Elizabeth

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “Oh, be quiet, Richard,” Elizabeth said. “It’s almost over.”

  “It is over,” he declared. Then, with a thrust of his bare foot, he kicked in the television screen. In doing so, he cut himself so 248

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  badly that it took Elizabeth more than an hour to stop the blood flow enough to get him to a hospital. It was then that Elizabeth discovered something about Richard that she hadn’t known: He had hemophilia. A simple cut could bring on profuse bleeding and severe pain, even though his case was mild.

  Richard had suffered from hemophilia since childhood. Marie Bentkover, who was secretary to Richard’s agent Hugh French, explained: “We worked hard to keep it from the press, just as a matter of privacy. As I understood it from Rich, it was first discovered in his two older brothers when he was eight years. They had to have their tonsils removed. They went to the hospital and nearly died from the operation. It was then that the hemophilia was discovered in the Jenkins family. Of his six brothers and sisters, four of the brothers were so-called bleeders. The other two brothers, and the girls, were not.

  “We always knew that Rich’s case could turn from mild to acute at any time, and it was always on our minds, if not his. Rich told me that it was known as the ‘disease of kings’ because of its common occurrence in the inbred royal families of Europe. ‘So, of course, I would have such a disease,’ he said, laughing.”

  By 1964, Richard Burton had not undergone any type of surgery that might provoke profuse bleeding. Even in barroom brawls, he usually escaped with only minor cuts. However, he did have a few close calls. He broke an arm as a youngster, and his nose was fractured in a fistfight. More recently, hoodlums had descended on him outside of Paddington Station to beat him up. He said it was a random attack. During that beating, Burton suffered a black eye. Worse, though, one of the assailants pinned him down and another stomped on his head with a sharp-pointed shoe. The cut was just half an inch long, but it took ten days for the blood to completely clot. It caused a ten-day delay in The V.I.P.s. He managed to keep it (the bleeding, not the beating) from Elizabeth. “When he was doing Cleopatra, he had to be careful not to nick himself while shaving. I bought him an electric razor for that film,” said Marie Bentkover. “They didn’t have them

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  in Rome at the time. I brought one with me from America, and he was thrilled.”

  Though Richard was able to keep previous bleeding incidents from Elizabeth, the incident with the television set could not be hidden from her. She frantically took him to the emergency ward of a hospital. There, she demanded to know why he would not stop bleeding. Finally, Richard needed a dozen stitches and would have to limp through his performances for the next two weeks. After learning of his medical condition, Elizabeth did her own research and learned that vitamin K is helpful in bringing on faster coagulation of the blood. From that time onward, she always made certain that a supply of vitamin K was on hand at all times.

  “You cannot keep this a secret any longer,” Elizabeth told Richard. “I’ve learned that there are more than a hundred thousand sufferers in the United States alone.” At the time of this conversation, Elizabeth and Richard were dining with Hugh French and Marie Bentkover at Sardi’s in New York. “I think you should go public with it.”

  Richard was hesitant. “I’m afraid it makes me look weak,” he said.

  She leaned over and touched his face. “It makes you look human, darling. We can help people. We should do something.”

  Dr. Richard Rosenfeld, who was a staffer at New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital at the time and was director of the Mt. Sinai Blood Bank, recalled, “Elizabeth and Richard learned that Mercedes McCambridge had the disease and had been very active in raising funds for it. In talking to her, they decided they had to do something, as well. In the sixties, it really was still an unmentionable disease. People had suffered through many centuries of misunderstanding and hiding of it. The Burtons wanted to drag it out of the closet and bring knowledge and understanding about it to the public.”

  As a foreshadowing of her very important work with AIDS in years to come, Elizabeth contacted the National Hemophilia Foundation and asked what she and Richard could do in terms of 250

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  fund-raising for public awareness of hemophilia. Shortly thereafter, they started the Richard Burton Hemophilia Fund. Dr. Rosenfeld served as chairman of the medical advisory board of the foundation’s New York City chapter. Elizabeth was chairman of the fund, and very passionate about it. They raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through public appearances and different galas. They were even cited in the House of Representatives on June 17, 1964, for their work.

