How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  The party wasn't quite what any of them had expected. Father Long never showed. Wilding wasn't feeling well, so for most of the night he reclined on the sofa, aloof and not saying much. Elizabeth was nervous and chatty, her mind perhaps on the affair that she was carrying on at Shirley MacLaine's Malibu beach house. Soon after midnight Monty decided to head home. His lover, Jack Larson, who was not present, believed that he'd had a couple of glasses of wine with his meal, but that was it; Kevin McCarthy disagreed, saying they'd both made a decision not to have anything to drink at all that night. Either way, everyone involved insisted that Monty was not drunk. Standing in the driveway, he shared with McCarthy his dissatisfaction with the way Dmytryk was directing the picture, shooting nearly everything in giant close-up and chopping the actors' hands out of the frame. Then they bid each other good night, got into their respective cars, and drove off down the hill that Elizabeth called a "cork-twister." McCarthy was in the lead.

  Within moments, he was back at Elizabeth's house, ringing her doorbell frantically. Wilding answered the door, and McCarthy blurted out that Monty had had a serious car accident. Elizabeth came up behind her husband and asked what was wrong; when Wilding tried to shield her from the news, she exploded. "Is it Monty? What's wrong with Monty?" McCarthy told her that Clift's car had struck a utility pole as he'd rounded one of the hairpin turns on the dark, foggy street. Elizabeth shrieked, demanding that McCarthy take her to the scene of the crash.

  Monty's car was demolished, an "accordion-pleated mess," Elizabeth said. A 4,800-volt transformer, knocked off the pole by the impact, had narrowly missed hitting the car. McCarthy thought that his friend was dead. "The doors were so jammed that we couldn't get to him," he said. Without any hesitation, Elizabeth climbed in through a back window, heedless of the broken glass. "Adrenaline does something to you," she remembered. "Where I got the strength I don't know." Hauling herself over the bloody front seat, she steeled herself to the carnage. "All my revulsion about blood absolutely left me," she said. Monty's body had slipped down beneath the steering wheel, "literally under the dashboard," Elizabeth said. What was worse, she could barely make out his face. "It was like pulp," she remembered.

  At first Clift didn't move, but after a few moments he began to react to the sound of Elizabeth's voice. He indicated that he was choking. Several of his teeth had been broken and were now lodged in the back of his throat. Reaching in with her fingers, Elizabeth pulled the teeth out, one by one. "I firmly believe, and the doctors agreed, that Elizabeth saved Monty's life that night," said Jack Larson. Otherwise, he said, Monty would have choked to death on his own blood and broken teeth.

  The ambulance got lost and took nearly an hour to get there, so a handful of photographers had made their way to the scene by the time Monty was being lifted onto the stretcher. Kevin McCarthy remembered one from Movieland magazine. But Elizabeth knew how to deal with them. Both McCarthy and Larson confirmed the oft-repeated stories that Elizabeth positioned herself protectively between Monty and the photographers' cameras and told them that if they so much as took one picture of her wounded pal, she'd never allow them to take another picture of her. ( Just imagine a world without photographs of Elizabeth Taylor.) "She was remarkable," said McCarthy.

  In the days ahead, as Monty underwent painful reconstructive surgery on his face, Elizabeth was often at the hospital to cheer him up, jostling for position with the fifty-two-year-old Libby Holman, the torch singer and scandalous stage actress who was Monty's other best girlfriend. Holman had never liked Elizabeth, calling her a "heifer in heat." At least one mutual friend of Elizabeth and Monty's felt that Holman blamed Elizabeth for the accident. For her part, Elizabeth thought that Holman was a bad influence on Monty; at one point Elizabeth discovered Holman allowing Clift to sip a martini through a straw after he had returned home, bandaged and in traction. Although she bawled Holman out, Elizabeth wasn't averse to doing the same thing once Monty was able to sit up in a chair.

  Holman's assignation of blame, however, may have had its desired effect on Elizabeth. "I'm not sure if she blamed herself," said Mark Miller, who heard accounts of the accident from Rock Hudson, "but I think she felt she had a responsibility to help Monty recover." Another friend of both Elizabeth and Monty's said, "After Montgomery Clift's car accident, Elizabeth kind of woke up and made some decisions about her own life. When something like that happens, you see how fleeting life can be. After all, it could have been her in that car."

