by Donald Bogle
Nonetheless, this was the world the Jackson kids would soon enter.
• • •
One version of the story of the audition was that Berry Gordy was not present that day. Gordy and Jermaine Jackson have said he was present but apparently he had not made his presence known at first. Nonetheless Michael and his brothers were still excited when greeted by Gordy’s top assistant, Suzanne de Passe, along with Ralph Seltzer, the company’s attorney and head of its creative division. Joe was informed that the boys were to do an audition tape. Once cameras were set up, Michael went into action, speaking and setting the stage for the group’s performance. Those watching sat spellbound as the group—with Michael in the lead—performed James Brown’s “I Got the Feelin’ ” and Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lovin’ You.” Especially after viewing the black-and-white sixteen-millimeter film—with Michael’s complete command of the lyrics and the melody, with his gyrations, with his bold intonations, with his sheer confidence (much like Taylor’s when she met with those MGM executives and read for Lassie Come Home)—Gordy put the word out to sign the boys.
When presented with the contract in Motown’s office, Joe wanted the term of the contract reduced from seven years to one. Gordy agreed to the concession, but he knew it didn’t really matter. If they proved unsuccessful, he could drop them after a year. As the boys’ guardian, Joe signed the contract but apparently without reading it all the way through. Or perhaps without having read it at all. Nor did he consult an attorney. “Berry did not want outside lawyers looking over any of our contracts,” Ralph Seltzer later said. “It was best, Berry decided, that potential contractees read over the agreement in my office and then just sign. If they had a problem with that, they did not become Motown artists. It was that simple.”
Unknown to Joe was the fact, as stipulated in the contract, that whatever Motown shelled out to record the boys—money for arrangements, studio time, tour expenses, promotion, you name it—would have to be repaid to the company out of the group’s royalties. The royalty rate itself was basically a small one. The brothers would receive 6 percent of 90 percent of the wholesale price, divided equally among all five siblings. It wasn’t a lot of money. Nor did Joseph understand that Motown could replace members of the group and that the company would also own the name the Jackson 5, as it owned the names of all its groups. The boys signed that day. Later, Katherine, as a guardian for her sons, signed—also without thoroughly reading the contract. But before the boys could start recording for the company, Motown had to work out a settlement with Steeltown Records, which still had the group under contract. Didn’t Joe understand that his sons could not record for one label while still legally bound to another? In the years to come, it would be apparent to the children, especially Michael and his sister Janet, that Joe was not a particularly astute businessman. Eventually, both would steer clear of him when making their own deals. Michael would become a very shrewd businessman with top advisers, and always in the back of his mind was the realization of what Joseph had failed to do. Yet Michael would also make mistakes and find himself hiring and firing any number of people.
The contract went into effect on March 11, 1969.
• • •
The boys’ lives changed. During the week, they attended school in Gary and also kept up their gigs at theaters in and out of the Gary area. On weekends, they were back in Detroit, where they recorded some fifteen songs, with singer Bobby Taylor supervising. They also stayed at Taylor’s home. Many of the songs they recorded then—and in the future—were not released. Berry Gordy was meticulous in grooming the brothers for major stardom, in making sure that whatever was released would be a winner. He promised them that they would have three successive number one hits.
During the Christmas holiday season, a big event occurred. Though Gordy was now based in California, he arranged for the boys to perform for his guests and himself at his luxurious Detroit mansion, which he still maintained. The boys and their father were impressed by the opulent lifestyle stardom could bring. They took it all in: the marble floors, the Olympic-size swimming pool, the paintings, and also the guests. “I’ll never forget that night,” Michael recalled. “Smokey Robinson was there. That’s when I met him for the first time. The Temptations were there, and we were singing some of their songs, so we were real nervous. And I looked out into the audience, and there was Diana Ross. That’s when I almost lost it.” This marked the start of their friendship and his fascination with her. Motown’s publicists soon fabricated the story that was assumed to be good for both the Jackson 5 and Diana Ross—namely, that she had discovered the group.
