How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  "I think the Bad Girl image was finally starting to lose its stigma," said Gavin Lambert. "After the studios started fading away, the public seemed to change its outlook somewhat toward its movie stars. They could see through manufactured public images ... The remarkable thing about Taylor was that she was always very authentic, and the public came to admire that about her, no matter how many marriages she had."

  The repressive fifties were giving way to the rebellious sixties, symbolized by miniskirts and Playboy magazine and the young, progressive-thinking family in the White House. Elizabeth's great achievement during this period was that she made the public want her as she was; she made being sexy, independent, and defiant of cultural norms the desirable way to be. Some stars gauge what the public seems to want, and become that to sell their movies and their images. Elizabeth did exactly the opposite. By not conforming to the traditional picture of woman or star—by not trying to be Debbie Reynolds—she made the public want to buy what she already had to sell. Given her personality, to smile and fake her way through an artificial public persona would have been intolerable. After all, she never tried to be that ordinary housewife.

  Of course, vamps and femme fatales had been popular in Hollywood as far back as Theda Bara. But the ideal woman had always been the devoted wife and mother; consequently, every major female star—from Marlene Dietrich to Joan Crawford to Debbie Reynolds—was portrayed this way in their studio publicity, whether true or not (and it usually wasn't). Elizabeth turned that paradigm on its head. She made the Bad Girl the ideal. No longer did women just secretly envy her; now they wanted to be her. And they said so publicly. "If I could be Elizabeth Taylor for just one day," wrote a reader to a fan magazine in 1961, "I'd live the dreams of a lifetime in twenty-four hours." This letter was very different from what the magazines had been publishing just two years before.

  Throughout her career, but especially now, Elizabeth Taylor was proving that true stardom depends on a reconciliation of contrasts: that one could be good and bad at the same time, sexy and sweet, loyal and fickle, compassionate and tempestuous. All of those adjectives describe Elizabeth Taylor, and by 1960, the public was finally acknowledging how much they loved that about her.

  The furs, the jewels, the yachts, the trips around the world, and yes, even the men and the multiple marriages—Elizabeth's celebrity was like none before, offering a glimpse into an exciting, magical life that no Good Girl, certainly not little Debbie with diaper pins stuck to her blouse, was ever going to achieve. With the possible exception of Kim Novak, no woman who'd broken into the box-office top ten had ever been as notorious in her personal life as Elizabeth—not even Marilyn Monroe. Most of the women who'd made the list over the last ten years had projected wholesome images: Betty Grable, Esther Williams, Doris Day, June Allyson. But "by the time of Cleopatra," Tom Mankiewicz observed, "every woman in America wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor. And every man wanted her." She was "the gold standard" for a movie star.

  Being bad—or at least a little naughty—was now glamorous, thanks to Elizabeth. Butterfield 8, with Gloria waking up in a strange bed in a fabulous apartment and absconding with a mink coat, certainly made it seem that way. The audiences flocking to the film weren't coming to see a morality play; Gloria's death at the end was simply a bone tossed to the killjoys, a concession to the last gasps of the censor. What made the film a box-office smash was its celebration of sexual freedom and self-indulgence, which was sold to the public through those seductive posters and those special telephones. The studio was actually goading the public into pretending that they were calling a prostitute. After all those years of Production Code restraint, who knew being bad could be this much fun?

  But the question remained whether the industry would reward such badness. When the Oscar nominations were announced on February 28, 1961, the smart betting was that either Elizabeth or Deborah Kerr (for The Sundowners) would go home with the Best Actress prize. Hedda Hopper, extending an olive branch, predicted that it would be Taylor's year: "This is the fourth nomination for Liz; I believe she'll win. She is the only woman star who can carry a picture alone."

  Yet as much as the tide of public opinion seemed to be turning in Elizabeth's favor, she no doubt understood that there were a few things she could still do to help it along.

