How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  And for all her spite, Hedda could be counted on to keep mum about her accusations, at least in print. It would be years, in fact, before she'd make public what transpired at her house that day in late 1951. Had she written up her charges in her column at the time, as some biographers claim, Wilding's career would have been ruined. The only comment she made in print came a few days after the wedding when she asked Kay Young if she was "as fond of Stewart Granger as Michael is." Wilding's ex-wife took the bait. "Not really," she said. "He has a very strong personality but he doesn't take me in."

  Yet there's no question that Wilding was a devoted husband to Elizabeth and that he was determined to make the marriage work. And, at least in the beginning, his wife did her part as well. Knowing that Wilding suffered from occasional epileptic seizures, she was very solicitous of him and watchful for any warning sign. The connection was strong enough for a time that Elizabeth could indulge her romantic fantasies, which were never very far from the surface. With all the fervor she would have brought to a similar role onscreen, she played the part of a twenty-year-old woman in love and seemed to enjoy every bit of it. The journalist Doris Lilly spotted the couple at a New York restaurant, seated in a corner table, "holding hands and rubbing their legs together" while passing notes back and forth to each other. Elizabeth "had wildly romantic notions about life," Lilly believed, "which included her approach to love and her desire to do things differently."

  The newlyweds spent money "like drunken sailors," Michael Wilding said of the giddy early days of their marriage. Driving up a twisting mountain road in Beverly Hills, the Wildings found their dream house. It wasn't large but it was certainly out of the ordinary, designed by George MacLean, the architect for billionaire shipping magnate Daniel K. Ludwig, who later developed Westlake Village. A hidden chimney and a wall made of bark covered with ivy and orchids gave the place a kind of "Walt Disney, Snow White setting" for Elizabeth. The swimming pool and enormous chrome bar suggested more adult pleasures. Best of all, there was sufficient closet space for all of Elizabeth's clothes and shoes. Stamping her foot, she told her husband that no other house would do. Wilding just shrugged and agreed. He had to ask the studio for help, but he bought the mountaintop retreat for his wife. "We got a great deal of pleasure from giving each other expensive presents which we could not afford," he said. "Life, we both thought, was all too short, so why not enjoy it?" But money would be a constant worry.

  The Snow White house gave the fan magazines the storybook ending they'd been denied with Hilton. On January 6, 1953, Elizabeth gave birth to Michael Howard Wilding; two years later, on February 27, 1955, her own twenty-third birthday, she bore a second son, Christopher Edward Wilding. Various organizations would name her Mother of the Year during this time, and she would be frequently photographed bouncing her two beautiful boys on her knees. In some photos she even wore a checkered gingham dress. Elizabeth was giving her fans the perfect picture of an American family.

  Meanwhile those parts of her public image that had proved troublesome in the past were cheerfully forgotten. "Elizabeth Taylor is an example of what a girl does when real love comes along," wrote one columnist, surely working from press agents' talking points. "When married to Nicky Hilton, she loved only her career. With Mike Wilding, she loves only Mike and the things around him, like their children, their home, and the hundred little things that go with a happy marriage."

  All this mythmaking was given official sanction by Sara, whose piece for Ladies' Home Journal, published in the early spring of 1954, became a bible for writers who chronicled the life of her lustrous daughter from then on. In the final installment of the three-part article, Sara described Elizabeth rocking baby Michael in her arms, calling the star "a born mother [who] knows now why she was born."

  Yet while her love for her children was never in doubt, Elizabeth Taylor was hardly the average hausfrau reading Ladies' Home Journal at the end of a hard day. From the moments of their births, Michael and Christopher had nannies to feed them, change them, and teach them to walk. Only at dinnertime would Elizabeth receive the boys, all dressed and cleaned up, their patent leather shoes shining. "She doted on the boys," said one close friend. "She loved them with all the passion she had. But she was emotionally still a kid herself. I'd hardly say she raised them."

  There's a scene in The Last Time I Saw Paris that rings with some real-life truth. Elizabeth's free-spirited character stands cooing over her newborn baby. "The last nine months I've devoted to you," she says sweetly. "Now I'm going to have fun!" Laughing, she tosses the baby in the air while her husband looks on, horrified.

