How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  He also said that he hoped to resume their world tour once Elizabeth was better, stressing it would be "purely a vacation—no business." He was obfuscating again. In fact, what no one but his closest intimates (and the U.S. State Department) knew was that Mike Todd was determined to get to Russia. Nearly two years earlier, he'd harbored grand plans of making a film in collaboration with Russian filmmakers, and not just any film either. He'd wanted to make a gargantuan version of War and Peace—no matter that Paramount recently had beaten him to it with an adaptation of Tolstoy's classic starring Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn. That picture, Todd said, was boring and flat, and, besides, was shot in Italy. His would be colossal. And it would be filmed nowhere but in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  Mike Todd Jr. would insist that his father's desire to film in Russia was altruistic, growing out of a belief that a cooperative cinematic effort between East and West could help "bring the people of the world together." But for this flamboyant venture capitalist and son of a poor Polish-born rabbi, there was more to it than that. The Soviet Union represented a vast frontier of untapped opportunity and challenge. If he could make it in Communist Russia, there would be no stopping Mike Todd.

  At the height of the Cold War, however, doing business with the Soviets was regarded warily by the United States government. When Todd had first contacted the State Department about traveling to Russia back in April 1956—around the time that he was becoming friendly with Elizabeth—J. Edgar Hoover sent a personal memo to State Department agents in Los Angeles warning them against granting permission for the trip. His files, Hoover insisted, indicated "association by Michael Todd with pro-communist individuals and gamblers." Furthermore, there were Todd's "questionable business operations during his 1951 bankruptcy investigation." Yet nothing in Todd's FBI file backs up Hoover's charges. In fact, the Bureau had failed to prove any illegality on Todd's part during his bankruptcy, and one memo directly contradicts the chief's allegation of association with "pro-communist individuals" by reporting "no subversive info" whatsoever was found in Todd's files.

  But Todd was a Democrat, and any Democrat who courted the Soviet Union was immediately considered suspect. Surely Mike knew this, and he was shrewd as always: He "expressed great admiration for Director Hoover and confidence in all Bureau operations." That message was relayed to Hoover in code via teletype. After that, there was no further opposition from the FBI chief to Todd's Russian sojourn.

  To get what he wanted, Mike knew that he'd need to charm and manipulate the government in the same way he did the press and the public. Sponsoring a pair of Russian filmmakers on a visit to the United States, Todd kept the State Department apprised of their movements, offering to show the department the films the Russians had brought with them. Warned that the Soviets would try to use him for propaganda if they agreed to coproduce a film, Todd made assurances that he wouldn't tolerate any outside "artistic control." When asked to keep in touch with the State Department at all times, Todd replied that he "wouldn't operate any other way."

  He was equally as charming to the Russians. His informal, jovial humor struck a responsive chord among the Soviets, and they came close to signing a deal with him. When they finally turned him down, Todd headed into Yugoslavia to try to secure a deal there. Once again he was unsuccessful. Although plans for War and Peace were eventually dropped, Todd did not give up his dream of a Russian production and hankered for the next two years to get back to the Soviet Union.

  And so it was that in February 1958, Mike and Elizabeth celebrated their first anniversary clinking champagne glasses in Moscow. To both his wife and son, Todd hinted that he was on a "secret mission" for the U.S. State Department; his FBI records, however, reveal nothing of the sort. He was in Russia to sell Mike Todd, not democracy; he wanted distribution for Around the World and to jump-start talks for a U.S.-Soviet film production. Once again he got on famously with the Soviets, likening Khrushchev to a Hollywood movie magnate and admitting to being "fascinated" by him. Lest he be charged as being too friendly to the Communists, Todd made sure to tell reporters that he'd brought along America's "best secret weapon"—his wife. Let Elizabeth Taylor loose in Russia, Mike said, and it could "undermine their whole structure." Not quite—but the glamorous impression Elizabeth made touring Red Square wasn't lost on Soviet officials. Khrushchev decided to capitalize on the publicity of the Todds' visit by publicly renewing his call for a summit meeting between East and West.