  The experience left Elizabeth with recurring nightmares. Monty's bloody face haunted her: "It would come up like a balloon in front of me at night." Certainly reaching into a friend's bloody mouth and withdrawing his broken teeth had been a pretty close encounter with real life—not a frequent experience in the pampered, protected, day-to-day existence of Elizabeth Taylor. With production of Raintree County forced into hiatus while Clift recovered, Elizabeth found herself at liberty to take stock, to consider the next steps in both her public and personal lives.

  For one thing, she quickly realized that she needed a new agent. She'd once told Jules Goldstone that she'd be his client for as long as he practiced in Hollywood. But she'd also told him, "You'll never be really big in this town, Jules, because you're not a big enough shit." Goldstone was shrewd and efficient, but he was also essentially decent and aboveboard. To get ahead in Hollywood, to reach the very pinnacle of power, Elizabeth didn't need a nice guy; she needed a shark, a bastard. At least that was the counsel she was getting from Kevin McClory, advice that was backed up by his boss, Mike Todd.

  Elizabeth had been spending more time with the flamboyant showman. At a post-premiere party for Moby Dick at Mocambo in July, reporters noted that while Michael Wilding table-hopped, his wife remained deep in conversation with McClory and Todd. In fact, Todd had begun cautioning McClory against being seen with Elizabeth in public, given that she was still married. Significantly, Metro issued a statement the day after the party that announced the Wildings had decided to separate, and Mike Todd, no coincidence, was at the studio in Benny Thau's office at the time.

  Sailing with Todd on his yacht and bringing her children to barbecues at his home, Elizabeth witnessed the producer's incredible wealth up close and personal—and she found it mighty appealing. "For Elizabeth," one friend said, "wealth was the ultimate security. If she could be wealthy enough—something neither Michael Wilding nor her own career had yet been able to make her—she could make her own decisions and live the way she wanted and not be a slave to the studio." So money might be her way out. She admitted to Hedda Hopper that marriage to a rich man like Mike Todd would give her the luxury of not having to work. "I've never really been crazy about a career," she said. "I never wanted to be an actress."

  That statement was true only as far as it went. Yes, it had been her mother who had thrust ambition upon her. But by 1956 Elizabeth knew life only as a movie star. She might wax poetic about the simple life, but every time she and Todd met—under the moonlight on his yacht or at a corner table at Romanoff's—he was telling her how much bigger she could be, how much more control she could have, how much more grandly she could live if only she had the right people around her. No surprise, Kevin McClory was soon replaced in Elizabeth's life by Todd himself.

  One story encapsulates the reason. Don Tomlinson, Todd's editor on Around the World in Eighty Days, remembered the little gold locket that McClory planned to present to Elizabeth as an engagement gift. "It must have set him back twenty dollars," Tomlinson said. He told McClory that the locket wasn't going to be enough for the likes of Elizabeth Taylor. "What do you mean, that's not enough?" an offended McClory asked. Yet not long after this McClory found himself replaced at Elizabeth's side by his boss.

  Mike Todd offered much more than a twenty-dollar locket. Once Todd entered the picture, Elizabeth Taylor's career went into overdrive. By the time Raintree County resumed filming that summer (Clift's face had healed, but was never quite the same), Todd was planning his next project, a spectacular f
ilm adaptation of Don Quixote, in which Elizabeth would star.

  Giant finally premiered that October. Gala celebrations were held in New York and Los Angeles. At the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, ten thousand spectators packed the street while enormous searchlights cut across the night sky. Once more, the Hollywood elite was out in force: Lucy and Desi, Bob Hope, Henry Fonda, Tab Hunter, Groucho Marx. A cheer went up from the crowd as a gray-haired Clark Gable stepped out of his limousine, smiling and gracious despite being passed over in favor of Rock Hudson for the role of Bick. America's Sweethearts, Debbie Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher, arrived arm in arm, waving to their fans. Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Hammerstein came on the heels of Viscount and Viscountess Paul de Rosiere, representing Cartier jewelry, who were, notably, good friends of Mr. Mike Todd.