  A thousand miles away from Beverly Hills in Marfa, Texas, Elizabeth was indeed having fun, kicking up her heels and knocking back shots of tequila with Rock Hudson. She missed her little ones, of course: Jane Withers recalled bonding with Elizabeth over their shared sadness at leaving children behind. But after three years of playing the lead role in that picture-perfect life, Elizabeth was tired of it and ready for some action.

  At the little theater in downtown Marfa, ranchers in six-gallon hats rubbed shoulders with Mexican immigrants and movie stars. Singing cowboy Monte Hale, who was playing a small part in Giant, strummed his guitar in the lobby as folks arrived. George Stevens took a seat up front, and Elizabeth and Rock slid into the row behind him. Just as he did every night, Tom Andre had ensured that the film for the evening's show had arrived in time from Hollywood. But this wasn't the latest studio release. Stevens was projecting the rushes for everyone to watch. This was what passed for an evening's entertainment in Marfa. Sometimes the rushes only consisted of endless stretches of cattle and Elizabeth and Rock sitting on horses. But the show would still draw packed houses. With no film lab nearby, the day's raw footage had to be flown to Hollywood, developed overnight, and sent back. Tom Andre saw to it that the show always went on.

  Jimmy Dean, if he came at all, would be slouched against a far wall, ready to split before the lights came up. Dean rarely socialized with his fellow actors, preferring to learn rope tricks from local cowboys and shoot rabbits with the crew. His mumblings around the set—his way of staying in character, a hallmark of Method acting—unnerved his costars; Jane Withers once asked him what all that limbering up of his shoulders and shaking of his fingers meant, and he looked at her as if she were mad.

  Despite the stories that have come down to us about the great friendship between Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, there was no love lost in the beginning between the glamorous Hollywood-trained actress and the surly New York thespian. Under the tent where everyone ate their meals, Dean would "make fun of Elizabeth and Rock because they didn't come from the Actors Studio," said Carroll Baker. Elizabeth represented all that Dean despised about Hollywood. Where Monty Clift had found her charming, Dean considered her ludicrous. She'd waltz into the "dingy" dining area wearing white chiffon, Baker said, and Dean would shake his head derisively. For her part, Elizabeth seethed every time Dean broke a scene saying he needed to rethink his motivations. Off to her trailer she'd go, swearing a blue streak.

  Yet somehow Andre managed to get the production back on track, smoothing over differences and arranging reconciliations, even if temporary. The studio had been worried that the location shooting might stretch through the summer, but by the first week of July they were all packing to head back to Los Angeles. On July 9 a convoy of Warner Bros. trucks packed with costumes and props rattled down Marfa's main street. Elizabeth and her costars went on ahead by train.

  Filming resumed at the Warners lot in Burbank. On the day Elizabeth first appeared wearing her old-age makeup, Hedda Hopper was invited onto the set to get a look. Possibly trying to insinuate herself back in the star's good graces, the columnist reported that given the makeup results, she could now "guarantee Liz Taylor will be as handsome [at fifty-five] as now." Yet all Stevens had done to age her was shake some powder in her hair and give her a few lines around the eyes. The middle-aged Leslie Benedict still had the hourglass figure of the tw
enty-three-year-old playing her.

  Her figure had, in fact, been a concern at the start of the film, especially since she had just given birth to Christopher. As the pampered wife of Michael Wilding, Elizabeth had become well-known in Hollywood for her rather hedonistic relationship with food and drink. Tables at her parties sagged with gourmet delicacies. "My tastebuds get in an uproar," she admitted, "and I get a lusty, sensual thing out of eating." Before starting Giant, she had been at least fifteen pounds heavier than she should have been, mostly from eating ice cream drenched with fudge and peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches right before bed. But whenever she was faced with starting a picture, she simply starved herself, she said, explaining how she'd managed to fit into Leslie's tailored dresses for Giant. "I have coffee for breakfast, scrambled eggs for lunch and steak for dinner—with pink grapefruit juice coming out of my ears."

  But the alcohol was putting the pounds back on. Every night during production, Rock invited people up to his house in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, and the drinking that ensued there was prodigious. "The pile of empty bottles in the trash the next day told the story," said Mark Miller. Most of the cast would show up, even James Dean, though he had an ulterior motive. His rivalry with Hudson, increasing every day as the film neared completion, had turned Elizabeth into a prize to be won. As one party wore on into the early morning hours, the other guests began asking where Jimmy and Elizabeth had disappeared to. They were discovered outside in the backyard talking together in hushed tones. All the strife in Marfa was forgotten. "He became very introspective," Elizabeth recalled, "and told me some things that just blew my mind." She chose never to reveal what he'd said. But Carroll Baker said Jimmy was saying, in effect, "Hey, Rock, I can take Elizabeth away from you."

  But it was with Rock that the real friendship remained. Elizabeth and Michael hosted him one night for dinner. "It was a very liquid evening," Hudson admitted. The next morning they were shooting the wedding scene in which the estranged Bick and Leslie are so moved by the couple's vows that they reconcile on the spot. It was all to be done without dialogue, using only their eyes and expressions. As the scene was being filmed, many observers were moved to tears by how effective the two actors were, how romantic they seemed—when, according to Rock, they were really just "dreadfully hung over."

  Like Clift, Hudson offered Elizabeth a friendship that could be intimate without being sexual. And she seemed drawn to the oversized "camp" nature of gay men like Hudson, who dressed in outrageous costumes for parties or bantered together in preposterous, phony accents. Mark Miller recalled a night soon after their return from Marfa when Rock and Elizabeth sat drinking with George Nader, the sword-and-sandal movie actor who was Miller's lover. Well past midnight, they developed a yen for nachos and cheese. Rousing Rock's chauffeur, they toured several all-night Mexican eateries, sampling the nachos in the backseat of the car. And when they got home, Miller said, these three glamorous Hollywood stars "sat in a circle on the floor and held a belching and farting contest, laughing like crazy." Elizabeth, of course, won.

  She'd never had a childhood. Now she was a wife and a mother, expected to parade her maturity and good sense before the world. No wonder she acted out. No wonder she looked for ways to escape the tedium, the schedules, and the commitments. George Stevens was still shouting at her on the set, accusing her of being late and holding up the entire company just so that she could get her makeup right. Elizabeth bellowed back that she'd never been called to the set. No wonder she began to call in sick.

  On Friday, July 15, right around the time of the late-night nachos fiesta, Tom Andre received word from Elizabeth's doctor that the star had a throat infection that had spread to her bladder, "causing acute pain." Dr. John H. Davis diagnosed it as a slight case of pharyngitis and cystitis—strep throat and a urinary infection, both bacterial. Jack Warner, head of the studio, was informed that "she must have medication and at least forty-eight hours rest in bed, possibly seventy-two hours." Elizabeth would not be working that day or the next, and Davis would determine if she'd be able to report on Monday. In fact, she did not work that day, but managed to come in for a few hours for wardrobe talks.

  Two weeks later she was complaining to Dr. Davis about a pain in her left leg. He diagnosed it as thrombophlebitis—vein inflammation—"caused by wearing very tight breeches." As Leslie, she was frequently dressed in riding gear that showed off her shapely legs. Once more she was unable to work and didn't return until August 8.

  Only Elizabeth, it seemed, could get injured from wearing tight pants. Her delicate constitution was becoming legendary in Hollywood. "I catch cold even from weather forecasts," her charac ter says in The Last Time I Saw Paris, yet another bit of autobiography in that film. Once, sitting with Michael by their pool, both of them were stung by a bee. Michael just pulled out the stinger, but Elizabeth's swelling lasted a week and a half. "If she opens a beer can, she cuts herself," said the director Richard Brooks. "If there is a chair in the middle of the set, she falls over it." On the Elephant Walk set an electric fan had blown a splinter of steel into Elizabeth's eye, which eventually turned into an ulcer. Press agents, sensing a good story, leaked word that "lovely Elizabeth Taylor might be facing blindness in one eye." In an inspired bit of publicity, Albert Teitelbaum, the furrier to the stars, sent over an ermine eye patch. "I couldn't wear it because of the danger of fur next to my eye," she told reporters, "but how I loved the idea!"

