Clearly I had a lot to learn about the facts of life in the production world. For example, I’d even thought that some stupid script about a boxer could be a success. What did I know?
A couple of years later I was still suffering from that blow to my self-esteem when that same movie, whose script, written by Sylvester Stallone, I’d so admired, the one that Elliott Kastner had so despised, won the Oscar as 1976’s Best Picture. I was happy to see Stallone had changed the ending. Rocky didn’t die anymore. The movie worked much better that way. Maybe he’d even do a sequel?
Chapter 14
Breaking Up
Throughout these months, the one thing Claudye and I never talked about publicly, although it dominated—and troubled—our lives, was a story that made global headlines: Elizabeth and Richard’s divorce. The news came out of the blue for us too. Neither of them released any statement or gave any explanation. We were in Rome with our daughter. They were in Switzerland, and then suddenly they were in London. We had no clear idea what was going on. Someone in the entourage spoke about arguments but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing so serious as to make you think they’d separate. Inevitably, the news became public property, and we were deluged with telephone calls from the press. We made no comment. To tell the truth, at that point the journalists knew more than we did. Elizabeth and Richard refrained from making any statements. Their staff did the same. We conformed with that silence.
It was a terrible time for Claudye and me. The “Taylor-Burton divorce” was on every front page. We were friends with both of them and didn’t want to take sides in any way. What was a spicy soap opera for the rest of the world was for us a very delicate moment in the life of a man and a woman whom we cared for deeply. The speculation and misinformation was irritating, but also sometimes amusing. We learned, for instance, that Elizabeth had gone to Santo Domingo to file for divorce, when actually she’d gone to Hamburg, in Germany, with Claudye.
In the middle of this cyclone, Richard was shooting The Voyage with Sophia Loren for director Vittorio De Sica, while Elizabeth was busy with director Giuseppe Griffi’s Identikit. I decided I wouldn’t work with one or the other. I didn’t want to find myself in the middle of whatever was happening between them. I wanted to be home with my wife and my little girl. I had no desire to be involved in that melodrama. It would be like allying myself without even knowing the reason for the battle. Richard probably wouldn’t have cared. But if I’d agreed to work on the set of The Voyage, Elizabeth would have really resented it. I’d have gone over to the “enemy,” Sophia Loren. It was a time when the two women reigned supreme, a league apart from every other actress. The superstars of the past had waned or gone, while those of the new generation were still on their way up. Whenever Elizabeth did a major magazine cover, the next second Sophia would appear on one of its rivals. What’s more, they were almost opposites. Elizabeth was a beautiful woman, but she actually cared little about what she wore or how she looked, especially when she was with Richard, the love of her life. Sophia, on the other hand, cared intensely. She was deeply Italian, born in the land of the world’s top designers, particularly Valentino, who made it his business to ensure that Sophia always dressed with full elegance. And right then, Richard was a guest in Sophia’s house.
Elizabeth’s movie was being produced by Franco Rossellini, Roberto Rossellini’s cousin, who rang me one day with a problem. They’d tried four different photographers in two weeks, but Elizabeth had turned them all down. She didn’t like their photos. She’d worked with me alone for twelve years. Rossellini wasn’t calling to ask me to work on the movie—he said I had to. In my opinion, however, I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to. So I told him I’d let him know.
I went on set to meet Elizabeth, explaining how a number of American publications had asked me for photos for their articles about the divorce. “Let’s do it then!” she replied, leaving me stunned, to say the least. But I agreed, and we went ahead with a layout shot in my studio.
Elizabeth understood and respected my position that I didn’t want to work on either her movie or Richard’s. It was obvious that she didn’t care a thing about Identikit. It’s possible that she’d only accepted the job because it was being filmed in Rome, as was part of The Voyage. Richard was Sophia’s guest in her villa in Marino, just outside Rome. Elizabeth was constantly in bad health, suffering terrible back pains and had a nurse on hand day and night.
When a day’s shooting on The Voyage was planned in Naples, I went down to see Richard. I was there in the Excelsior Hotel when, by chance, I met the movie’s sound technician, Piero Biondi, who revealed to me the interesting shift in power dynamics on set. Initially De Sica had absolutely no control. The movie was being produced by Carlo Ponti, Sophia’s husband. Sophia was worth a gold mine and very aware of her power. And Richard was Richard. But De Sica was seventy-three and shooting what would be his last movie. At the end of one scene, Richard and Sophia were alone in a boat when De Sica called, “Cut.” But Piero forgot to turn the microphones off—and Richard and Sophia started talking about very private, personal things to do with the previous night. Piero, who only noticed the unintentional recording later, promptly took it to De Sica, who confiscated the tape the moment he heard it. From then on, apparently, De Sica regained full control of the movie.
These shots, done in the “American style,” were Elizabeth’s answer to knowing that Richard was a private guest in Sophia Loren’s villa. We did them in color. Elizabeth wanted the world to know she was single, still young, and beautiful.
While I worked on those “Take that, Sophia Loren!” photos, Elizabeth snapped this one of me.