Yet another change came when Gordy wanted the Jackson family to relocate to Los Angeles in order to record at Motown’s Hollywood studios. Because Joe did not feel completely secure that everything with Motown would materialize, he had his five sons move west. But Katherine stayed in the Gary home with Janet, La Toya, and Randy. Rebbie had other plans. Having married her fiancé, she settled in the south, which apparently angered Joe. The marriage of any of his children seemed to be an alien idea to him. He still believed that all his children should be together.
Once again Motown constructed its own scenario on the move, saying that Michael actually lived at Diana Ross’s Los Angeles home for a time. Even Michael promoted this version. In actuality, Gordy housed the boys first at the Tropicana (“one of the seediest motels in Hollywood,” according to biographer Randy Taraborrelli) and then the Hollywood Motel, which “was a dreadful residence for young boys; prostitutes and pimps used it as a place to conduct business.” Gordy grew cautious about shelling out too much money on the group. Like Joe, he took safeguards just in case things didn’t work out.
At a young age, Michael, though protected by Motown, was still exposed to a far sleazier side of entertainment in America, quite different from the way Elizabeth Taylor was handled by MGM. Yet Taylor would understand how affected Michael was by all he had seen. Gordy also briefly moved the boys into his home, but they “spent many afternoons and evenings at Diana’s, walking the winding street between the two,” Jermaine recalled. “But it wasn’t true that any of us, including Michael, lived with Diana. This was another of those marketing myths—upheld by Michael in his book Moonwalk in 1988—for the sake of image.” In August 1969, Gordy leased a home for the family at 1601 Queens Road. Michael was enrolled in the Gardner Street elementary school, and for a time, Berry Gordy’s son Kerry was his close friend. All the brothers were seduced by Los Angeles as much as the hordes that migrated there annually, seeing it as a sun-filled paradise with endless blue skies, swaying palm trees, stirring sunrises, and stunning sunsets, and the promise of big dreams to be fulfilled with glorious days of sheer pleasure.
“Those were truly wild days for me and my brothers,” Michael recalled. California “was like being in another country, another world. To come from our part of Indiana, which is so urban and often bleak, and to land in Southern California was like having the world transformed into a wonderful dream. . . . We were awestruck by California.”
The boys received the whole Motown treatment, learning the ropes with top talents: composers, choreographers, and publicists. Gordy had a team of musicians, referred to as the Corporation—which included Freddie Perren, Deke Richards, Fonce Mizell, and himself—work with the group. As “boys,” they had to have music that expressed their youthful yearnings and energies, and the idea was to tap into a base with a younger crowd that in time would grow up with the Jackson 5. Eventually, the music evolved from snappy, fast-moving bubblegum soul to the sounds and signs of teen passion and teen angst. But the formula was to keep them young, delaying adulthood as long as possible.
The brothers were prepared—in terms of how they spoke and conducted themselves—to deal with the public and the media. At all times, they were to be gentlemen. Polite, well spoken, well groomed in the style of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Care was taken to correct their grammar. Any rough edges were sanded down. Motown depicted
the Jacksons as an ideal American kind of family with a hardworking father and a loving mother. In these days, stories of Joseph’s ferocious temper, of his beating of his sons, of his domineering stranglehold on them were rarely, if ever, discussed.
