that’s how it seemed at first blush. Shortly after the Howard Hughes encounter, Elizabeth met twenty-three-year-old Conrad Nicholson Hilton Jr., son of the millionaire socialite hotel owner Conrad Hilton and one of the wealthiest and most eligible bachelors in Los Angeles. The Hilton empire was worth more than $75 million. Elizabeth, at seventeen, was introduced to Nicky, as he was called, on the set of A Place in the Sun, and began dating him in the fall of 1949. She was quickly swept off her feet by his charm, magnetism, Texan drawl, and rakish good looks. Six feet tall, with brown hair and eyes, broad shoulders, and a reedthin waist, he was, as Elizabeth later put it, “spectacular in every way.” Besides his looks, Elizabeth couldn’t help but be bowled over by his wealth—or at least that of his family—and by the sixtyfour-room Bel Air manor in which he lived, furnished with choice antiques, crystal chandeliers, fine carpets, and museum-quality art. She was also impressed by the troupe of uniformed butlers, maids, and other servants at the Hiltons’ beck and call. It was apparent that Nicky was as spoiled as Elizabeth—maybe even more so.
In late winter of 1950, after a brief courtship, Nicky asked Elizabeth to marry him, and she accepted. That was also the month she graduated from high school . . . in a fashion. MGM orchestrated the idea of Elizabeth donning a white cap and gown and ac-80 Elizabeth
tually attending a graduation ceremony with students she didn’t know at University High School in Los Angeles. Like almost everything else in her life, it was all illusion, but this one really had a purpose behind it. Debbie Reynolds, who actually was a student at the school, recalls, “I believe that how it happened was that Nicky wanted to marry her, he asked her father for his permission, and her father laid down the law and said, not until she graduates high school. As it happened, the state board of education required that she graduate from a real school, not any MGM
kind of school, and that’s how she ended up at our school. But it was sad and lonely for her that day, and my heart went out to her. She told me how unhappy she was in her life and that she felt like such a misfit standing there with all of those kids who really just wanted her autograph because they knew they could never have her friendship.”
After she got to know Nicky, Elizabeth believed she was in love with him. Of course, she had no experience against which to measure such feelings, and no one to guide her. Even her own mother now feared that Elizabeth had mistaken the romantic illusion she had played in the twelve movies she’d so far made as being somehow comparable to real-life experience. “When other teenage girls were reading romantic stories and imagining themselves as the heroine,” Sara had said, “Elizabeth was living her dream world, by acting the role of the heroine—that is, at the studio.”
At the time, Elizabeth just wanted to marry Nicky, and that was the end of it. All she could see was that he seemed strong and powerful, that there was something about her dynamic with him that made her think he was the boss. It was different than what she’d seen in her mother’s marriage, and she wanted it for herself. Was Nicky more self-reliant than Francis Taylor, though? Probably not . . . even if Elizabeth did think so at the time. After all, it was only because of his family’s money that he was wealthy, much like the relationship Francis had with his uncle Howard. So, in a sense, Francis and Nicky had at least that much in common. A primary reason why Elizabeth wanted to marry at just eigh-Finding Her Way 81
teen, though, was that she was absolutely frantic for some distance from Sara. Her mother’s refusal to let her out of her sight had been wearing Elizabeth down for some time. It was only natural at her age that she be able to put some emotional distance between herself and her mother. However, she knew full well that Sara would not let go easily
, and so marriage seemed a good way to win her freedom. She wrote in 1987 that she was “desperate to live a life independent of my parents.” It would seem, though, that she was referring only to Sara, because she never had those kinds of issues with Francis.
Marriage also represented an outlet for Elizabeth’s adolescent urges, which she’d lately felt, to explore her sexuality. She was still a virgin. As she later wrote, “I had always had a strict and proper upbringing, and that was absolutely necessary, living the existence I did. The irony is that the morality I learned at home required marriage. I couldn’t just have an affair. I was ready for love, and I was ready for lovemaking.”