  Back in California in the middle part of that February, Elizabeth had little time to unwind because rehearsals for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof began on February 24. Since the birth of Liza, life had been a whirlwind, with the Madison Square Garden party, the jaunt to Asia, the appendectomy in Los Angeles. For New Year's, the Todds, with Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds along for the ride, had planned to see Judy Garland and Harry Belafonte perform in Las Vegas. Elizabeth was still not all that keen on Debbie, but she'd come around to liking Eddie okay; he made her laugh, and there was something about the way his eyes lit up every time he saw her that she just couldn't help but find amusing. As they hustled on board the Liz with the champagne already flowing, no one thought to tell the pilot their destination, so it was taken for granted that they were headed to their home in Palm Springs. Not until they'd touched down and recognized the San Jacinto Mountains did the group let out a collective shout of surprise, and soon the plane was zooming back up into the air. The foursome welcomed midnight with a burst of bubbly somewhere over the Nevada desert.

  A few weeks later the Todds were on their way to Russia, and after that, there was a flying trip to Paris, where Elizabeth "only had to utter an enraptured 'oooh'" to acquire new gowns at the salons of Dior and Balenciaga. "Liz bought and bought," as Photoplay commented on her jaunt down the Rue de la Paix to find some new shiny rocks for her rapidly growing collection. "The only French phrase Liz knows is 'Van Cleef and Arpels.'" Apparently Paris didn't bore her so much this time.

  This was the lifestyle that Elizabeth Taylor was born for. There was no chance to get bored. At a time when air travel was still new to most Americans, Elizabeth was jetting around at will, often in her husband's private plane. So she was a little petulant when she was forced to put all of that on hold and return to work for the first time in more than a year. Yes, the film would be good for her career, and, yes, she thought that she could do a good job in the part. But that didn't change the fact that she preferred flying around the world to emoting on a soundstage. But as Mike spent his days still trying to secure Russian distribution of Around the World, Elizabeth turned her full attention to Maggie the Cat.

  Rehearsals did not go well. Some people on the set thought that the star was behaving like a spoiled brat. Judith Anderson said that Elizabeth "dogged it" during rehearsals—meaning that she held back and refused to get into the part. Paul Newman was so frustrated that he complained to director Richard Brooks; Elizabeth, he said, was giving him nothing to work with. But Brooks, who'd been through all this before on The Last Time I Saw Paris, didn't share his actors' concerns. He told Newman not to worry. "Once the camera begins to roll," Brooks said, "she comes alive." The director understood his leading lady very well. "First, she's a beauty. Then, she's a combination of child and bitch. Third, she wants to love passionately and to be loved."

  After a year of marriage, it was Elizabeth's desire for grand romance and passion that defined her. She adored being Mrs. Mike Todd. "Liz is blissfully happy," Photoplay reported. "Queen Elizabeth of the British Empire should have it so good as Mike's 'Queen Liz.'" It was the way she'd always wanted to live—life in all its wide-screen glory.

  And so she was more than happy to participate in Bill Doll's latest public relations gambit, launched just as filming of Cat got under way. i'm saying good-by to the movies blared the headline in the Los Angeles Times on March 16 over a piece written by "Mrs. Michael Todd." A Madonna-and-child photo of Elizabeth and baby Liza graced the page. "I won't really be leaving show business," Mrs.
Todd wrote. "I'm just thinking of retiring the commodity known as Elizabeth Taylor. When that happens, the spot light will be on Mike, which is the way it should be." Despite what some people were saying, she didn't feel that she "owed" her public a lifetime in the movies. "I owe the public exactly what they see on screen and nothing more," she said, "and I think my fans will be glad to have me do whatever makes me happiest." She insisted that she would make just three more movies: Cat, Don Quixote, and another picture for her husband sometime in the future. And then she'd call it a day.

  There were at least a couple of motivations behind the story, including putting an end, once and for all, to those recurring rumors about troubles in the Todd marriage. "When we're separated," Elizabeth wrote truthfully, "we absolutely die." But the real point of the article was to ratchet up pressure on Metro, which still insisted that Elizabeth had one more film on her contract. The star, however, was determined never to do it. The more time she spent away from the studio, the more she loathed the idea of going back. After filming wrapped on Cat, she intended to walk off the Metro lot and never return.

