Elizabeth

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Elizabeth had to leave her Velvet Brown world behind for a 320

  Elizabeth

  while to go to Vienna late in the summer to film the movie version of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway hit A Little Night Music. She didn’t really want to do it, but had committed to the part earlier and decided to just brave it out as best she could. Her heart wasn’t in it, though. She had to sing “Send in the Clowns,” which terrified her. “Every great singer has done it,” she said, “and now, here comes Chunko.” She gained fifteen pounds during this production. While Elizabeth was in Vienna, she and John Warner had lengthy conversations about life and love and, in a sense, began forging their romantic relationship by long-distance telephone communication. This was certainly a different kind of “falling in love” experience for Elizabeth, if only because, at least at this early stage, it was a relationship built on a foundation of something other than melodrama and misery. For her and John, there were no acrimonious fights and horrible name-calling sessions followed by passionate lovemaking. But contrary to what people on the outside may have believed to be the case about him by first glance, Warner slowly revealed himself to be quite the chauvinist. He made it clear early on that if Elizabeth was to be in his life, she would have to give up aspects of her own. “That Hollywood stuff and all those jewels will have to go,” he told her. As she got to know him, she realized that he was a lot like her ex-husbands, controlling and manipulative. Rather than run for her life, she did just the predictable opposite: She began to cling to him and become emotionally attached. Once again, she had found a man who would dominate her and force her to adhere to his ways. Elizabeth and John spoke for hours about his political agenda and ideals. He genuinely seemed to want to contribute to mankind, or at least to the state of Virginia. His temperament and personality were very different from the men Elizabeth had known over the years. All of her husbands had been in show business, with the exception of Nicky Hilton—and Hilton rarely crossed her mind. John Warner seemed the least self-involved man Elizabeth had ever known, next to her own father, Francis. She sus-Coming to Terms 321

  pected that he might even be able to influence her out of her own self-interests

  On October 1, 1976, John Warner stepped down from his position as director of the Bicentennial Commission and flew to Vienna to be with Elizabeth. He asked her to marry him and presented her with a dazzling ring made of rubies, diamonds, and sapphires. It was almost as if he couldn’t decide which gem to give her so he gave her three of the best just to cover his bases. It was understandable; she was Elizabeth Taylor, after all. Imagine his predicament in trying to find an engagement ring that might impress her. Elizabeth eagerly accepted the ring, and his proposal. True to her nature and pattern over the years, she was a woman who simply could not be alone . . . even for a few months. It had only been one year since she and Richard Burton had married the second time, and just three months since their second divorce was finalized. Between Burton and Warner, she’d almost ended up with Henry Wynberg. Considering the dire consequences she’d suffered in recent years as a result of her choices where, for instance, Richard was concerned, it might have made sense for her to at least come to terms with those two marriages (and divorces) before leaping headfirst into the next one. Only Elizabeth knows what was in her heart and mind at the time. However, in reading between the lines in interviews she’s given and in what she’s written in her books and articles, it becomes evident that she simply was not capable of reviewing her life without becoming so emotionally devastated that she would soon find herself in a dark state. Out of despair, she would turn to alcohol . . . and that would lay ruin to any kind of self-examination. She was strong in many ways, but not in one important way: It takes resolve and selfdiscipline to look back critically over one’s experiences and vow not to repeat the same mistakes, and Elizabeth wasn’t capable of doing it. In her defense, her life had been so charged with emotion for so many years, it’s understandable that she would not want to relive much of it. However, in constantly moving forward 322

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  without giving any real thought to the past, she would be doomed to a life of utter despair . . . and not fully understand the reasons for it.

