The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice

by M. G. Lord

  Two parts that Taylor played for director George Stevens seem to have had a strong effect on her identity in later life. Stevens saw qualities in her as a teenager that she had not yet recognized in herself. He saw the qualities that would enable her to make “her greatest conscious gift.”

  When Stevens ad-libbed the “Tell Mama” line for her in A Place in the Sun, he identified a maternal quality in her love. This quality, journalist Kevin Sessums wrote, also informed her AIDS activism. In a memorial tribute published in the Daily Beast, Sessums described an interview that he had with her in the 1990s for POZ, a magazine for people with HIV. He told Taylor that he felt she had turned to “all of us who were HIV positive” and said, “Tell Mama—”

  Taylor stopped him and touched his hand, he recalled. Then, as if to confirm his perception, she finished the line herself: “Tell Mama all.”

  Taylor’s character in Giant also anticipated the activist she would become. As Leslie Benedict, Taylor makes common cause with the sick. She steps away from her privileged community—the white Texas ranching elite—to serve a community of outsiders, their Mexican workers. Although she is warned not to enter the Mexican homes, she does so anyway. And when she finds an ailing child, she cradles him. She doesn’t pull back, fearing contagion—just as Taylor herself did not recoil from people with HIV. She demands medical attention from the privileged community’s physician.

  Her husband scolds her. “He’s our doctor,” he says. “He don’t tend those people.”

  Although frustrated, Leslie holds her temper. Decrying his prejudice would not help the child. Gently, through persuasion, she forces both her husband and the doctor to transcend their bigotry: to acknowledge the humanity—and the suffering—of the outsiders.

  “Darling, I don’t think you quite understand,” Leslie says sweetly. “There’s a child who’s very sick.” Then she turns to the physician: “You’ll go, won’t you doctor?”

  And in that brave moment, Leslie leads the doctor—as Taylor herself led a callous nation—to do the right thing.

  Acknowledgments

  I did not watch Elizabeth Taylor’s movies alone in the dark. I watched them many times with different friends, all of whom offered valuable insight. Robin Swicord and Nick Kazan inadvertently got the project rolling—by giving me a boxed set of Taylor DVDs. Robin repeatedly weathered Cleopatra with me, as well as commented on my drafts.

  The movies I highlight are a pleasure to watch. Not all Taylor’s movies, however, can be described this way. Thanks to Robert Ladendorf for enduring many less-than-beguiling films with me. Robert also tracked down Production Code memos in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library and gave me thoughtful notes on my every draft. (At last a use for that master’s in film!) In the Herrick Library Special Collections, thanks to Barbara Hall, research archivist, and Jenny Romero, coordinator. Thanks also to Faye Thompson, coordinator of the Herrick Library’s Roddy McDowall Photo Archive. I also benefited from the assistance of Robert Montoya in the Department of Special Collections in the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA and Susan Halpert at the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

  For their careful readings of the manuscript, thanks to Sarah Kroll-Rosenbaum, Brighde Mullins, and Ellen Handler Spitz. For Memorial Day in Palm Springs, thanks to Hayes Michel. For joining me in study hall, thanks to Nan Cohen, Tim Kirkman, and Tom Rastrelli. For their perspective on Giant, thanks to Lindsay Doran and Rodney Kemerer. Thanks to Jonathan and Rita Lynn for introducing me to Austin Pendleton, who was generous with his time and wit. Thanks to David Francis, Judith Freeman, and Marion Rosenberg for an intriguing off-the-record conversation. For recollections of the early days of the AIDS epidemic, thank you to Dr. Michael Gottlieb, Dr. Francine Hanberg, Brenda Freiberg, and Barry Krost. Thanks to Kathy Lu for introducing me to Dr. David Ho.

  Thank you to Dinah Lenney for introducing me to Kate Burton, and to Kate for allowing me a glimpse of the person beneath Taylor’s public identity. I benefited from conversations with these old and new friends: Marlene Beggelman, Johanna Blakley, Donna Bojarsky, Jon Boorstin, Dorothy Braudy, Leo Braudy, Natasha Burton, Kate Chilton, Meg Cimino, Donna Deitch, Sara Epstein, Nancy Furlotti, Vivian Gornick, James Grissom, Libby Halstead, Anthony Hernandez, Margo Howard, Terri Jentz, Laura Karpman, Zoe Kazan, Jeffrey Kegler, Fran Kiernan, Howard Kiernan, Cheris Kramarae, Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, Adam Kurtzman, Caryn Leland, Tom Lutz, Kate McCarthy, Vance Muse, William Nguyen, Sarah Conley Odenkirk, Jere Pfister, Owen Phillips, Laurie Pike, Claire Potter, John Romano, Nancy Romano, Kevin Sessums, Victoria Steele, Arne Svensen, Susan Brodsky Thalken, Shelley Wanger, Laurie Winer, and Jaime Wolf. I’m also grateful to family: Mike Lord, Nancy McWhorter Lord, and Richard McWhorter. Thank you to Adele Cygelman, David Mossler, and Brenda Potter for admitting me to houses where Taylor once lived. As always, thanks to Mary Lamont, my stalwart transcriber.

  This book benefited greatly from the stewardship of two feminist men: George Gibson, my deft and insightful editor, and Eric Simonoff, my shrewd and steadfast agent. I am also grateful to Patti Ratchford for the knock-out jacket, Vicki Haire for creating the illusion that I can spell, and Mike O’Connor, for his attention to detail. Without Shannon Halwes, there would be no book. Not only did she read every draft and share her knowledge of movies, she feigned convincing enthusiasm when I insisted that we watch Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? for a fourteenth time.

  Notes

  1. The Beautiful Somnambulist

  1 “I myself have never …”: Rebecca West, “Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics,” reprinted in The Young Rebecca: The Writings of Rebecca West, 1911–17, ed. Jane Marcus (New York: Virago Press, 1982), 219.

  2 “a movement to end sexism …”: bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (London: Pluto Press, 2000), 1.

  2 “the radical notion that women …”: Marie Shear, “Media Watch: Celebrating Women’s Words,” New Directions for Women, May/June 1986, 6. Often attributed to Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, the quote actually comes from Marie Shear. Kramarae asked Shear for the origin of the quote, and Shear explained, “I’ve been calling feminism ‘the radical notion that women are people’ since God was a child.” But when Shear used the definition in a 1986 review of A Feminist Dictionary in New Directions for Women, the definition “reached thousands of readers.” Shear adds: “The idea certainly isn’t uniquely mine. For example, Rosalie Maggio’s trove, The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women, quotes Katha Pollitt thusly: ‘For me, to be a feminist is to answer the question “Are women human?” with a yes.’ ”

  2 “a social justice movement …”: Katha Pollitt in “Rebecca Traister, Hanna Rosin, and Others on Why You Can’t Own Feminism,” Slate, October 8, 2010, http://www.slate.com/id/2270053/entry/2270054.

  2 “is to integrate an ideology …”: Rebecca Walker, “Becoming the Third Wave,” Ms., January/February 1992, 41.

  3 Camille Paglia: Camille Paglia, “Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood’s Pagan Queen,” Penthouse, March 1992, reprinted in Sex, Art, and American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).

  5 “Mothers were said …”: Barbara G. Walker, The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother, and Crone (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 12.

  7 “an aura of heightened reality”: Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (New York: Ballantine Books, 1990), 13.

  7 “a kind of possessiveness …”: Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 606.

  7 “Elizabeth was very devoted to her mother …”: Interview with Kate Burton, New York City, May 14, 2010. (All Burton quotations are from this interview.)

  8 “Bust Inspectors”: Ellis Amburn, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World: The Obsessions, Passions and Courage of Elizabeth Taylor (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 12.