  It was just past midnight on March 4 when the nurse caring for Elizabeth Taylor, who had once again fallen ill, suddenly noticed that her patient had turned blue in the face. Ensconced in the penthouse suite of London's posh Dorchester Hotel, Elizabeth was recovering from the flu that she had picked up after too many late nights at the Munich Carnival. But now the nurse discovered with alarm that the star had stopped breathing.

  A doctor was located within the hotel. Immediately he saw the urgency of the situation. "She might have survived fifteen minutes without attention," he recalled, "but no more." To loosen the congestion in her lungs, he resorted to rather unorthodox measures, holding Elizabeth upside down by her ankles, then pushing at her eyeballs and sticking his fingers down her throat. She gagged a little, which meant air was flowing. Then he called her doctor from the London Clinic, who arrived around four o'clock. An oxygen tank was sent over, as well as a portable toilet—the same one, Walter Wanger was told, that was used by Her Majesty when she traveled to "primitive corners of the Commonwealth."

  Eddie had just gotten out of the hospital himself. He'd told his doctors that he'd been having chest pain, but what he really wanted was a little rest and detox from all the pills and booze. In Munich he'd had a humdinger of a fight with Elizabeth, after which she'd swallowed too many Seconals and had to have her stomach pumped. It had been this way for months, the Fishers constantly at each other's throats, exchanging sickbeds as they recovered from binges. But this time his wife's illness was serious, her doctors insisted. With her immune system severely depressed from lack of sleep and ingesting too many substances, Elizabeth's flu had turned into staphylococcus pneumonia, and now her lungs were dangerously congested. She needed to be taken to the London Clinic for a tracheotomy. Otherwise she could asphyxiate and die. Eddie was speechless.

  Word had leaked outside the hotel, and aggressive photographers were ready to pounce when Elizabeth was carried out on a stretcher and placed into an ambulance. Their brazenness was scolded in the House of Lords. But now that the word was out, it was received with stunned disbelief by the world. Beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, just twenty-nine years old—her lovely throat cut open and a breathing tube inserted! Would it be permanent? If not, would it leave a hideous scar? No answers were forthcoming. The statement from the doctors simply said, "Her condition remains grave."

  Grave. Standard hospital terminology, but it was a frightening word for the public, especially in America, where Elizabeth's condition would probably have been described as "critical." Grave sounded far more serious. Not surprisingly, the headlines on Sunday, March 5, were sensational: MISS TAYLOR HAS SURGERY TO SAVE LIFE. LIZ AT DEATH'S DOOR IN LONDON. Based on what little news had been given to the public, it was an overreaction. As the Times of London more soberly reported the next day, "The condition of Miss Elizabeth Taylor, the film actress ... had considerably improved last night"—although the paper did add that she was "not yet out of danger."

  Inside the hospital, Elizabeth was in and out of consciousness, the tube in her throat pumping in oxygen, a drip system feeding her through her ankle. A throng of reporters took up a vigil around the clinic, pestering each person who went in or out for news of Elizabeth Taylor. To keep them satisfied, doctors began issuing health bulletins every fifteen minutes, even if the news was simply "no change." These bulletins were then read on the radio as soon as they came in. In his hotel room, Walter Wanger listened raptly. He'd written in his diary just days before, "At last everything is going along beautifully. The plan is to start shooting April 4, then to Egypt for the exteriors." Now he spent a sleepless night with the telephone right next to his bed.

  That the situation was indeed grave is und
eniable. Wanger's own doctor thought that it was serious enough to prescribe a sedative for the producer so he could be "prepared for the worst." But on Monday, March 6, things spiraled out of control when an American news report allegedly announced that Elizabeth Taylor had died. Just where this report was made has never been determined. No such account was found in any of the voluminous clippings about Elizabeth in any film archive. Perhaps it was a radio or television report. Or perhaps it was just one of those stories that spreads so quickly in Hollywood. Alan Cahan remembered hearing it from a publicist friend. "It'll soon be all over the news," he was told. "Liz Taylor is dead in London!"

