Elizabeth
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Before the ceremony, as Elizabeth and Julie were being briefed about their roles in the proceedings, their instructor turned to Julie and asked her to “look after” Elizabeth, as if to say, “This one could be trouble, so keep an eye on her, won’t you?” Elizabeth had to laugh: “As though I would possibly misbehave!” Indeed, her troublemaking nature was part of the legend of Elizabeth Taylor that had continued beyond its validity. Much of the public still viewed her as an unpredictable, moody, and demanding film star. The woman who was preparing to receive this great distinction, though, had become a different person altogether. On the special day, Julie Andrews, sixty-four, was the first to receive her insignia, for services to acting and entertainment, at a ceremony in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace. Next came Elizabeth, sixty-eight, who received her Dame Commander’s brooch in honor of her services to acting and charity—recognizing her fund-raising for AIDS research. With her head slightly bowed, Elizabeth accepted the honor as Queen Elizabeth pinned the offi-462 Elizabeth
cial insignia on her blouse. “Today doesn’t compare to anything else that’s happened to me in my life,” she said, nearly overcome by emotion. She looked regal, maybe even more so than the Queen herself, in a heavy pearl necklace and Van Cleef & Arpels pearl-and-diamond earrings that she designed for the occasion. The Krupp diamond from Richard Burton shone brightly from her right hand. With her hair in a teased-out bouffant, and wearing the color—lavender—she hadn’t looked as good and vibrant in some time. It was wonderful for her loyal fans to see her well . . . indeed, to have her back, even if she was in a wheelchair for much of the time. Her children surrounded her: the salt-and-pepperhaired Michael, now forty-eight, with his wife, Brooke; Christopher, forty-six, and his wife, Margi; Liza, forty-three, and Maria, thirty-nine.
It’s probably not surprising that there was one man on Elizabeth’s mind on this memorable day: Richard. It had been back in 1970 when she and Richard Burton arrived at Buckingham Palace to accept his OBE—the title of Sir Richard. Elizabeth had worn a Russian-style fur hat on that day, looking stylish and proud on the arm of her flattered husband. She couldn’t help but wonder now what his reaction would be to her own day of honor—the “what ifs” involving Richard had never faded over the years. As much as Elizabeth had tried, she’d not been able to get over his death. In fact, she finally decided that she really didn’t want to, preferring instead to keep not only his memory alive in her heart, but also the sadness of his passing. She would remember many of the good times with him in her life, and very few of the bad. “I miss him so much,” she said of Richard after receiving her honor. “Oh, how I wish he was here.”
Of her sixty-eight years of experience, she told reporter David Wigg of the Daily Mail, “What I can’t envisage is my life any other way than it has been. The pattern of my life was inevitable. If there hadn’t been World War II, I probably would have been a debutante, lived in England, and married somebody very secure and staid. But you can’t ‘if’ your way through life, can you? Each All Woman
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experience, each blow, each happiness, each magical moment—
even each moment in the pits—has taught me something. The really bad moments taught me to rely on my inner strength and not to succumb. I don’t believe in wallowing. I have no sympathy for self-pity. Oh listen,” she continued, “I’ll cry on a shoulder, and I don’t mean that I’m totally encased in a shell. I’m not, at all. It’s just that I’ve learned that you have to solve your inner problems yourself. Nobody else can do it for you. The magical moments have taught me to appreciate my life. Hang on to it and relish it—
and not take even a second of it for granted.”
When she got back to the United States after all of the festivities, Elizabeth hosted a small dinner party with some of her closest friends and family members, including her brother, Howard—who was seventy-one in 2000—and his lovely wife, Mara. Howard and Mara had been married since 1951—fortynine years in all—and spent much of their lives together with their children in Hawaii and, more recently, La Jolla, California. It’s difficult to resist the temptation to contrast Howard’s sole long marriage to his sister’s track record in that department, but Elizabeth would be the first to say that she always believed her brother had chosen the more sane lifestyle, one outside of show business.