Sara, who was now fifty-four, and Francis, fifty-three, were not happy about the impending marriage, or so says a relative of Elizabeth’s. “I’ve read over the years that they were thrilled with it, but my memory of it was that there was a lot of ambivalence surrounding it. Sara wanted Elizabeth to date for purposes of publicity, yes, but marry? Well, girls did marry young back then, but I think Sara would have preferred that Elizabeth wait until she was maybe twenty-one. But still, if she was going to do it, Sara felt that Nicky Hilton was probably not a bad choice in that he would give them even greater access to the social strata that she valued. When he gifted Elizabeth with a hundred shares of stock in the Hilton hotels, as well as a few diamond baubles, Sara figured he might not be so bad, after all. In truth, I think she was just attempting to make the best of what she thought was a bad situation, looking at the bright side as had always been her way. Francis even began to think exactly as Elizabeth would later say she’d been thinking all along: that his unhappy daughter could finally escape his wife’s stranglehold if she was a married woman, and 82
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that Nicky might even be able to do the thing that Francis hadn’t been able to do, which was to protect her.
“I’ve also read that Nicky demanded that Elizabeth convert to Catholicism and that Sara was unhappy about that as well,” says the same Taylor relative. “In fact, my memory of it was that he only wanted Elizabeth to sign a document saying she would agree to raise the children as Catholic, not convert to one herself. She and Sara agreed that the document was unnecessary, and she didn’t want to sign it. So round and round they went over that issue, and I believe she didn’t sign it until about ten days before the wedding.”
Just as her marriage was being discussed, Elizabeth was in the midst of filming Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride, a lighthearted romp in which Joan Bennett and Spencer Tracy played her parents. Elizabeth finished the movie just hours before her engagement to Nicky was announced. As if to further blur the distinction between reality and fiction and undoubtedly to exploit the occasion, MGM then decided to delay the film’s release to coincide with Elizabeth’s wedding, over which the studio took complete charge. MGM’s wardrobe mistress, Helen Rose, created Elizabeth’s $3,500 bridal gown, a gift from Louis B. Mayer. Ceil Chapman designed her trousseau, and Edith Head her many honeymoon outfits . . . all of which were presents to their star from the studio. MGM even paid for Sara’s wardrobe for the happy occasion. Was it any wonder that young Elizabeth had such trouble distinguishing between her film career and her real life? In the days before the wedding, Elizabeth became ill and very depressed, much as she would in years to come when she had to appear on the set of a movie she didn’t want to do. Many of her relatives felt that she believed she was making a mistake, that her intuition told her that there was trouble ahead, but that she also knew it was too late to change her mind. Therefore, on May 6, 1950, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills was filled with MGM executives and movie stars, as well as Hilton hotel executives, for the wedding of eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Finding Her Way
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Taylor. The morning had begun with the kind of random and unexpected melodrama that would typify so many of Elizabeth’s romantic entanglements. The doorbell rang at the Taylors’ Beverly Hills home, and when Sara went to answer it she found Elizabeth’s previous fiancé, William Pawley, standing before her looking quite stern. Inexplicably, she let him into the house, and then upstairs to confer with Elizabeth. Fifteen minutes later, he angrily bolted from the room and left the premises. Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth emerged from her bedroom in tears. It’s not known what Pawley said to her, but it wouldn’t be difficult to surmise at least the parameters of their conversation, considering that Elizabeth had rejected him as a suitor. Pawley even had the temerity to show up at the wedding!
“I closed my eyes to any problems,” Elizabeth recalled, “and walked radiantly down the aisle.” It was a happy day. As Elizabeth was escorted down the aisle by Francis to Wagner’s Wedding March, the excitement and anticipation she felt was evident on her face. Her eyes were aglow with anticipation. After the ceremony, she confidently announced that she was so happy she would probably now retire from making movies. In the years to come, she would make that proclamation many times over. In truth, though she put on a brave face for the world, privately Elizabeth was scared. “I was terrified,” she later recalled. “So was Nick. I remember taking out my handkerchief and mopping the sweat off his face during the ceremony. There was a big reception and, for the first time in my life, I had two glasses of champagne. Then the time came to leave and I had a third glass. And I became more and more afraid. My bridesmaids dragged me off and stuffed me into my going-away suit. I wanted to run, I was so scared. I really had no idea what was coming.”