Michael paid close attention. As was often said, he absorbed everything like a sponge. Of all the brothers, he was the most inquisitive and the most observant, preparing himself not only for the immediate future but also the distant one. Early on, he valued collaborating with the best people in their fields. Very quickly, he also realized the importance of publicity and the construction of an image. Much of what he observed during this time he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
Chapter 5
* * *
SURPRISINGLY, ELIZABETH HERSELF realized, even before MGM did, that the iconic role that would carry her to the heights of childhood stardom had not yet come. Originally, Paramount Pictures owned the rights to the 1935 novel National Velvet by Enid Bagnold. Then MGM acquired the rights. National Velvet, at least as a film, was a drama that painted a portrait of a well-ordered, ideal family. An older sister has her first boyfriend. A middle sister is a meddlesome tattletale. A baby brother collects insects in a jar. A father, tough and unyielding on the outside, is really a pushover who likes sneaking food from the dinner table to the nearby family dog. A mother remembers her time as a champion swimmer who swam the English Channel before she settled down to family life. A stable boy, who is an outsider with a troubled past, works for the family and becomes one of its members and eventually reaches manhood through his experiences with them. But at its heart is daughter Velvet, who is sensitive, dreamy, and devoted to a prize horse she has won called the Piebald. Planning at first to enter the Pie in the big steeplechase race but unable to find a jockey, she ends up riding him herself, wins the race, and by doing so, has defied the conventions and the gender roles of her time.
At one point, MGM producer Pandro S. Berman thought of casting Katharine Hepburn as Velvet, making the character older. Hepburn had the right independent temperament to play the girl who dresses as a young man to win the race. But MGM had not put the film into production with Hepburn. Elizabeth was given the Bagnold book to read, and she fell in love with the story and the heroine. When she expressed her desire to do the part, producer Berman listened but believed her too young and much too small to convincingly play a girl whom onlookers believe is a young male jockey.
“Well, it was my favorite book, and I really was a marvelous horsewoman. At the age of three I could jump without a saddle,” Taylor recalled. “But when I came down to the producer’s office, he saw that though I was eleven, I was only as tall as a six-year-old.” Berman measured her, marked her height on his office wall, and told her that she looked like a child. With her love of animals and with her identification with a character who believes her horse must have the chance to prove his worth and defy expectations, Elizabeth told the producer, “Well, I’ll grow up.”
The story of her strenuous campaign to win the role became the stuff of Hollywood legend. “I was absolutely determined. National Velvet was really me,” she said. “And there was this place Tip’s, where they had a thing called a Farm Breakfast—two hamburger patties, two fried eggs, a great big mound of hashed brown potatoes and after that a whole bunch of dollar pancakes. I used to have two Farm Breakfasts every morning at one sitting. For lunch I’d have steaks and salads, then swim and do exercises to stretch myself.” Three months later, she went to see the producer again. Not only had she put on weight, but when Berman measured her again, he discovered she had also grown three inches. Not until decades later when she underwent another transformation to play Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would Elizabeth Taylor be as fiercely committed to a character. Berman would leave those pencil marks indicating her height on his office wall for years to come.
MGM moved forward with Elizabeth as the star of National Velvet. The film would costar Mickey Rooney as the hired hand; Anne Revere and Donald Crisp as the parents; Jackie “Butch” Jenkins as the kid brother, Donald; Juanita Quigley as the middle sister, Malvolia; and Angela Lansbury as the older teenage sister, Edwina. The film was to be directed by Clarence Brown, a movie veteran from the days of silents, who had directed some of the studio’s greatest stars: Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil and Anna Karenina and five other films; Clark Gable and Joan Crawford in Chained; Gable and Norma Shearer in Idiot’s Delight; and later an underrated gem about racism in America, Intruder in the Dust. He also succeeded in stripping sound films of some of the melodrama associated with silents. He favored naturalistic dialogue. Most significant, he respected actors, and he was known to let performers go with their instincts. Brown had been especially sensitive to his female stars. Garbo considered him her favorite director. One version of the way Elizabeth was cast is that Brown himself had first suggested her to Berman. Having directed Elizabeth in her previous film The White Cliffs of Dover, Brown understood that hers was not an upfront steely kind of drive like Hepburn’s or Bette Davis’s. Instead, it was cloaked by a surface warmth and an alluring traditional femininity, but underneath was a fierce independent streak, all of which would be the hallmarks of her star persona. Just as important, the drive was there, and Brown sensitively worked with her to let the sweet-tempered drive shine. He also understood perhaps that the way to bring out the best in her was to blur the line between the child’s convictions and those of her character. It was star acting where the star’s persona was crucial to the development of the character.