  “Stars of the entertainment world have brought comfort to the handicapped, the sick and the lonely,” said Congressman James G. O’Hara (D-MI) as he read his statement into the Congressional Record. “Hemophilia needs attention, and Mr. and Mrs. Burton are responding in the finest traditions of their profession when they associate themselves with the effort to conquer this terrible illness. Their efforts may help speed these developments and earn thereby the thanks of thousands of American families.”

  “Even Our Fights Are Fun”

  I n the summer of 1964, Elizabeth Taylor found herself working in a very different venue for her, the theater. Philip Burton had asked if she would participate with Richard in a literary evening at the Lunt-Fontanne to raise funds for his American Musical and Dramatic Academy of New York. The program, titled “World Enough and Time,” involved the Burtons reading excerpts from the works of D. H. Lawrence, Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edwin Markham, and, oddly but maybe also appropriately, John Lennon of the Beatles. Elizabeth rehearsed for two weeks; she had a tough time with it. Some of the Burtons’ friends felt that there

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  was an ulterior motive to Elizabeth’s work on the stage at this time. She was always very aware of the kind of education she had at MGM, and it never bothered her much . . . until she was with Burton. She then found herself in some ways feeling intellectually inferior. “I never mind being wrong with Richard because I learn from him and he never treats me like an idiot,” she would later write. “He makes me feel an intellectual equal of his, which, of course, I am not.”

  “He was Higgins and she was Eliza,” said Richard’s good friend Joe Sirola. “In other words, here’s a woman not terribly educated, not a great actress, didn’t know the classics, any of that. And here she meets a guy, this theater star, who understood all the classics, could recite them back to you, this great actor. I always sensed that she didn’t feel she was his match, intellectually. And the poetry and all of that was sort of trying to compensate, at least that’s how I viewed it at the time.”

  It’s also true that Elizabeth was often afraid of boring Richard. She and a tutor of the children’s were walking on a beach in Puerto Vallarta once, and she was talking about her marriage to Richard and how much she loved him. She said, “But I’m afraid I’m going to lose him. I think I bore him. I don’t think I’m smart enough.” It was a stunning admission.

  “It had to be tough on her,” says Sirola. “I mean, to the world she was this great star. Privately, she had these insecurities about her value to Richard.”

  On the big night, she walked onto the stage swathed in pleated white silk, with emerald-and-diamond earrings and a delicate spray of white buds in her hair. It was a star-studded audience that included Carol Channing, Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and Beatrice Lilly. Elizabeth had barely started when she flubbed her lines. “Oh, I’ll have to begin again,” she said apologetically. “I screwed it all up.” Richard quipped, “This is funnier than Ham- let”—which probably did little to assist her. Still, from then on, the audience was with Elizabeth as the underdog in the production. Her reviews the next day were generally positive. 252

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  Also at this time, Elizabeth was writing the se
cond of her four books, Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir. (The first had been the children’s book Nibbles and Me). “Even our fights are fun—

  nothing placidly bovine about us,” she wrote of Burton. “Richard loses his temper with true enjoyment. It’s beautiful to watch. Our fights are delightful screaming matches, and Richard is rather like a small atom bomb going off—sparks fly, walls shake, floors vibrate.” When writing about the possibility of his cheating on her, she noted, “I would love him enough to love the hurt he might give me and be patient. I have learned that pride is very bad, the kind of pride that makes you say, ‘I won’t tolerate that.’ ”

  At the end of the year, the Burtons filmed another movie together, their third, The Sandpiper. Elizabeth hadn’t been in front of a camera in two years, having decided to devote that time to her husband and his career. Also, she would later explain, she could not obtain insurance from a studio due to her many health issues.

  “I didn’t think I could get a job,” she said, “so I grabbed The Sand- piper and let them pay their million dollars.” She also noted that she never thought the film would be “an artistic masterpiece.”

  Work of art or not, once Elizabeth was back in front of the cameras on a soundstage, she couldn’t have been happier. The movie began filming in Big Sur, and ended in Paris. All of Elizabeth’s children were there with her, including Maria (who had undergone a remarkable rehabilitation by this time, and who also had her own governess and nurse).