  While it’s clear why Elizabeth chose to accept John Warner’s proposal of marriage, his motivation is a bit more suspect. At the same time that he proposed to Elizabeth, he said that he would consider the possibility of running either for Governor of Virginia or a seat in the Senate. Earlier, he had dated Barbara Walters and, according to many reports, famously said to her, “You are such a terrific woman. You could make me a Senator!” Warner was an ambitious politician. Did he want an alliance with Elizabeth Taylor, one of the most famous and sought-after women of her time, in order to help secure his political fortune? “Oh, please,” said one person who knew Warner at the time. “Of course. Not to say he didn’t like her, and maybe even loved her. But anyone who thinks that politics wasn’t part of his plan is being naïve. John Warner never did anything without an eye toward how it would affect his political career—so maybe he was a little more selfish than people knew. Having Elizabeth Taylor on his arm just as he was about to announce his next political move was obviously advantageous to him.”

  If Elizabeth didn’t know exactly what to expect from John Warner, she found out in the fall of 1976 when he gave a speech supporting Gerald Ford’s bid for the presidency at a stock car race, in front of an audience of 35,000. He introduced Elizabeth as his fiancée and said that he wanted to make her a “citizen of the state.” It was about all he could do for her, and unofficially, because she wasn’t even a citizen of the United States! “I lean a little to the right and Elizabeth leans a little to the left,” he told the roaring crowd, “and we both consider ourselves progressivethinking people.” Soon after, in November, he spoke at a function to commemorate the Virginia Military Institute’s Founder’s Day. Later that month, she flew to Los Angeles to do a small role in the television movie Victory at Entebbe, a three-hour made-fortelevision movie that wasn’t a highlight in Elizabeth’s career. Coming to Terms

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  Elizabeth Marries John

  O n Saturday, December 4, 1976, Elizabeth married John Warner in an intimate sunset service at his Atoka Farms estate. The fifteen-minute Episcopalian ceremony was attended only by a few close friends and employees of the couple. At this same time, the incumbent Virginia Senator William Scott announced that he would not seek reelection. The Warners would spend early 1977 testing the political waters for his own possible senatorial candidacy. Since much of John Warner’s Republican constituency was conservative, the question at hand was whether or not the “wow factor” of Elizabeth Taylor’s presence on his arm and behind his podium would outweigh the controversial image of a Hollywood actress who’d been married seven times. Some of John’s comments about Elizabeth seemed particularly egregious. He liked to call her his “little heifer,” for instance. Often he referred to her as his “little woman.” As insulting as this might have been to many women at this time—particularly given the burgeoning feminist movement of the 1970s—Elizabeth took no issue with such offensive remarks. Every time she married, she’d made it clear that her greatest desire was to be totally engulfed by her husband. She had repeatedly said over the years that, if possible, she would gladly abandon her career to be the wife of . . . (fill in the blank). Now that she was Warner’s wife, she would repeat similar refrains, but with new themes having to do with finding her true home: “I am so happy to just be John’s wife. I finally feel that I have a home. My search for roots is finally over.”

  In February 1977, Elizabeth and John took off for Los Angeles where she had a cameo in a political thriller called Winter Kills. They’d made a vow that they would never be apart—the same promise Elizabeth had made with her other husbands. In the film, which starred Jeff Bridges and Anthony Perkins, Elizabeth was onscreen for about thirty seconds and mouthed four words: “Son of a 324

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&n
bsp; bitch.” John Warner even made his motion picture debut in that brief scene—or at least his right arm did. Elizabeth played a madam who was blackmailing the President of the United States. Warner played the President, unseen except for the arm. He had no lines. Some who knew Elizabeth joke that it was the first time he’d been quiet since meeting her.

  The rest of 1977 found Elizabeth playing perhaps the oddest and most incongruous role of her life: the wife of a senatorial candidate. It may be an affront to Elizabeth to note here that she had spent a good deal of her life up until this time as a self-possessed and, sometimes, selfish woman. It’s difficult to believe that she would disagree with this harsh assessment. Elizabeth is not like a lot of celebrities of her stature who refuse to recognize their faults and instead live in constant denial of them. However, this is not to say that she could not be a supportive wife when she wanted to. She prides herself on what she has called her “old-fashioned sense of a wife’s obligations and [I] always have been the malleable one in marital situations. I adapt one hundred percent to my husband’s life, willingly and happily.” It’s true. Don’t forget that she was the wife who traveled the world with Mike Todd helping to promote his Around the World in 80 Days. She was also the one sitting ringside at all of those Eddie Fisher performances, and how much fun could that have been? She put her career aside for Richard Burton’s on several occasions, and were it not for her there were many performances Richard never would have been able to complete. As John Warner’s wife, though, her loyalty would be pushed to the extreme on the campaign trail. Could she survive without a limousine at her beck and call, and instead travel on a Greyhound bus? Would she be able to be punctual? (Had she ever been on time for anything in her life, ever?) Could she survive without her hairdresser, her makeup woman? More important, could she give of herself in a totally unselfish manner to someone else’s cause, a venture that really had nothing to do with her own career, her own personal desires, or even her own interests? With her other Coming to Terms

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  husbands, she had been available to support them, but it was easier for her to do since their ventures were show business–related and she had been comfortable and at home with that. It’s also true that she had given money to hospitals and charities in the past, but writing a check or making a quick speech was never much of an investment for her. It certainly wasn’t the same as spending day after day on the campaign trail.

  As Elizabeth and John traveled the state to win support from his party for his possible candidacy, she met at a grassroots level with the very people who had supported her movie career for so many years: her so-called “public.” Shaking hands with people in the “real world,” kissing their babies and making conversation with them, all the while smiling cheerfully, was a new version of Elizabeth Taylor Warner, one that completely captivated her public in part because of its accessibility factor. Her fans were used to Elizabeth running from them, not toward them. And, for her part, she had to recalibrate the way she thought about the public, thinking now of it as consisting of allies, not foes. Paparazzi had for years been the bane of her existence. Now she had to accommodate them and smile gamely in their direction rather than risk the wrong kind of picture being published in the press. The routine was the same, day after day: As the Warners would pull up to a political rally in their Greyhound bus, John would squeeze his wife’s hand and whisper, “Game time,” in her ear. She would spray perfume on her wrists, and gently rub them together.

  “Okay, let’s do it,” she would say as the driver opened the door.

  “You’ll be great,” he would tell her. Then they would be off, into the crowd for another day of baby-kissing and handshaking—

  2,000 hands a day, Elizabeth estimated. Later, John would stand at a lectern and give a well-executed speech, Elizabeth all the while gazing up at him with admiration . . . the perfect politician’s wife. There were, of course, some comical moments on the campaign trail, as one would expect from Elizabeth Taylor. For instance, she and John were in a private airplane flying over Virginia when she suddenly had to go to the bathroom. The plane’s facilities were in 326

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  disrepair, but she had to go, and she couldn’t wait another second. John instructed the pilot to make an emergency landing in an open field. When it landed, Elizabeth had a choice of either going in the field or running to a nearby home. She chose the house, which, as she looked around, truly seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Imagine the surprise of the woman who answered the door to find Elizabeth Taylor standing there asking if she could use her bathroom! “I’ll never forget the expression on that poor lady’s face,” Elizabeth said, laughing.

  Elizabeth would later observe that the discipline and perseverance she’d depended on for years as an actress in Hollywood would be key to her success on the campaign trail. She would also have to admit that the work of a politician makes that of the actor look like child’s play. She was taken aback by the obvious: that what comes out of the mouth of a politician or his wife has to be

  “golden” because there are no retakes, no “director’s cuts.” A politician has to think on his feet, not depend on a script. For Elizabeth, a woman who has always had a script before her when performing, either onstage or, much more often, before a camera, this was not easy. Still, she welcomed the challenge. When it came to giving speeches or answering questions, she would not have memorized a script but she would do her best to remember the one thing that would always be true: She was still Elizabeth Taylor, no matter the venue, a smart and savvy woman. If she gave sincere thought to what she was saying and spoke from the heart, she could speak extemporaneously and not go wrong.