“How I admired Howard’s disdain for the movies,” she once commented. On this night at the home of Elizabeth Taylor, with friends and family surrounding her, Richard was still on her mind, as was Mike Todd. She became emotional when talking about them, her eyes filling with tears. “You know, Mike didn’t deserve to die that way,”
she said, her voice shaking. Her guests were surprised. It was rare for Elizabeth to bring up Mike’s death; she usually only spoke of his life, not his tragic demise. However, the honor she’d received in England had stirred so many memories for her, and, inevitably, when she thought of Richard—as she so often had in recent weeks—she automatically thought of Mike. After all, they were the two loves of her life. “And why is it that I always have this Goddamned feeling that Richard Burton is going to walk right 464
Elizabeth
through that door at any minute and start giving me hell about something?” she asked one of the guests, seemingly bewildered. Then with a laugh she concluded, “Somewhere, the two of them are probably having drinks, waiting for me to join them. And oh, the hell we shall cause in heaven if in fact that’s where we end up, which,” she concluded with a cackle, “I highly doubt.”
“It’s her desire to live that has pulled her though so many crises in her life,” says Eber. “Who knows where that comes from? Maybe it’s from actually being at death’s door so many times and just realizing how precious life is, and not wanting to miss out on a second of it. Or it could be a positive outlook at her very core that pushes her onward. Or is it her mother, maybe?”
That evening, as she stood before her closest friends and family in her Bel Air home filled with free-flowing laughter and love, Elizabeth Taylor raised a glass of sparkling cider. “There’s a woman who deserves our deepest appreciation,” she began, slowly, “because if it weren’t for her we’d all be somewhere else right now. She taught me how to be a different kind of dame,” she added, prompting raucous echoes of laughter. “Let’s all drink to my mother, Sara Taylor.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted a guest.
“No!” she commanded, bringing the room to a hush. “Let’s drink to two things.”
All eyes were on her.
“To my mother,” she said. “And forgiveness.”
Appendices
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Selected Cast of
Characters
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DAME ELIZABETH ROSEMOND TAYLOR
For the last six years, Elizabeth Taylor has lived a quiet life at her home in Bel Air, California, limiting personal appearances to a precious few a year in order to conserve her energy and preserve her health. “My body’s a real mess,” she told a reporter for W magazine in December 2004. “If you look at it in the mirror, it’s just completely convex and concave. I’ve become one of those poor little women who’s bent sideways. My x-rays are hysterical.” She also told the reporter that she was suffering from congestive heart disease.
“The pain she suffers on a daily basis is, I’m sorry to say, unbearable, to the point where there are tears,” says José Eber, who sees her almost every day. “It only seems to get worse. I was with her recently and she was crying. She was supposed to go to a doctor, but couldn’t even get dressed. I said, ‘Can’t you find a new doctor? Someone who can actually help you?’ She said, ‘My God. I have been to every doctor in Los Angeles . . . maybe in the world!’ ”
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Cast of Characters
Despite her body, so broken and beaten in more ways that can be counted over the last fifty years, Elizabeth’s spirit remains unscathed. “When a great guy wants to take her on a date, she becomes like a teenage girl,” says Eber. “She’ll be
gone in a second.”
Elizabeth often sends first-class airline tickets to friends and family members who are having difficult times in their lives, usually with a simple note: “Join me. Love Elizabeth.” Celebrities also come to her home to pay homage, obtain advice, and bask in her presence. “From Johnny Depp to John Travolta to Billy Bob Thornton to Demi Moore,” says José Eber. “I’ve seen Madonna there. Nicole Richie, her father Lionel, all of them, they come just to be able to say they know her.”
Of course, Elizabeth also entertains her four children, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. “Her family is everything to her, now,” says Eber. “They visit, stay with her. You walk in on a Saturday evening, and you’ll find her in bed with her grandchildren, watching movies. Also, she loves cutting their hair. She has a great sense with a scissors, loves doing her grandchildren’s hair. ‘If there’s one thing I finally learned over the years,’ she has told me, ‘it’s that when things are at their darkest, we always have our family. And that’s a gift from God.’ ”
As of this writing, Dame Elizabeth Taylor is seventy-four years old.