You hear a lot of rumors of affairs in the cinema world, and you never quite know who to believe. I don’t claim to know the truth. But everyone was convinced that Richard and Sophia were having an affair—everyone involved in the movie, the press, and above all Elizabeth. Bear in mind that no one really knew what kind of relationship Sophia and Carlo Ponti had. They were married, but word was that she already had a lover in Switzerland. Carlo was her manager and her agent. They lived together, but they also didn’t live together. Carlo was in Marino when Richard was there. But Richard also had opportunity to be alone with Sophia. The marriage between Sophia—Italy’s beauty of beauties—and Ponti, a powerful but aging and decidedly not-beautiful man, has always been a major mystery in Italy.
I wanted to find some way to get Richard away from Sophia. I was convinced that Elizabeth and Richard still loved each other. Their assistants told me that they phoned each other daily. I told Claudye that maybe we should organize a dinner for Elizabeth and Richard and try to help them get back together. So I invited them both to our apartment. Elizabeth asked if she could bring her nurse along too, at which point I invited actor Franco Nero along with half a dozen other friends.
It was a magnificent evening. The dinner itself was nothing special, just good food. But I did everything I could to make the atmosphere enjoyable. Claudye and I shared the cooking, making all their favorite dishes: prosciutto ham and mozzarella cheese, amatriciana pasta, and stripped beef. Elizabeth and Richard were very sweet to each other. After dinner, in order not to bother the baby, Richard went for a smoke on the terrace and spotted our ping-pong table. First he played with Elizabeth. Then, under a sudden downpour, he and Franco had a match in the driving rain. It was a wonderfully absurd scene.
Around 2 in the morning our guests began to head home. I called the elevator, but it was out of order. We were on the fifth floor. The building had a beautiful spiral staircase, and Franco went down first. I followed, Elizabeth on my arm. When Franco got to the bottom, he looked back up at Richard, still standing on the top floor admiring the staircase. Franco stood where he was and started singing “Camelot” at the top of his voice. Richard sang back, the stairwell acting as an amplifier. When Elizabeth and I got to the third floor a woman poked her nose out of a door. “What’s going on? What’s all this racket?” she barked. “I
’m terribly sorry,” I replied, “but having Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor for dinner doesn’t happen every day.” She took one look at Elizabeth and snapped, “If that’s Elizabeth Taylor, I’m Greta Garbo.” And slammed the door.
A throng of paparazzi were waiting for us outside the building. A thousand photos later appeared under one headline: “Elizabeth and Richard back together!” And I could see that they still loved each other, but nevertheless they each went their own way, Richard back to Marino and Elizabeth to her apartment in the Grand Hotel.
The following day the lady from the third floor came to apologize. She was very disappointed. She explained that she’d always admired Elizabeth and would have been delighted to meet her, but, roused from sleep by “Camelot,” she hadn’t had her glasses on.
Richard called Elizabeth later that day. Sophia had invited her to lunch. Claudye was called in to help Elizabeth get ready, and I went along. After all those years, when it came to dressing at home or on set, Elizabeth and I understood one another at a glance. Whenever she had to appear in public in a new outfit or in something she wasn’t sure about, she’d look at me and I’d reply with a return look, indicating whether I approved or not. Words were superfluous. She’d understand everything from my expression, and our shorthand avoided offense to some director or designer.
Under the circumstances, I thought I should get to the hotel before Elizabeth left, just to see how she dressed. She was still getting ready when I arrived. Claudye emerged from the bathroom to tell me Elizabeth was very agitated. The gossip about Richard and Sophia had got to her. When Elizabeth finally came out of the bathroom, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was wearing full-on makeup, an evening-wear hairdo, and was dripping with jewels from head to toe. For a lunch date? What if photographers were there in waiting? My expression couldn’t lie.
“What?” she blurted. “What’s wrong?!”
“Elizabeth, where do you think you’re going? It’s a lunch!”
“So?”
“So you look like a Christmas tree.”
She let out a scream and raced back into the bathroom. Raymond Vignale, Elizabeth’s personal assistant, started shouting at me. “Look what you’ve done!” he exclaimed. “You don’t understand,” I replied. “Sophia’s photographer will be there, along with who knows how many paparazzi. Elizabeth will look ridiculous dressed up like that, during the day!” She emerged an hour later wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a jean jacket. No makeup, nothing. She looked twenty years younger, a mere girl.
I didn’t go to the lunch myself. But Claudye ferried Elizabeth there in a car and reported later that Sophia turned up wearing super-heavy makeup, a brightly colored caftan, and a wardrobe of jewels. In the end, it was she who looked like a Christmas tree. Photographers were there too, of course, but no photo of that lunch was ever published. It’s my belief that Carlo Ponti bought them all off in order not to embarrass Sophia.