  Principal photography commenced on March 3 with the scene outside the plantation house where the bratty child throws ice cream at Elizabeth. As Brooks had promised, the star's performance noticeably improved once the cameras were on her. But as had become her custom, she called in sick a few weeks later, pleading a cold. (She'd later claim that it was pneumonia.) A reported 102-degree fever kept her from flying with Mike on March 22 to New York, where the Friars Club was planning to roast the showman at the Waldorf-Astoria. Instead of his wife, Mike took along the writer Art Cohn, then penning the authorized Todd biography and working on a script for Don Quixote.

  Dick Hanley drove them to the Burbank airport, where the Liz took off at 10:41 P.M., helmed by pilot Bill Verner, a forty-five-year-old major in the air force reserves, and copilot Tom Barclay, thirty-four, a last-minute replacement for Verner's regular copilot. Settling into their seats, Todd and Cohn smoked cigars and sipped brandy as the plane rose into the clouds over Southern California. They'd use the trip to go over drafts of Don Quixote.

  A little more than two hours later, at 1:55 A.M. Mountain Time, as turbulence over Arizona began to jostle the small plane, Verner called down to air traffic control in Winslow for permission to climb from 11,000 to 13,000 feet. He reported "moderate" icing conditions. Permission was granted, and the Liz began its ascent. If he hadn't done so already, Barclay probably told the two passengers to make sure their seatbelts were fastened. But the higher altitude did nothing to decrease the turbulence. The Liz was heading straight into a storm front, and ice was now forming rapidly on the wings. Shortly after two in the morning, Verner radioed air control in Zumi, New Mexico, that the icing conditions were getting worse. What he didn't know was that the right master engine rod as well as the right propeller were about to fail.

  Far below, John Johnson was working the graveyard shift in the control tower at the tiny airport in Grants, New Mexico. Grants was a quiet mill town, the carrot-growing capital of the United States, nestled to the northeast of the snow-covered Zuni Mountains, the locus of many Indian legends. Johnson had had little to report all night. But around 2:30 A.M. he saw an intense, brief flash of what he thought was lightning in the purple winter sky. Shortly afterward he received a call from the pilot of an Air Force B-36 flying overhead, who reported seeing a plane go down over the mountains. Johnson noted the time as 2:40 A.M. and phoned Dick Lane, the airport operator. Lane could do nothing until daybreak, since the darkness would make any search of the snowy mountain terrain impossible.

  There was, of course, a suspicion that this was Mike Todd's plane. No communication had been received from Verner since he'd radioed Zumi saying that the icing was getting worse. A search team was organized, including stringers from the Associated Press, which set out at first light into the mountains. "We had trouble seeing very much of the terrain because the ground was partly obscured by fog," Lane said. It was pilot Bill Hopwood who, after about thirty minutes of searching, first spied a column of dark smoke rising through the fog from the edge of a small arroyo. The searchers were stunned by the devastation. The burned wreckage of the Liz was scattered over a quarter of an acre, evidence of a massive explosion on impact. Glenn Hughes, an investigator for the Civil Aeronautics Administration, took one look at the scene and knew instantly that the plane had rammed nose-first into the ground.

  The investigation would disclose that the plane had lifted off carrying 20,757 pounds—a ton more than the maximum allowable weight for a Lockheed of that size. Mike Todd never traveled lightly. Just four months earlier he'd been charged for excess baggage on a commercial flight. Had his excess finally been his undoing?

  Dick Lane reported that all that was left of the Liz were "the outer portions of the wings and a small portion of the tail." And one other thing: a red cloth napkin with the words the liz embroidered in gold.

  The snow in the arroyo was melting, blackened by fuel and cinders, and stained a deep red in several places. The remains of three bodies were found far away from the site of impact. But the report from the Burbank airport had said that four people were on board. Searchers wondered if the report was wrong. But then an Associated Press freelance photographer named George Hight moved a piece of wreckage and discovered the gruesome, blackened remains of Mike Todd. Only his dental records—and his wedding ring—would identify him.