  Spyros Skouras heard the report, too, and placed a transatlantic call to Wanger. "My God," he cried. "How did it happen?" Wanger assured him that it wasn't true.

  But the world couldn't be as easily reassured. The story spread like wildfire. Perhaps it was intended to. "I wouldn't be surprised," Cahan said, "if that story of Liz Taylor suddenly dying in London wasn't planted." Dick Clayton thought that it was possible as well. "Press agents are pretty clever like that," he said. And certainly Elizabeth had some very good ones working for her, both on her own and at Fox. A call might have been made, and then another, and soon all of Hollywood would have been buzzing with the tragic news, and then, of course, it would have zoomed around the globe. "We are all very frightened," Wanger wrote that night in his diary, "and, it appears, so is the world. People are crying. Flowers and gifts and 'cures' are coming in from all over."

  Whether they planted the story or not, surely Bill Doll or any of Elizabeth's other press agents remembered the "shrieking fans" who had gathered, quite on their own, when the star, said to be suffering from "Malta fever," had been hospitalized just a few months earlier. Witnessing this latest outpouring of affection for their cli ent, they had to be pleased. And they had to know that such sentiment could be harnessed.

  When the account of Elizabeth's famous tracheotomy was previously reported, this part of the story was never told. The reaction to her earlier illness has been treated as incidental, if at all. But, in fact, the narrative of her brush with death and the outpouring of public support was already in place by March 1961, because it had already happened. And had any clever press agent been so inclined, it would have been easy to whip it up again by starting a little whisper campaign that Elizabeth had died. The reaction of the press and the public was already known. Crowds would fill the streets and newspapers would banner the latest reports of Elizabeth's condition.

  Which is exactly what happened. On March 7, the day after the death rumor, the headlines about Elizabeth moved from below the fold to the top of the page, from regular font size to three inches tall in some instances. Thousands of grief-stricken fans choked the streets around the clinic, depositing flowers in enormous piles on the steps as a sort of shrine—a common enough gesture today for sick or deceased celebrities, but unusual in 1961. Newspaper reports about Elizabeth's condition read almost like obituaries, with photographs of Elizabeth in her greatest films and descriptions of her "once-lithe body" now "linked to medical apparatus around her bed." And surely it was press agents—and not "friends," as reporters described them—who leaked the few precious facts that emerged from the star's hospital room: her constant pain due to lack of sedation (it could weaken her breathing) and her sudden, heartfelt concern about her children, which caused her to sit bolt upright in her hospital bed.

  Though doctors were in fact reporting a "slight improvement" in Elizabeth's condition, the press had no interest in quelling the sudden hysteria. They wanted to sell newspapers. So it was the star's anemia (a "setback," it was called) that the reports trumpeted. "Elizabeth Taylor developed dangerous symptoms of anemia today in her fight for life against pneumonia," the New York Daily News declared.

  No matter how many hospital bulletins insisted that Elizabeth was "breathing quietly and peacefully," the histrionic coverage continued. Reporters trailed Eddie's agent, Milton Blackstone, as he hurried to board a plane for London, allegedly carrying twenty vials of an antipneumonia drug. Just why Elizabeth's doctors would need Eddie Fisher's agent to procure drugs for them in America was never made clear. When a grim-faced Sara and Francis Taylor arrived in London, pursued down Harley Street by a mob of shouting reporters, the public reasoned that things must indeed be dire. They were, of course—just not as dire as the press made them out to be.

  And then, suddenly, Elizabeth got better. On March 10 the Times announced that she was "out of danger"—even if the tabloids in England and America carried on for another day or two. But on March 12 the breathing tube was removed from her throat. Doctors assured reporters that she was "going along very nicely," and that seemed to be that. London police dispatched a "black maria," or paddy wagon, to disperse the crowds amassed around the clinic. "Go on home," they barked through megaphones. "It's all over."