  At the end of the picture, the applause was thunderous. Once again George Stevens had boiled down his gargantuan footage into a first-rate picture and provided Elizabeth with a personal triumph—no matter how rough he'd treated her during filming. For all of Dean's scenery chewing, it is Elizabeth who stands out best, utterly splendid in her portrayal of Leslie. When she takes on the cattle barons to demand her place at the table, she is incandescent: a powerful force of nature barely contained within her slim, girlish frame. In the second half of the film, she is the most believable of the three leads by far, transitioning seamlessly from young whippersnapper to wise old grandmother. "She got hold of that [transition] and did it," Stevens said, "and if she hadn't have done it, she would have sagged down into nothing."

  Critics shared his appreciation for her work. The Motion Picture Herald said Elizabeth displayed "a new artistry." Bosley Crowther in the New York Times said that she convincingly turned her character into "a woman of spirit and sensitivity who acquires tolerance and grows old gracefully." Variety opined, "Miss Taylor, whose talent and emotional ranges have usually seemed limited, turns in a clever performance that registers up and down the line." Once more, predictions were made about an Academy Award.

  Significantly, the ad campaign focused on Elizabeth and Rock rather than on the deceased Dean—though the cult that was already growing up around his memory surely contributed to the film's impressive grosses. Publicists, perhaps thinking it unseemly to hype a dead man (these were, after all, more discreet times), launched a campaign that promoted the love story between Leslie and Bick. Film posters bannered just three words in huge type: Liz and rock. Radio ads in sixty-, thirty-, and ten-second spots intoned a version of the same script:

  Whad'ya got, whad'ya got? Liz and Rock, Liz and Rock! In the giant entertainment of them all! Giant! Giant! Giant! Giant! It's a big story of big feelings and big things! Liz and Rock, Liz and Rock, Liz and Rock, Giant!

  And television, that great rival of the studios, proved that it could also be the newest, and perhaps most effective, medium for promoting movies. Against a sweeping shot of the Texas desert with the façade of Reata looming in the background, the TV announcer proclaimed,

  Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. The giant entertainment of them all. George Stevens's production of Giant. Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. The big stars. The big story. The big emotions. Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. The two big stars. The only picture big enough to bring them together.

  Giant proved to be a runaway hit, the biggest moneymaker until then in Warners' history. And with Mike Todd at her side for the New York premiere, Elizabeth was poised for success equally as impressive. Her alliances with men, dating as far back as Glenn Davis, had always been chosen, consciously and unconsciously, for what they could offer her. Nicky Hilton had given her romance and headlines. Michael Wilding had brought stability to her reputation. But Todd could give her much more than any of that. Mike Todd could give her the world.

  Five

  Over the Top

  July 1957–March 1958

  PRINCE ALY KHAN and his latest ladylove, the French model Bettina, were astride pink and purple horses on the carousel. Behind them, Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier (Vivien Leigh to the masses) waved enthusiastically to Baron Shawcross, former attorney general and the lead British prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, who was busy dancing a rumba with Debbie Reynolds. A light mist may have been dampening the partygoers' fine duds, but it did nothing to ruin their gaiety. Mike Todd, that master showman, had left nothing to chance, distributing plastic raincoats to every one of his seventeen hundred guests. He'd permitted himself only one moment of pique, stamping his foot and shaking his fist up at the clouds over London's Battersea Park, cursing God for daring to rain on his parade.

  Watching from a perch on the raised wooden walkway known as the Tree-Walk, Dick Hanley breathed a long sigh of relief. The party, celebrating the London premiere of Todd's wide-screen epic Around the World in Eighty Days, was a smashing success. Hanley could relax and have a good time.

  After being canned by Louis B. Mayer (some thanks for eleven years of devoted service), Dick had been hired as Todd's executive secretary, and it was his job to make sure that everything—from poker games at the Beverly Hills Hotel to extravagant galas like this one—went off without a hitch. Never far from Todd's side as the producer flew around the world making his big, extravagant picture, Dick jetted from Hollywood to New York, New York to London, London to New York, New York to Paris, Paris to New York, and New York to Hollywood—all in less than a month. But he was glad to do it. When the history of cinema was written, Hanley told friends, Mike Todd would be an even bigger name than Mr. Mayer. Though some people in Hollywood still considered Todd a carpetbagger, he was also being hailed as "the hottest man in show business" by the press. After all, no one could argue with success—especially not the big, unqualified success that Todd was enjoying—so rare in an industry still hemorrhaging audiences and profits every year.