  The bodies of the four victims were taken to Albuquerque, seventy-eight miles east of Grants. Just three days earlier Todd had been to Albuquerque, making a special appearance for a showing of Around the World in Eighty Days. The Liz had landed at the Albuquerque airport and was met by local officials who gave the gregarious showman a rousing welcome. But their idea to escort him into town with siren-blaring police cars was declined. "Sirens, in an instance like this," Todd told them, "are very undemocratic. They divide Americans into two classes and have a way of saying: 'Get out of my way, you peasants, here comes a big shot.'"

  But Mike Todd was a big shot, as big as they came. And now, in the blink of an eye, with so many plans left unfinished, the big shot was gone. Dick Lane called the Burbank airport and told them that Todd's plane had been found. The Civil Aeronautics investigators called in their reports. The stringers called in their stories. One of them also called James Bacon, who called Dick Hanley and told him that Mike Todd was dead. It was left to Dick—devoted Dick—to break the news to Todd's wife.

  Six

  Protecting Interests

  September 1958–May 1959

  AS HEDDA HOPPER BARGED into her office, her secretaries sat bolt upright at their desks. They knew when the "old harpy" (as some of them called her behind her back) was on the warpath, and this was clearly one of those times. Tossing her flowered hat onto the ratty sofa, the columnist barked out an order to get Kurt Frings on the phone. The gleam in her eyes told her secretaries that Hedda was on to a scoop.

  Everyone in town was looking for Elizabeth Taylor, who'd just returned from New York. A posse of reporters had been left stymied after chasing the star to the Beverly Hills Hotel, only to lose her when she escaped through the Polo Lounge and was whisked away by a waiting car. But Hedda had a hunch "she would be hiding out in the house of Kurt Frings"—a man she despised with every breath of her aging body, blaming him for "squeezing producers dry and making the stars [the] rulers of Hollywood." At seventy-three, Hedda was getting a little old to play the game in this new world order created by Frings and others like him, but she wasn't going down without a fight. And that meant finding and nailing Frings's prize client, the Widow Todd, who, after all, was only a star because Hedda had made her so. Or so Hedda believed.

  It had been exactly five months and eighteen days since Mike Todd had died in that fiery plane crash. Elizabeth's grief had been broadcast from every newspaper, magazine, radio, and television. Fan magazines quickly pasted stock shots of Elizabeth and Mike onto their covers with headlines like farewell my darlin
g, farewell my love and saw their newsstand sales spike. A comment supposedly once made by Todd—that when he was separated from his wife, he felt like one half of a pair of scissors—was kept in heavy rotation in nearly every article written about his death. Photos of Elizabeth at Mike's funeral in a black veil, being held up on either side by her brother Howard and her doctor Rex Kennamer, her mouth open in a wail of anguish, became iconic, anticipating the photos of Jackie Kennedy a few years later, though Jackie would never be as dramatic in her grief.

  To the young widow, the press bowed low. Louella Parsons temporarily dropped "Good News" as the title of her column in Modern Screen, explaining she couldn't use it because of the "sorrow of Liz Taylor's great tragedy." All those notorious fights between the Todds were forgotten as columnists rewrote history. Louella recalled the night at Romanoff's after the Academy Awards a year earlier when Mike won the big prize and tenderly held his wife's hand and asked, "How can one man know such happiness?"

  And now, if the fan magazines and newspaper columns were to be believed, Elizabeth had remained inert for the past five months, sitting alone in her bedroom—"a small figure with hands lying listlessly in her lap, face white as chalk, eyes swollen with weeping, staring vacantly, seeing nothing." She sat caressing Mike's wedding ring that had been pulled from the wreckage of his plane or the statue they had bought together in Hong Kong. "The goddess Todd had built went to pieces when Mike's plane crashed," Motion Picture magazine wrote, summing up the image the public seemed to want and expect from its heroine. Prophetic words that Todd was supposed to have uttered ("I'm flying so high maybe I have to come down!" or some version thereof) were mixed into the narrative in an attempt to fashion a truly Shakespearean tragedy.