  But the story wasn't over. It was far too profitable to fade away that fast—for both the newspapers and the principals involved. Eddie gave several different interviews, describing how the "dreadful illness" had nearly taken his wife's life "more than once this past week." Even with the crisis over, he stood on the clinic's front steps to have his picture taken and read statements expressing the couple's "limitless gratitude and appreciation to those who made possible her miraculous recovery." Indeed, the "miracle" of Elizabeth's "second chance at life" was heralded in newspapers the world over.

  Of course, these statements were written by press agents who knew their audience. And it wasn't just Elizabeth's adoring public. It was also those Academy voters back in Los Angeles who had yet to cast their ballots for Best Actress, and who were following the saga of the star's near-death experience in their morning newspapers. To suggest that there was no awareness of how Elizabeth's health crisis might play out for Academy voters is naïve. "Of course that's what was on their minds," said Dick Clayton. Frank D'Amico, who worked at the time for the publicity firm of Rupert Allen in Hollywood, observed, "A good publicist is always thinking of ways in which an event can be turned around to help his client." That would explain the parade of interviews arranged over the next few weeks, first with Eddie, and then with Elizabeth herself.

  The first photos of "Liz on the mend" appeared on March 23. For the occasion, the French hairdresser Alexandre, whom she'd met in Paris, flew to London at her request to give her a new hairdo. "There, in her hospital bed," said Alexandre, "she was held up by three nurses while I created her famous artichoke cut." Above her cashmere sweater, she wore a discreet bandage hiding the wound on her throat. She smiled meekly for photographers, but said nothing, since she was still too weak, according to spokesmen. But not too weak to share champagne with Truman Capote, who came to visit.

  And, yet again, that is not meant to trivialize the experience that she'd been through. Elizabeth would tell remarkable stories to her friends, and later to the public, about seeing "the white light" while she'd been unconscious, of feeling "so welcoming and warm"—the classic description of near-death experiences. She'd even seen Mike, she insisted, who told her that she needed to go back, that it wasn't her time yet—though he had promised that he'd be waiting for her when it was. No doubt she fervently believed all of it. That stories such as these only further riveted the public to her drama was immaterial.

  A few days later her release from the hospital caused a riot. The door of her Rolls-Royce was nearly ripped off its hinges by eager fans, and Elizabeth had to be moved to another car. This was followed by a much ballyhooed return to America. It wouldn't do for the next Best Actress Academy Award winner to recuperate outside of her own country. MISS TAYLOR COMES HOME TO REGAIN HEALTH blared the headlines. There was even talk of making Cleopatra in Hollywood; in any event, the London shoot now had to be abandoned, which meant that Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd couldn't wait around anymore. A new Caesar and Antony would need to be found. Wanger was thinking Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, who, though not a big movie star, had recently been a sensation on Broadway in Ca
melot.

  Cleopatra, however, was the furthest thing from Elizabeth's mind. When she arrived in New York, she told reporters that she felt "a little better," and then, in a "wan and wispy" voice, thanked the public for all "their good wishes." The press was also there when she arrived back in Los Angeles, carried down from her plane by two TWA attendants and placed in a wheelchair, her left leg covered with bandages from "numerous shots of antibiotics during her fight for life in England." Dressed in a stylish tan suit, she was whisked away to a limousine, where, as she petted a little dog in her lap in the backseat, she spoke a few words out the window to newsmen. They had to lean down and strain to hear her whisper: "I plan on doing nothing. I won't do anything for at least several months. I have to do what my doctors tell me."

  In every account of her life, Elizabeth Taylor's frail health has been a recurring motif. It is part of her story, part of her legend. Even before this latest crisis, Motion Picture magazine had tried to explain her ever-fragile health as a result of that other important theme of her story: her passion and lust for life. "It is love that is killing Liz Taylor," the fan magazine wrote. "[I]n her brief life [she] has loved not wisely, but too well, and too many things: men and beauty, fame and talent, children and travel and money and excitement and love itself." While little more than pop psychology, some of this may have been on the money, even if the writer didn't fully realize it. Certainly Elizabeth's headlong embrace of sex, drugs, alcohol, and food did exacerbate her various health issues.