  After a day of filming, Elizabeth and Richard would customarily have drinks together at the bar of the Lancaster Hotel. One evening, as the Burtons relaxed, three people rushed into the bar, two women and a man. The man began taking photographs and, before Elizabeth and Richard knew what was happening, rushed off. One of the women then began speaking in German, her words tumbling out quickly as she frantically motioned toward her friend. Suddenly, it hit Elizabeth: The woman’s friend was Maria’s birth mother. “Is this [she said the woman’s name]?” Elizabeth asked. “Yes, this is her,” admitted her friend. “I’m going to inter-“Liz and Dick”

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  pret for her.” Elizabeth and Richard then realized that Maria’s mother had been brought to them for a tabloid photo opportunity. Taylor was enraged. “You’re no friend of hers,” she screamed at the woman. “You’re a journalist. And I’m going to kill you if you don’t get out of here, now!”

  “No. I am a friend of hers,” the woman protested.

  “Leave!” Richard bellowed. The woman ran from the room, leaving Maria’s distressed natural mother with the Burtons. Elizabeth took her by the arm and urged her to sit. Luckily, the Burtons’ trusted attorney and good friend, Aaron Frosch—who spoke German—happened to be coming by the hotel to meet with them. Slowly the story unfolded. Apparently the editors of a gossip magazine in France had contacted Maria’s natural mother in Germany and told her that the Taylors wanted to have a face-to-face meeting with her. She believed them, and that’s why she was in France. Actually, it was all a ruse so that the publication could obtain photographs of Maria’s poor natural mother in the same room with her rich adopted mother for a sensational story.

  “Elizabeth felt awful about it,” said Marie Bentkover. “She realized that these people’s lives were forever changed by having an association with her. Elizabeth and Richard bought the woman a plane ticket so that she could return to Germany.”

  The next morning found the Burtons back on the set of The Sandpiper. Elizabeth had chosen Vincente Minnelli, who had guided her when she was still in her teens in two of her most successful early films, Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend, to direct the film, in which Elizabeth portrays an artist who has a complicated affair with an Episcopal minister, played by Richard. Elizabeth had wanted Sammy Davis Jr., whom she had recently befriended in New York, to essay the role of the man she leaves for the Burton character, but producer Martin Ransohoff felt the idea was “too ahead of its time, though it would surely have caused quite a sensation having Taylor and Davis involved in a romance 254

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  on the screen in the 1960s.” Future action star Charles Bronson ended up with the role.

  When The Sandpiper was finally released in 1965, fans stormed Radio City Music Hall in New York for the premiere, to see Elizabeth on the screen for the first time in two years. The movie’s theme, “The Shadow of Your Smile,” became a hit record for Tony Bennett and remains a popular standard even today. The film was a box-office smash, bringing in more than $10 million. If nothing else, it validated the commerciality of its stars because, in truth, the movie suffered from a weak story that an even weaker script could not overcome. Despite brisk ticket sales, the Burtons knew they had made what Elizabeth later referred to as “a real turkey.”

  When she received one lone good review for her performance in it, she quipped, “How dare that writer! I’m suing for libel.”

  Elizabeth Apologizes to Debbie

  O n the way to Paris on the Queen Elizabeth 2 for filming of The Sandpiper there, Elizabeth was surprised to run into, of all people, Debbie Reynolds. It’s a story Debbie loves to tell:

  “Harry [Karl, whom she married after her divorce from Eddie Fisher] and I were about to leave for our vacation when we got a call from a columnist saying, ‘Guess what? Elizabeth and Richard are going to be on the same cruise ship as you and Harry. How fabulous is that?’ Well, I thought, we have to go by air, of course, or cancel the whole thing because, otherwise, it would be too much of a circus. Why, the media will eat us alive if Elizabeth and I are on the same ship. But, no, Harry said we should do it, and I had to agree. I really did not hold any animosity toward Elizabeth,

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  though I hadn’t spoken to her since, well, before the scandal happened, actually.