For their honeymoon, the newlyweds would embark on a threemonth European vacation to the south of France on the Queen Mary—but not right away. Mother’s Day was just around the corner and Elizabeth had never been away from Sara on that special day, so Nicky would have to wait it out before he would be able to 84
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honeymoon with his new wife. Also, Sara wasn’t at all happy with some of the wedding pictures, so in the best tradition of Hollywood image-making, she arranged that they be reshot. Thus all of the principals in the immediate family had to get dressed again in their wedding finery and pose for new photographs at the house. “Oh, please, Daddy! Just pretend that it’s last week,” Sara suggested to Francis, who was visibly annoyed by the exercise. “A smile. Is that so hard?” Once all of that was taken care of, the Hiltons were able to depart for their honeymoon on the Queen Mary, where they were properly ensconced. Making matters even more surreal, Elizabeth brought her maid with her on the honeymoon. (Well, some- one had to unpack the seventeen trunks she’d brought for the trip.) The next day, Elizabeth woke up still a virgin. Nicky hadn’t slept with her in the intervening week, and then they spent their first night on the cruise at a bar, drinking. It would actually be two more nights before the marriage was consummated. “Then came disillusionment,” Elizabeth later recalled, “rude and brutal. I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.”
The story of Elizabeth’s honeymoon with Nicky has almost become the stuff of legends. The way he gambled and drank while in Monte Carlo, leaving his bride alone and sobbing until the wee hours of the morning, has been told numerous times. Indeed, people who saw them on their honeymoon have recalled Nicky’s belligerent behavior toward his new wife. He was suddenly angry at her and jealous of the attention she generated wherever they went. Some of Elizabeth’s faults were now more noticeable to him, and he wasn’t happy about it. She was stubborn, a consequence of being told what to do and how to do it from as far back in her life as she could remember. She was maddeningly late for everything, probably due to having to always be “on the set on time” from an early age. She was sloppy, a repercussion of having been constantly nagged by her mother to be the ever so prim and proper movie princess.
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presented. After the honeymoon, as the weeks turned into months, it became clear that he was an alcoholic with serious drug and gambling problems. He and Elizabeth had violen
t quarrels. While they were out on the town one evening, witnesses watched him give her a forceful shove that sent her reeling backward. She stumbled and fell, landing with a shattering impact that knocked the wind from her. “That’ll teach you,” he said, standing over her menacingly. Then he walked away, not even looking back at her on the floor, where she lay sobbing. To think that he would hit her was more than she could imagine or bear. She certainly wasn’t prepared for such treatment; she’d never been shoved like that in any of her movies, that much was certain.
There also had been no hint at Nicky’s violent temper when Elizabeth was dating him. He had a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality—
Jekyll before the wedding and Hyde after the nuptials. Who knows what had gone so wrong in Hilton’s life to spur him into such violence? All that mattered was Elizabeth needed to get away from him. It’s fascinating, in retrospect, that her first marriage was such a breeding ground for so many of the problems that would be significant in her later life. Nicky was an alcoholic, a drug addict, and physically abusive . . . all issues that Elizabeth would have to deal with in years to come.
Elizabeth hadn’t made a single important decision on her own in her entire life. Now, as Nicky’s victim, she was faced with a real-life drama the scope of which would have been devastating to even the most experienced of women. At first, it was important to her that Sara believe the marriage to be perfect. Perfection had always been of paramount importance to her mother, and Elizabeth certainly did not want to disappoint her. She was also afraid of being embarrassed and harshly judged. She blamed herself for the marital discord, not knowing how else to explain something that was not an ideal situation except to accept culpability for it. It’s Elizabeth Taylor legend that she did not share her misery with anyone, including Sara. Even Elizabeth has said as much, numerous times. It now seems, though, that Sara did learn what was hap-86 Elizabeth
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