  Day after day, week after week . . . it was the same grind. Just dealing with the public in such close proximity was a challenge.

  “You’re a lot bigger in person than I thought you’d be,” a housewife told her at one rally. “How nice,” Elizabeth said with a frozen smile. John walked over and pulled her away. “Thank you for rescuing me,” Elizabeth told him. “Funny,” he said, “I never thought of you as the kind of woman who needs rescuing, Pooters.” She put her head on his shoulder as they walked into the crowd. (Warner’s nickname for Taylor was “Pooters.”)

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  Still, despite any difficulties she may have experienced, there was something redemptive about this time in Elizabeth’s life. She was spending all of her time devoted to something other than herself, or her career. Most of her life had been consumed by her own very dramatic history, so for her to now place as top priority John’s political career and, by extension, maybe even the well-being of his broad constituency was a good lesson for her. “The campaign was harder than anything I’d done in my own career,” she would later say, “but I have to admit that there was something exhilarating about it.” Indeed, she had to admit that giving of herself in this way felt good and made her feel that she was contributing to something important, something that really mattered. Still, it ate away at her that she wasn’t being true to who she was as a woman, as a movie star. She enjoyed what she was doing with John Warner, but still, on a deep level—as she would later explain—

  she wished that she could experience that sense of generosity and also preserve her identity as a star, the person she’d been since childhood.

  Not that there wasn’t the occasional show business work. For instance, in the summer of 1978, Elizabeth went to Los Angeles to tape a TV movie of the week called Return Engagement. It was a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie in which Taylor portrays Emily Loomis, a professor of ancient history at a small California college. She reluctantly rents a room in her house to a new student, played by Joseph Bottoms. Both happen to be loners—she with a secret past—and after an initial shaky start, they eventually develop a rapport in which they help one another emerge from their emotional shells. Strange as it always was to see the great screen legend Elizabeth Taylor in a TV movie, once the viewer got past that distr
action the film was actually quite enjoyable. Elizabeth was heavier in it than perhaps she’d ever been on film. Though she was unhappy with her appearance, the extra weight did somehow underscore her character’s sense of loneliness and desperation. In that sense, her physical appearance was an asset to her characterization.

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  In the end, at the GOP convention, John lost his party’s vote to run for the Senate. The victory went to his opponent Richard Obenshain, former chairman of the state Republican Party. He would be running against Democratic candidate Andrew P. Miller, a former state attorney general.

  Elizabeth returned to Virginia in July, determined to help John find a new place in politics. But then, in a twist as sudden and tragic as any of Elizabeth’s true-life plotlines, Richard Obenshain was killed on August 2 in a light plane crash. The task of picking a new GOP nominee fell to the seventy-eight-member Republican State Central Committee. They chose John Warner, although he was regarded as less conservative than Obenshain; there was no one else in the running. At a press conference, Warner said that his wife “will join very actively in my campaign.” He also said she was hit “very severely by Obenshain’s death because one of her previous husbands, film producer Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash.” Obenshain “was a good friend, he waged a good fight and gave all he had,” Warner said. “Fate has dictated that someone must step up and assume that responsibility.”

  John Warner received encouragement and offers of support from political leaders throughout the state. He portrayed himself as a strong candidate who could lead, who cared about people, and who “doesn’t need on-the-job training. I pledge every ounce of strength and wisdom I have in this race,” he said. For the next three months, Warner would campaign tirelessly, spending more than a million dollars in his bid to convince voters that he would do them proud as their Senator. Everywhere he went, Elizabeth was at his side, shaking hands, posing for photographs, giving brief speeches. The days were long—twelve, sometimes fifteen hours—and the work grueling, but with no pretense and no star attitude, Elizabeth was determined that she would see it through, and do so without betraying that she was beginning to lose her identity in the process. An interesting metaphor for what she was going through at this time comes in the form of an anecdote about her favorite color, purple. A delegation from the Re-Coming to Terms 329