  “So when we got onto the ship we found that there were six gigantic suites for, you know, big shots. Harry and I were in one of the suites, happy as clams, thinking, Goodness, this is big. The other five suites? Elizabeth and Richard, of course, and their entourage and their luggage and their animal cages and the birdcages and their . . . lives. I immediately sent a note to the Burtons’ suite, one of them, anyway, and it said, ‘Look, this is so silly. We should just meet and get it over with.’ Our notes had crossed in the hallway! I no sooner sent mine when fifteen seconds later I got one from her saying the exact same thing.

  “It was decided that we would meet in my and Harry’s suite. That night, there was a knock on the door and I opened it and it was Elizabeth and Richard, she looking gorgeous and he looking rather amused by the whole thing. We talked a bit, and it was then that Elizabeth said to me, ‘Listen, Debbie, I am so very sorry for the trouble I caused you. I don’t know what I was thinking with Eddie Fisher. I mean, really? Eddie Fisher? I hate what I did to you. Truly.’ I told her, ‘Well, it’s over now, Elizabeth. Let’s just forget it and enjoy our cruise. I mean, you have five suites, we have one . . . how bad can things be? We laughed and got out the champagne and had a toast. ‘Look how we lucked out,’ Elizabeth said, clicking my glass. ‘Who cares about Eddie Fisher anyway?’

  “Then we went downstairs. Well, my God, you would have thought it was the Second Coming when we walked into that dining room, all those photographers hiding behind potted palms, patrons standing on their chairs for a good look at us. The four of us sat down and had a marvelous dinner despite it. Then Elizabeth had to go to the ladies’ room and I went with her, as girls do. Fifty women rose from their tables and followed us. I was standing in line holding her purse with those women behind me. As soon as Elizabeth got into the stall, they started chattering at me, saying,

  ‘How could you be here with her? I have never forgiven her for what she did to you. That homewrecker.’ And I thought, well, I 256

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  may have moved on but these women certainly haven’t. I turned to one of them and said, ‘My dear, there is no friendship so close as two women who detest the s
ame man.’ They all laughed. Then Elizabeth came out and took my purse, and I went into the stall. Who knows what they then said to her? All I know is that on our way back to the dining room, I whispered into Elizabeth’s ear, ‘Did those women talk about me?’ and Elizabeth said, ‘Oh, yes. I got an earful, all right. Apparently, they love me but aren’t quite as fond of you.’ We just had to laugh.”

  Who’s Afraid of

  Virginia Woolf?

  A rguably, the Burtons’ greatest film achievement is their 1966 version of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Sandpiper hadn’t done much good for the couple, other than financially, but it was responsible for their having met Ernest Lehman, writer of such films as Sweet Smell of Success, North by Northwest, and Somebody Up There Likes Me. Having recently completed the screenplay for The Sound of Music, Lehman had set his sights on the Tony Award–winning Edward Albee play. The four-character story involves the combative and often poisonous relationship between George, an associate professor of history, and Martha, his wife, the daughter of the president of the small New England college where George teaches. The film’s action takes place over a single drunken and troubling night when the couple entertains campus newcomers Nick and Honey (played by George Segal and Sandy Dennis). When playwright Albee sold the film

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  rights of the play to Warner Bros., he said the studio promised that the leads would be played by Bette Davis and James Mason, and, as he recently told Barbara Hoffman in the New York Post, “I was very surprised when it turned out to be Burton and Taylor.”

  The play is considered a black comedy, but there is tragedy lurking in practically every line. This is not so much a “battle of the sexes” as it is, as George rhetorically says to his wife late in the story, “Total war, Martha?” She spits at him, “Total!” Virginia Woolf today is almost painful to watch—a little like watching someone tear the wings off a butterfly—but oddly compelling, the viewer squirming in his seat in uneasy fascination, wondering what these two bitter, foul-mouthed dipsomaniacs will do or say next to humiliate each other (and their young guests, too, as it develops). Elizabeth has said that she had a difficult time imagining herself as the character of Martha, not only because of the age difference between her and the character, but also because “I couldn’t imagine myself dominating Richard.” The script was so challenging, Elizabeth said, that her first read of it made her feel as if she had never acted before in her life. Neither she nor Richard had ever seen Virginia Woolf on the stage, so their interpretation of the roles would be uniquely them. The way Elizabeth explained her character sounded as if she were describing someone else—herself: