How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  So it was with some relief that she finished up the picture and hurried off to Dahomey (now Benin) in western Africa to make another picture with Richard, The Comedians, directed by Peter Glenville. Meanwhile, a world away, The Taming of the Shrew opened in New York on March 8, 1967, to surprisingly good box office; Shakespearean films didn't normally bring in the crowds. But apparently the Burtons still could. In gorgeous pastel Renaissance costumes, Elizabeth is a heaving-bosomed delight. Audiences seemed to consider all the kicking and sparring and jumping into haystacks as a glimpse into the Burtons' famously tempestuous private lives.

  Hollywood was impressed. Elizabeth could still pack them in after twenty years. But would they reward her for it? She'd been nominated for an Academy Award for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? No one had doubted that she would be. But the question on people's minds was whether Academy voters—Elizabeth's peers—felt that she'd already been rewarded enough. Those million-dollar salaries, those jewels, those houses in Switzerland and Mexico. And she already had one Oscar. Well-known award handicapper Bob Thomas gave the odds to Lynn Redgrave for her engaging performance in Georgy Girl, a favorite among young moviegoers. But Marilyn Beck, one of the new breed of writers who'd appeared in the wake of Hedda and Louella, had a different view, predicting that Elizabeth and Richard would be the first husband and wife to take home joint Oscars. "The emotional climate seems right for this to be the Burtons' year," Beck wrote in her syndicated column. "For Liz and Richard are now among the filmland's favorites, and don't think that such things don't have a lot to do with selecting a winner."

  This was more proof of how times had changed. Elizabeth and Richard were no longer just tabloid fodder. Now they were "filmland's favorites," causing a sensation wherever they went, spicing up parties with a dash of old-time glamour in an increasingly blue jeans–and-T-shirt industry. When Elizabeth's name was read as the winner on the night of April 10, the applause that thundered through the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was heartfelt. Unlike the night six years earlier when she'd won for a film that she'd respected much less, Elizabeth was not present to receive her award. She was no longer a denizen of Hollywood; she graced them with her presence only on rare and special occasions. But the next day her photo landed on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Richard didn't win, however, much to her chagrin, and neither did Mike Nichols, but Sandy Dennis did take home the supporting actress trophy.

  Despite the slight to her husband, it seemed that in this new world order, Elizabeth Taylor was still queen. She alone had anticipated what was to come. Every criticism made of her, every action taken against her, was eventually proven wrong or overturned. Her way of seeing the world prevailed, as the lawsuits she faced were settled one by one, largely in her favor. When one of the exhibitors suing over Cleopatra argued that he'd lost revenues because audiences didn't want their money going to "that woman," Appellate Judge Gilbert H. Jertberg looked at him in disbelief. Undeterred, the exhibitor pressed forward, even if he had no evidence that Elizabeth and Richard had hurt his business. All he had to bolster his argument was his own umbrage. "In this case," he said indignantly before the court, "they were each married to someone else."Jertberg gave him a trenchant look. "But that's no longer very shocking, is it?" the judge asked.

  Indeed, it was not.

  "We're all dieting, so no dessert," Elizabeth told her entourage one night in the royal suite at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. "That's why we are ordering lima beans, corn on the cob, steak and kidney pie, and mashed potatoes."

  Elizabeth was thirty-five years old and on top of the world. Whatever she wanted, she could have. And tonight she was hungry.

  "God, I love food," she gushed to Liz Smith, entertainment editor for Cosmopolitan, as the entrées arrived. "And wine, I adore wine." But when she took a gander at the bottles that Richard had ordered, she scrunched up her face. "Really, Agatha," she said, using one of her pet nicknames for her husband. "Are you saving money again? Really, I don't believe you, you are so cheap."

  "Quiet, Tubby," Burton responded, "or I shall belt thee in thy tiny chops."

  "Listen," Elizabeth said, wagging a finger at the waiter. "I think I'll have a hot fudge sundae."

  No one dared remind her about the diet.

  Glancing around the hotel suite, Smith pondered what exactly it was that made the Burtons so larger than life. She watched as Alexandre fussed over Elizabeth's hair while the star polished off her sundae. Behind them, a secretary was on the telephone, ordering lingerie from Henri Bendel. "Money, stardom, fame, and married sexual excess were not their gods," Smith observed, "at this point, anyway." It was food, she realized, penning a hilarious, notorious piece about the Burtons' culinary intemperance.