  The illnesses and accidents weren't so much fabricated as they were exploited, and as a form of rebellion against the strictures of her life, they often served Elizabeth very well. Just a day after returning to work, Elizabeth collapsed after a scene where she had to jump on a bed. Although she had a congenital anomaly of the spine—a condition that would cause her considerable pain in the years ahead—this time the problem, her doctor insisted, was due to a ruptured intervertebral disc. After she was brought home, her back was strapped with adhesive tape. X-rays were taken the next day and Tom Andre was notified that the star was suffering from sciatica—an extremely painful and unpredictable ailment. Shot up with novocaine and hydrocortisone, Elizabeth was also given prescriptions for the painkillers Meticorten and Demerol. It was not clear when she would be returning to the set. If she needed to be put in traction, it could be several days.

  George Stevens fumed. He was falling behind schedule. "Miss Elizabeth Taylor's illness from August 1 to August 8, inclusive, caused the Giant company to shoot around her as much as possible," Tom Andre reported to the studio. The second unit was brought in to do work originally scheduled for later, but eventually the company was unable to proceed without its leading lady and was "forced to lay off." Clearly the situation could not continue. Metro was already hounding Stevens to get Elizabeth back to her home studio so that she could start work on Raintree County, another big epic picture slated to be shot on location. So Tom Andre was dispatched to find out what was really going on. Dr. Paul Mc-Masters, the physician treating the sciatica, wouldn't say whether she was well enough to work. It was up to his patient, he explained. "If she felt well enough to come in," McMasters said, it was "all right" with him.

  The next day Elizabeth was given a call for 8 A.M. makeup. She arrived only twenty minutes late, hobbling onto the set using crutches. Tom Andre asked if she'd prefer a wheelchair. She replied that she could manage better with the crutches. "Dr. McMasters recommended we keep Miss Taylor off her feet as much as possible," Andre reported to the studio chiefs, "which, naturally, we do."

  Some people thought that she was playing for sympathy. At the end of the day, one member of the crew noticed her running after Rock yelling, "Hey, wait for me!" as if nothing were wrong. Although that's the nature of sciatica, it's also quite possible that she was having a better day because Stevens hadn't yelled at her quite so much. Certainly the director's view was that her illnesses were temperamental, or possibly just hangovers from too many chocolate martinis. On August 31, when she called in to say that she had a "ver
y bad headache," Stevens bellowed that she'd better show up since "she was involved in everything [they] were doing." A studio memo suggested that she consider moving onto the lot until the picture was completed—a suggestion the star chose to ignore.

  "You must understand that when Elizabeth got sick, she was in control," said one close friend, requesting anonymity. "It was her show, nobody else's. She always felt the pain, no question, but if she could drag it out a day or two longer, or insist she couldn't walk, she could live her days the way she wanted to, without any director or husband or publicist telling her when to sit, when to stand, when to smile, when to pose pretty for a picture." She could stay home, her friend said, like a kid playing hooky from school, watching tele vision, playing records, and eating chili with ice cream. It was her little rebellion against those who ran the machinery of her fame.

  On September 26 she was sniffling and sneezing with a bad cold. The company was in the midst of shooting the important fight scene in Sarge's Diner, where Rock, defending a family of Mexicans, gets drawn into a fistfight with a bigot. They had to stop filming at noon because Elizabeth looked so weak; first aid was brought in, and her temperature was found to be 99.6.

  With such a low-grade fever, somebody else might have soldiered on, but a call to Elizabeth's doctor resulted in an order to send her home immediately. Stevens insisted that she at least stick around to shoot three close-ups before departing, and then her stand-in was used to resume filming the fight. Still trying to keep things running smoothly, Tom Andre called Elizabeth's doctor, who said that if his patient could "remain in bed" the entire next day he'd guarantee she'd be able to work the following. But if she were forced back to work too soon, the doctor said, all bets were off. A weary Stevens surrendered and gave her the day off.