I have no idea what else went on at that lunch. Shortly afterward, however, Richard and Elizabeth invited me to go with them to Mexico. I went but spent as little time as possible with either of them. I wanted to leave them alone, give them time to talk undisturbed, to hear the echo of their words. They then left Mexico together, just the two of them. No one knew where they were going. They wanted to keep it a secret. We heard later they were in South Africa, and that they had remarried. But it didn’t last. The split became irreparable. There’s rarely just one reason behind a divorce. Elizabeth and Richard had accumulated a series of conflicts over the years, and in the end the weight of them all dragged them apart.
This was the kiss that made Elizabeth and Richard give their marriage a second (though short-lived) chance.
They both had baggage from the past. They’d both been married before and had children. They needed the support of an entourage. But then they got trapped by the trappings of their life. They could no longer travel like anyone else. They couldn’t walk in the street like anyone else, go to a restaurant like anyone else. There’s a huge gulf between an actor and a star, an even greater one between a star and a superstar. They’re no longer in charge of their own lives. They become public property. Their freedom vanishes. In Richard and Elizabeth’s case, they had to buy an entire stretch of beach in Mexico just to go on holiday with their kids.
They also came from very different backgrounds. Elizabeth had lived as a celebrity all her life. Being a celebrity was her life. Richard, on the other hand, found the jet set suffocating. Living with a superstar, staff, and exorbitant expenses drained him. Basically, Elizabeth and Richard ended up working for everyone else, including us in the entourage, movie after movie after movie. And Richard couldn’t stand it. He’d far rather have done theater instead of making movies just for the money. He enjoyed writing, reading the classics. He found celebrity a burden, unlike Elizabeth, who had been a star since age seven. Richard liked being alone, whereas for Elizabeth being “alone” meant being with her staff. But that life wore Richard down; it pushed him to drink more and more. And when he wasn’t working, when his star stopped shining, he began to feel out of place in that world. I knew the feeling all too well myself.
In the end they became two people who’d stopped facing their lives in a rational way. I don’t think they ever planned how to manage their careers or their lives, how to maintain some kind of balance. I never heard Richard or Elizabeth discuss critical reviews of their movies. Sometimes they talked about box office returns because that influenced future projects. Richard would often say, referring to Where Eagles Dare, “I earned more money with that stupid movie than with all my other movies put together.” But there’s a huge difference between what the Hollywood industry considers a success and recovering costs, making a simple profit with a movie. Elizabeth’s and Richard’s movies always sold. And if $1 million wasn’t a success for Hollywood, it sure was for whoever got a cut.
The trouble with Elizabeth and Richard was that, despite all their talent, they needed those profits, and that need compromised their artistic satisfaction. Looking back, it’s strange to realize that two of the world’s biggest stars didn’t participate in the most exciting and innovative period of modern American cinema. They never worked with any of the legendary “New Hollywood” directors: Scorsese, Altman, Spielberg, Coppola, Ashby, Rafelson. Oscars and good critical reviews are all well and good. But they don’t pay for a yacht, a string of homes, a personal photographer. You hear about a lot of actors these days who are very careful not to inflate their image, who hire teams of PR experts to make sure the public doesn’t get tired of them. Elizabeth and Richard, on the other hand, did movies, together and alone, every single year for nearly a decade. Richard would often say, “If we keep doing movies together we’ll end up like Laurel and Hardy.” Which is pretty much what happened. Did the industry just get tired of them? By the end of their relationship, were they obliged to accept whatever they were offered? X, Y and Zee was supposed to star Richard alongside Elizabeth. But the production called in Michael Caine instead. Night Watch was written for the pair of them, but Elizabeth ended up costarring with Laurence Harvey. Then Richard really wanted to play the lead role in Under the Volcano, but director John Huston wasn’t interested because of the circus that Richard dragged behind him.
That circus became too much for both of them and provoked some of the epic arguments you so often hear people talk about. But I’ve only one word to say about all that: nonsense. I was there. It’s true they argued. But just like any other couple. The press exaggerated everything. Their love had no room for the kind of furious arguments it’s alleged they had. Gossip by people who weren’t there has no value. From their first meeting until they finally separated, Elizabeth and Richard lived one of the greatest love stories of all time. It’s just that sometimes history gets the better of people. When their relationship began, the press adored them. You would read about how in love they were, how beautiful, how happy. You heard about their charity work. Even when serious publications gave way
to the gutter press, Elizabeth and Richard were still the greatest love story on earth. They were beautiful alone, and even more so when they were together. But in order to sell the new kind of magazine, the plot had to change. Elizabeth and Richard had to become two violent drunks who did nothing but argue. If she left a party because she was tired and he stayed behind for a drink with his friends, the following day the newspapers all said they’d gone separate ways because they’d had a vicious argument. All nonsense, just nonsense. But the myth sold, and it still sells today.
For twelve years I had shown the world the truth: a man and a woman who loved each other intensely, wholeheartedly, in the middle of a show that most of us would have trouble even imagining. But now that love story was over, and all that was left was the show, for the use and abuse of magazines, newspapers, journalists, TV crews, and the public. In fact, anyone who felt like it—which definitely wasn’t me. My place in that story had ended.
My Life in Focus Page 25