  And yet while Smith was being funny, she was also quite serious. By the later part of the 1960s, Elizabeth's raison d'être was the voracious acquisition of all that would sustain, fulfill, and satiate her: wine and mashed potatoes and hot fudge sundaes, to be sure, but also Alexandre's elaborate Parisian hairstyles and the lacy slips sent over from Henri Bendel.

  And the jewels. Definitely the jewels.

  As the Burtons and their crew sailed "unobtrusively" out of the Plaza, Smith hurried to tag along, taking notes all the way. Elizabeth wore a coffee-colored suede coat trimmed with fox. Her eyes were "flashing like 'walk' signs." They climbed into a robin's-egg-blue Rolls-Royce in order to ride two blocks to David Webb's jewelry store. When they walked in, store employees sprang to attention "as if we were wearing stocking masks," Smith wrote.

  "I want to see some rings and things," Elizabeth announced. "Nothing over $5,000." Trays of jewelry suddenly materialized around her. Alexandre was nearly orgasmic, slipping rings onto his fingers, but Richard just rolled his eyes. "A steal at $4,000," he said sarcastically, looking at one piece.

  Elizabeth shot him a look. "Richard, you don't understand, man. This stuff is not just ordinary diamonds-and-rubies junk. This is it now—it's very chic." She already had several of the gold and silver rings jammed onto her short, chubby fingers.

  Turning her attention to the sales clerk, she asked sweetly, "What will these pieces be with my spectacular discount?" With a grand wave, she indicated several leopard, zebra, and serpent rings. "Never mind," she said quickly. "Send them to the hotel, and these too." She pointed at a $2,500 cigarette lighter and a $29,000 shell purse.

  This was Elizabeth's fame now. In October 1967 there were no movies on the immediate horizon. Three had just opened: Reflections in a Golden Eye and The Comedians in New York and Doctor Faustus in London. None were big moneymakers. The cockiness that Elizabeth had displayed to Ray Stark now rang awfully hollow; for the first time, not just one Elizabeth Taylor movie, but three, failed to cash in at the box office. Not even Reflections—which had promoted the latest (and as always discreet) nude shot of La Taylor with a suggestive tagline, "Leave the children home."

  Yet in some ways box office didn't matter anymore to Elizabeth. In February 1968 the New York premiere of Doctor Faustus brought out the Robert Kennedys and the Peter Lawfords and even Spyros Skouras, who let the past be the past and toasted the Burtons grandly. Outside the theater, another riot broke out. "We just stepped right on one poor man who had fallen," Elizabeth said. "I couldn't help it, the way they were shoving and clawing at us."

  "It was Bobby Kennedy who saved us," Richard said, describing the fracas the next day. "He just took over. He turned to those cops and snapped, 'Is there a police car outside? Well, get the Burtons into it.' He is a fantastic person."

  "We adore Bobby Kennedy," Elizabeth echoed. "We simply adore him."

  Richard couldn't get over the fuss that people still made over them. "Here were these two middle-aged people, Elizabeth and me, merely trying to get into the cinema," he said.

  Elizabeth sighed. "I thought we were all through with that sort of thing. I thought we had gone over the popularity hill. The crowd was strange: not the usual types along in years who might hang around to see us, bu
t a young groovy bunch—like hippies almost."

  Apparently their appeal knew no bounds. "With Elizabeth around," Burton said by way of explanation, "you always get that sort of excitement."

  "Oh, Modesty Blaise," his wife said, throwing him a look, "I hardly know you."

  She made that kind of noise often, insisting that the crowds came to see Richard as much as they did her. But her husband was right. It was Mrs. Burton, in her elegant furs and sparkling jewels and daring miniskirts—then all the rage—who really drew the attention. Still, the two of them together provided the glamorous traveling road show that the press covered so eagerly and the public devoured so greedily. As media stars, their only peers were Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, but Jackie and Ari, for all their wealth, were never so deliciously conspicuous as the Burtons.

  "We get a great giggle out of all our things," Elizabeth said. "The yacht, the Rolls, a sable fur coat." Of course she quickly assured the reporter that she and Richard were "totally unblasé" about it all. Indeed, it was her very enjoyment of extravagance—her sheer, undisguised elation—that made Elizabeth and her lifestyle so appealing. "Some people believe it is vulgar to show their possessions," she said, "but we show ours. In Gstaad, it is fun to look at everything we've collected over the years." And she insisted with utter conviction that she loved the little straw donkey a bartender had given her years before in Rome with as much fervor as she loved the sapphires and emeralds.