“I think Velvet is still the most exciting film I’ve ever done,” Elizabeth later said. Filming went smoothly. Yet more now than with her previous films, Taylor experienced the demands, the difficulties, and the adult discipline that were all a part of filmmaking. Movie sets themselves, and everything surrounding them, were adult spheres where the crew and technicians, the makeup artists and wardrobe people might gripe, complain, and curse, where other actors might become impatient if a line was flubbed too often, where action might be halted in order for lighting to be adjusted or makeup to be reapplied, where childhood giggles were not permitted. Some sequences could require endless takes, and the repetition could be deadly. Because scenes were not shot in sequence, Elizabeth had to carry the whole film in her head. The workload was also heavier than those earlier films because, as the lead, she was in so many scenes. Stories also circulated for years that she was thrown by the horse she rode, which caused some of the back problems that later plagued her.
Always there was the knowledge that there was work to be done, and that each moment on a movie set meant money was being spent. She learned to accept the working conditions and the responsibilities very quickly, almost amazingly so. Unlike the young Judy Garland, to whom it was said the studio gave pills to pep her up, Taylor managed to keep her energy level high. Throughout, her concentration showed. Years later her costar Paul Newman would comment on his surprise at how quickly she could tap into her emotions.
There would be a classic sequence—both stirring and years later poignant—in which she rode energetically and waved, seemingly to the audience itself. For the young Elizabeth Taylor, with everything still ahead of her, she was optimistically facing—so it appeared—only a sunny future.
• • •
Once National Velvet was completed, the studio was immediately excited about its prospects and also its new star. Here was a girl now with only four films behind her who could hold her own with seasoned pros. No one, not even that young master of cinema Rooney, could dominate a scene in which she appeared. She had also been easy to work with, disciplined and devoted to the role, living as much as playing the part, which for movies was essential. “She was Velvet. And she loved that horse just like Velvet did,” said her mother, Sara.
Released in December 1944, National Velvet garnered glowing reviews and was selected to play at the prestigious Radio City Music Hall. “Mr. Brown has also drawn some excellent performances from his cast, especiall
y from little Elizabeth Taylor,” wrote Bosley Crowther in the New York Times. “Her face is alive with youthful spirit, her voice has the softness of sweet song and her whole manner in this picture is one of refreshing grace.” Later the New York Times named National Velvet one of the outstanding movies of the year.
Clearly, critic Crowther was in something of a swoon over Taylor. But he wasn’t the only critic to feel that way. “Frankly, I doubt I am qualified to arrive at any sensible assessment of Miss Elizabeth Taylor,” James Agee wrote in The Nation. “Ever since I first saw the child, two or three years ago, in I forget what minor role in what movie, I have been choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were both in the same grade of primary school.” He added: “She strikes me, however, if I may resort to conservative statement, as being rapturously beautiful. I think she also has a talent, of a sort, in the particular things she can turn on: which are most conspicuously a mock-pastoral kind of simplicity, and two or three speeds of semi-hysterical emotion, such as ecstasy, an odd sort of pre-specific erotic sentience, and the anguish of overstrained hope, imagination, and faith. Since these are precisely the things she needs for her role . . . and since I think the most hopeful business of movies to find the perfect people rather than the perfect artists, I think that she and the picture are wonderful, and I hardly know or care whether she can act or not.”
Years later, Pauline Kael called National Velvet one of the most likable movies of all time and wrote that “the 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor rings true on every line she speaks: she gives what is possibly her most dedicated performance as Velvet Brown.” She added: “The film is a high-spirited, childish dream; like The Wizard of Oz, it makes people smile when they recall it.”