  Around the World in Eighty Days proved that the movies could still make big money. Since its New York premiere in October 1956, the film had smashed previous box-office records one by one: first Giant, then Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, and finally The Robe, a CinemaScope spectacle starring a Welsh actor named Richard Burton. Now Todd's picture—once dismissed as an overblown gimmick—was going head-to-head with DeMille's The Ten Commandments in an effort to overtake the biggest box-office champ of all time, Gone With the Wind.

  Dick Hanley was smiling. He knew that his boss despised false modesty. That was Todd's whole reason for this party—to rub his success in the noses of all those in Hollywood who had doubted him. Here was Mike Todd, on the banks of the Thames, hobnobbing not with nouveau riche movie folk but with authentic aristocracy. He'd bussed them in by the hundreds on red double-deckers, their tiaras and jewelry bouncing along on the ride to Battersea. Helping the Duchess of Argyll alight, Todd cracked, "Imagine, a duchess on a bus." The quip went around the globe in an instant, and Mike Todd, the son of a poor rabbi from Minneapolis, was suddenly king of the world.

  And at his side was his twenty-five-year-old queen, the radiantly beautiful and visibly pregnant Elizabeth Taylor. Todd, twice her age, helped her onto one of the boats that ferried guests across the Thames. A Spanish singer serenaded her with a flamenco gui tar as she placed her hand to her heart and blew her husband a kiss. From the front came the bells and gongs of Oriental music; from behind, the soulful call of Hindustani strings. Seven different bands played music from the seven different countries visited by Phileas Fogg in the movie, turning the normally quiet waterway into a cacophony of music, laughter, and applause.

  On shore it was more of the same. Seven chefs whipped up seven different national cuisines to satisfy every taste. Fish and chips were served in baskets lined with specially printed editions of the Times, dated 1873. Giant prawns were brought in from Hong Kong; curry dishes from India; sweet potatoes from Virginia. At the sideshows, partygoers dug their hands into buckets of copper pennies to use for playing the roulette wheel. The coins came courtesy of Todd in order that his guests would not have to pay for a single thing—not even t
he penny prizes. From caviar to stuffed bears, the entire night was on him. No wonder the champagne was still flowing well past dawn the next day.

  Of course, Todd's generosity was matched only by his self-promotion. "An openhanded sort," Time magazine called him, "who would pass out salted nuts at his own hanging if he owned the beer concession." Todd did, in fact, own the concession; after Around the World he could do anything he wanted. Hollywood was his. Every studio was ready to open its gates—and its coffers.

  At one point, however, his mood darkened. A drunken guest staggered a bit too close to Elizabeth, and Mike suddenly seized him by the collar and nearly shoved him into the river. "My wife is pregnant," he growled. "Will you please be a gentleman?" Raised eyebrows were exchanged between Lord Dalkeith and the Countess of Dartmouth. So that was the famous temper of the American showman. Elizabeth joked that she might have the baby right then and there, and if so, she hoped that it was a girl. "I don't know whether the world is ready for another Mike Todd," she said, eliciting a round of laughter.

  They'd been married for five months; she was probably seven months pregnant. They'd just come from Cannes, where Europeans had gotten their first glimpse of Todd's film, and where, just for the fun of it, the producer had invited a thousand people to a casino on the Boulevard de la Croisette and imported a circus from Paris. Lions and tigers paced in their cages as guests dined on smoked sturgeon. When Mike brought his wife around to the gambling tables, Elizabeth dropped her hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew a stack of notes. "There must be $10,000 here," she gushed, wide-eyed.

  "Pocket money," he told her. "Put it back. And don't count it. It's vulgar to count money."

  That much cash in the pocket of Mike Todd could be a dangerous thing, especially in a casino. At the age of fifty, he had already made and lost a million dollars in Chicago's construction industry, gambled away a second fortune, and declared bankruptcy twice. "He was a man who didn't look back," said Susan McCarthy Todd. "There was always something better ahead that he was planning to make happen."