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HOWARD TAYLOR
Howard Taylor, Elizabeth’s only sibling, lives with his wife, Mara Regan Taylor, in La Jolla, California. The two, married since 1951, have three grown children.
He is seventy-seven.
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MICHAEL HOWARD WILDING JR.
Michael Wilding Jr—Elizabeth’s firstborn son from her second marriage to the British actor Michael Wilding—lives quietly in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Wilding is the only Taylor offspring to have dabbled in acting and has had a few roles over the years, including that of Jesus Christ in the 1985 TV miniseries AD. Though he also appeared on the television series Guiding Light and Dallas, he hasn’t done any acting in the last ten years. He has also worked as a real estate agent and a restaurateur. Michael has a thirty-four-year-old daughter, Leyla, from his first marriage to Beth Clutter, and another, Naomi, who is now thirty. Wilding is now married to actress/producer Brooke Palance, daughter of Oscar winner Jack Palance. They have a son, Tarquin, who is sixteen.
He is fifty-four.
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CHRISTOPHER EDWARD WILDING
Christopher Wilding—Elizabeth’s second-born son, from her marriage to Michael Wilding—lives in Los Angeles, California. He has had a dramatic and often difficult life. At twenty-six, he married oil dynasty heiress Aileen Getty. Tragedy struck in 1985 when an affair left Aileen with the HIV virus. The marriage was not able to survive the strain, and Christopher was awarded custody of their two sons, Caleb (now twenty-three) and Andrew (twentyone). Today, Christopher works as a movie and television program editor. He is married to his second wife, Margi, who works as a film editor. They have a son, Lowell, fifteen.
He is fifty-two.
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Cast of Characters
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LIZA TODD TIVEY
Liza Todd Tivey—Elizabeth’s daughter from her marriage to Mike Todd—lives in upstate New York. She never knew her father, the colorful fifties impresario and film producer; she was just an infant when he died in a fiery plane crash in 1958.
Liza, an accomplished equine sculptor, married artist and teacher Hap Tivey in 1984. They have two sons, Quinn, twenty, and Rhys, fifteen.
She is forty-nine.
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MARIA BURTON CARSON MCKEOWN
Maria Burton Carson McKeown—Elizabeth’s adopted daughter—
lives in New Jersey and California.
As a young girl, Maria endured more than twenty operations to correct congenital defects in her hips. She has been fully recovered for years and is today a gorgeous and vital woman who’s even worked as a fashion model.
Though Maria was originally adopted by Elizabeth and Eddie Fisher in 1961, Elizabeth was given full custody of her when the couple finally divorced in 1964. It was then that Maria took the name Burton.
In 1982, Maria married talent agent Steve Carson; the marriage ended in the early 1990s. They have a daughter, Eliza, twenty-two. In 2001, Maria married Tom McKeown, a compliance officer with a Wall Street firm. During that very brief and extremely troubled marriage, she gave birth to a son, whom she named Richard after the only father—Burton—she’d ever known.
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Maria Burton Carson, who is presently single, is devoted to several disabled children’s charities. She is forty-eight.
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CONRAD NICHOLSON HILTON JR.
Elizabeth Taylor’s first husband, Conrad Nicholson Hilton Jr.—
Nicky—went on to a difficult life after his divorce from Taylor, battling alcohol and substance abuse for years. He dated Joan Collins and Natalie Wood in the 1950s. He is the great-uncle of the young socialites Nicky (named after him) and Paris Hilton. (Conrad Hilton, Nicky’s father and the founder of the international chain of business hotels that bear his name, is their greatgrandfather.) Nicky Hilton died in Los Angeles of a heart attack in 1969. Not surprisingly, he and Elizabeth were not friendly at the time of his death.
He was forty-two.