  She was probably being just a tiny bit disingenuous. Her love of jewels seemed to grow exponentially with every month she stayed away from moviemaking. She had finally achieved what she had always wanted: She could stay home, luxuriate in her bath, play with her animals, and eat chicken straight out of the deep fryer. She was the little girl she'd always wanted to be. And sparkly jewels were her favorite toys.

  "What are you doing, Lumpy?" Richard called to her, waiting for her in bed, in a moment he preserved for posterity in his diary.

  "Playing with my jewels," she called back cheerfully.

  She liked pretty clothes, too. "I'm much more broad-minded about clothes now," she tried telling one reporter. "I used to only go to Dior. Now it's all the good French designers." She laughed, aware of the press coverage the Parisians gave her. "I sort of try to live on a budget. Richard says I'm the reason for communism in France."

  But she needed new clothes: Her figure was filling out. By 1968 she was no longer the slim-hipped siren of Cleopatra and The Sandpiper. It was almost as if she'd taken a look at Martha's padding and extra poundage and not really minded what she saw all that much. To stay slim meant that she couldn't "pig out," an activity at least as enjoyable as playing with her jewels, with her favorite meal consisting of fried chicken, mashed potatoes with "lots of gravy," corn on the cob with "lots of butter," and "something chocolatey for dessert." For all her partiality to Europe, it was common American food that Elizabeth craved most.

  "The lazy little bugger ought to lose a few pounds or so to look at her absolute best," Richard wrote in his diary around this time. Looking at her as critically as he could, he saw few signs of aging except for a few gray hairs; the breasts, "despite their largeness and considerable weight," sagged no more than they had when he first met her. "She needs weight off her stomach," he declared, "not so much out of vanity but because all the medical men say it will ease her bad back if she has less weight to carry for'ard."

  But still the paparazzi aimed their telephoto lenses at the Burtons' new yacht, a 279-ton, 130-meter vessel christened the Kalizma—for Richard's daughter Kate and Elizabeth's daughters Liza and Maria. With six cabins and two staterooms, the Kalizma could sleep fourteen and required a crew of five. Columnist Earl Wilson called it a "floating palace." Elizabeth adored the freedom that the Kalizma gave them. The yacht meant they could live anywhere, go anywhere. Lounging on its deck of polished Edwardian mahogany and chrome, she could be a citizen of no place, completely on her own, answerable to no one but herself. It was her lifelong dream.

  "Hi, Lumpy," Richard called as she arrived onshore from the Kalizma by motorboat. They'd moored the yacht off the coast of Sardinia, and Elizabeth was meeting her husband and Earl Wilson for lunch at the Hotel Capo Caccia, perched atop a rocky promontory and surrounded by the crystal blue sea. She wore pink trousers, a white shirt, blue cap, and dark sunglasses, and carried under her arm a spotlessly white poodle named O Fie (one of her favorite oaths from The Taming of the Shrew). From her left pinky sparkled a twenty-nine-carat diamond ring, a gift from Mike Todd, and from her wrist an opal-faced, diamond-encircled wristwatch, which came from Burton. But it was mostly emeralds that her husband had been giving her of late, she told Wilson.

  Settling down for a quick conversation, Elizabeth was anxious to get back to the yacht. Onboard, John Lee was frying six chickens for the kids. Maybe she was hoping to snag a drumstick. A walkie-talkie kept her in touch with the crew. Throughout the meeting with Wilson, she let Richard do most of the talking. When the columnist observed that they seemed "the happiest, richest husband-and-wife team in show business," Burton quipped, "It's because I happen to have in my wife a remarkable star."

  Elizabeth smiled, her eyes dancing in the Mediterranean sun. Then the remarkable star stood, replacing her sunglasses and bidding the men a good afternoon. Trooping down the cliff, she headed back out to the Kalizma.

  Finally she was going to coast for a while.

  She'd earned the right.

  Epilogue

  How to Stay a Movie Star

  AFTER 1968 ELIZABETH TAYLOR didn't need movies to be famous anymore. Other things worked just as well.

  Diamonds, for instance.

  As the world watched, a diamond the size and shape of a small pear was put up for auction at the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. At 69.42 carats, one and a half inches long, and an inch deep, the diamond, discovered a few years earlier in a South African mine, was considered flawless. Cut and mounted into a platinum ring by famed New York jeweler Harry Winston, the gem was owned by Harriet Annenberg Ames, sister of Walter Annenberg, the billionaire publisher and current ambassador to the Court of St. James's. The announcement that Mrs. Ames was putting her rock on the block sent diamond lovers around the world into paroxysms of lust and longing. On October 23, 1969, nearly eight hundred dealers, agents, and socialites jammed into the velvet-curtained auction room at Madison Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street. Bidding was frantic. Everyone knew that Al Yugler of Frank Pollack & Sons was representing Elizabeth Taylor Burton, and it was suspected that Robert Kenmore, bidding for Cartier, was working on behalf of Aristotle Onassis. As the bids climbed, people leapt from their chairs, swinging their gazes from Yugler to Kenmore. When Yugler stopped bidding at $1 million—then an unprecedented sum for a precious stone—Cartier acquired the diamond for $1,050,000. "Wowee," said Mrs. Robert Scull, wife of the well-known art collector. "That was something, wasn't it?"

  But that wasn't the end of it. Calling from London, Richard Burton was furious. He ordered Aaron Frosch to get on the line with Cartier. In less than twenty-four hours, the Cartier diamond had become the Taylor-Burton diamond. "It's just a present for my wife," Burton told reporters when they reached him on the phone.

  Elizabeth never asked what he had to pay to get the ring, but it would be reported that he paid $1.1 million, providing Cartier a profit of $50,000. For the next several days the diamond was displayed in a breakproof glass case at Cartier's Fifth Avenue store, flanked by two armed security guards. Ten thousand people filed past to see "Liz Taylor's gem," the one they knew her husband had bought for her as a little gift because she'd been disappointed she hadn't gotten it at auction.

  "I missed lunch to see this," said Mary Jane Mildenberger, a clerk-typist. "If I had a couple of million I'd spend one of them on a diamond like that, too."

  This was now the crux of Elizabeth's fame, not the disappointing box office of her last few pictures or the excruciating reviews for Boom!, a wild, psychedelic, ahead-of-its-time film tha
t she'd made with Burton for the director Joseph Losey. Dry attendance totals and pompous reviews tucked away on an inside page of the newspaper didn't count. The shiny Taylor-Burton diamond was smack-dab on the front page, and on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on display on Fifth Avenue and later in Chicago, available to thousands to gawk at and sigh over. More people saw the diamond than saw Boom! What they were looking at was irrelevant; all that mattered was that they were still looking.

  And the Cartier diamond wasn't the only sparkler to grab the public's attention. It came on the heels of Burton's acquisition the year before of yet another oversized stone, the Krupp diamond. Once owned by a German armaments manufacturer, the Krupp prompted Elizabeth's famous quip about how nice it was that the ring should end up on "the nice little Jewish finger" of a girl like her.

  Some society matrons sniffed, calling it all just too gaudy. "Nobody I know wants a diamond," said Mrs. Archie Preissman, wife of the Beverly Hills real estate magnate. "They don't look right with the beading on dresses and the jeweled necklines." Mrs. Preissman said that she wasn't wearing her diamonds anymore.

  But Elizabeth Taylor was. At a reception with Princess Margaret not long afterward, aware that Her Royal Highness had called the Krupp the most vulgar thing she'd ever seen, Elizabeth asked if she'd liked to try it on. Once the ring had changed hands, its owner asked the princess brightly, "Doesn't look so vulgar now, does it?"

  Mrs. Preissman and Princess Margaret were in the minority. Most people were like Mary Jane Mildenberger, gushing in awe. Even at thirty-seven years old, Elizabeth Taylor was still living a fairy tale for the world to follow. Just getting the Krupp from New York to the Kalizma in the south of France had provided good copy for the tabloids. Since the diamond wasn't insured between the time it left the auction house and the moment it was slipped onto Elizabeth's hand, Aaron Frosch arranged for five men to leave New York all at the same time with identical boxes. Each arrived in France on different planes. When they finally stood face-to-face with Elizabeth, the men handed her their boxes. One by one, she found them all empty. Richard let out a laugh as he saw his wife's jaw drop. Then Aaron Frosch pulled the ring out of his pocket and presented it to her. There weren't four decoys; there were five. Frosch had had the ring all along.