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MICHAEL WILDING
Michael Wilding, Elizabeth’s second husband, died in July 1979 after a fall at his home in Chichester, England. Elizabeth, who had remained friendly with him over the years, attended the funeral. On his casket was a single spray of yellow roses and a standard that read, “For dearest Michael. Love always. Elizabeth.”
He was sixty-seven.
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MICHAEL TODD
(AVROM HIRSCH GOLDBOGEN)
Michael Todd, Elizabeth’s third husband, was—as she still maintains—one of the two loves of her life, the other being Richard Burton.
Michael—Mike—Todd died in a plane crash in 1958. He and Elizabeth were married for thirteen months.
He was fifty.
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EDDIE FISHER (EDWIN JOHN FISHER)
“She still hates me, doesn’t she?” Eddie Fisher asked of Elizabeth when he was interviewed for this book. “Yeah, well . . . I did the best I could for the old girl.”
If he could do it all over again would he do differently?
“Not a thing,” he says.
Would he marry Elizabeth Taylor? “Well, I’m afraid so,” he answered. “I don’t think there was any way around it. Truth be told, once is never enough when it comes to Elizabeth, anyway. I may have even married her again, if I’d had the chance.”
Why does he think Elizabeth is still so angry at him? “She’s mad at me because I left her,” he says. “She wanted both of us, me and Burton, to stay,” he explains. “She is Elizabeth Taylor, isn’t she? So, she should have two husbands at the same time, or at least that’s how she saw it. Seriously, whatever she wants to remember now, the fact is that she loved me as much as I loved her.”
If Elizabeth Taylor were to call him and say, “Eddie, it’s me. I’m on my deathbed. I just wanted to say good-bye,” what would be his Cast of Characters
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response? “I’d say, ‘Baby, remember a hundred years ago when you had to choose between me and Richard Burton? Well, you made a big mistake, baby. A big mistake!’ ”
Eddie Fisher has had five marriages, four ending in divorce and one by death. He is currently single. He’s authored two books about his life, in 1982 and in 1999. It’s clear from his writings that he’s still fascinated by Elizabeth, even though he can be quite critical of her. He also holds the dubious distinction of being the only one of her seven husbands with whom Elizabeth still seems tremendously angry. “Still, I’ve been the luckiest guy in the world,” he concludes. “I have no regrets. I’m too old for regrets. Life is not for regrets, anyway. Life is for living, isn’t it?”
Eddie Fisher lives in Los Angeles.
He is seventy-eight.
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RICHARD BURTON (RICHARD
JENKINS)
Richard Burton—who was twice married to Elizabeth Taylor, in 1964 and 1975—died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1984. Elizabeth says she will never really get over Richard . . . nor does she ever wish to do so.
He was fifty-eight.
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SENATOR JOHN WILLIAM WARNER JR.
John Warner—Elizabeth’s sixth husband—remains an active and influential United States senator, Republican from Virginia. He is 474
Cast of Characters
also a key member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. In December 2003, Warner married his third wife, Jeanne Vander Myde, in Washington. It was his first marriage since divorcing Elizabeth Taylor, in 1982. He and Elizabeth have remained on friendly terms.
He is sixty-nine.
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LARRY FORTENSKY
Larry Fortensky—Elizabeth’s seventh husband in her eighth marriage—has recovered from his accident. He remains physically weak and unbalanced, however, and still suffers from memory and attention deficit. He lives outside of Los Angeles. He and Elizabeth have remained friendly over the years. He is fifty-three.
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SYBIL WILLIAMS BURTON CHRISTOPHER
Despite numerous preliminary conversations with her, Sybil Burton Christopher did not wish to speak for this book. Though she remarried in 1964 to the late pop singer Jordan Christopher, one would not be surprised if some of her memories of her years with Richard Burton remain painful. In that regard, Elizabeth Taylor says that one of her biggest regrets in life is that she and Richard hurt so many people in the early days of their love affair. “Such as Sybil Burton,” Elizabeth explained in 2004. “I have been holding this regret with such deep pain. I mean, I broke up a beautiful marriage.” She now believes that her subsequent Cast of Characters