  8 “If the cameraman …”: Ibid., 11.

  8 Brenda Maddox: Brenda Maddox, Who’s Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor? (New York: M. Evans, 1977). />
  9 “Elizabeth did something when it required …”: Elton John, quoted in Brad Goldfarb, “Talking to Elton John,” Interview, February 2007, 207.

  9 “This is what forty looks like”: Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Takes Off: On Weight Gain, Weight Loss, Self-Image, and Self-Esteem (New York: Putnam, 1987), 26.

  10 Katharine Hepburn’s sexuality is detailed in William J. Mann, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).

  10 “erotic vagrancy”: Quoted in Liz Smith, “Liz Taylor Returning to Stage,” New York Post, August 23, 2007.

  10 “Can I sue the Pope?”: Ibid.

  11 “All profoundly original art looks ugly at first”: Clement Greenberg, “Art,” The Nation, April 7, 1945, 397–98.

  2. National Velvet, 1944

  14 “clubs to which her own sex …”: Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938), 85.

  14 “colleges from which …”: Ibid.

  14 “racecourses where she …”: Ibid.

  15 Handmade birthday cards and Valentines to Clarence Brown: C. David Heymann, Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995), 41–43.

  16 “like the rumps of elephants …”: Enid Bagnold, National Velvet (New York: HarperFestival, 2002), 3.

  18 “thin as famine”: Ibid.,131.

  20 “emotional intelligence”: Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (New York: Bantam Books, 1996).

  22 “Mummie’s” toilet: Elizabeth Taylor, Nibbles and Me (New York: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 2002), 19–21.

  22 “I knew he would …”: Ibid., 12.

  3. 1945–1950

  23 “the most beautiful creature …”: J. D. Salinger, quoted in Kitty Kelley, Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 19.

  24 “The novel is about female ambition”: Interview with Robin Swicord, Los Angeles, November 18, 2009.

  25 Relationship of Adrian and Francis Taylor: Heymann, Liz, 60.

  25 “Janet’s husband …”: Diana McLellan, The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 260.

  25 Sara Taylor’s affair with Michael Curtiz: Amburn, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, 9.

  27 “dream girl,” every man’s ideal: George Stevens to William Miklejohn, memo, May 42, 1949, George Stevens Archive, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter cited as AMPAS).

  28 “Angela is not bound by the need …”: George Stevens, “The Role of Angela Vickers,” undated memo, in ibid.

  28 “spoil and limit the world …”: Ibid.

  28 Taylor … understood little beyond the price of a cashmere sweater: Kelley, Elizabeth Taylor, 37.

  28 “Elizabeth Taylor is a joy to watch …”: Hollis Alpert, “A Double Bounty from Hollywood,” Saturday Review of Literature, September 1, 1951, 28–31.

  29 “boldest scene …”: “Cinema: The New Pictures,” Time, September 10, 1951. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815385,00.html.

  4. A Place in the Sun, 1951

  30 “Your problem is this …”: Michael Wilson, “A Place in the Sun,” First Change Draft, November 23, 1949, 65, Michael Wilson Archive, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

  30 “You understand …”: “History of Cinema Series: Hollywood and the Production Code,” Department of Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS.

  31 Louis B. Mayer: Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1989).

  32 “These Jews seem …”: Joseph I. Breen, quoted in Thomas Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 199.

  32 “eccentric utterances …”: Ibid.

  33 The Production Code and amendments to it: Ibid., 351–63.

  34 “Please omit the action …”: Joseph I. Breen to Louis B. Mayer, letter, February 11, 1943, “History of Cinema Series: Hollywood and the Production Code,” reel 27, Production Code Archive, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS.

  36 “We feel this story …”: Joseph I. Breen to Luigi Luraschi, letter, September 30, 1949, in ibid.

  36 “George’s line, ‘I’ll think of something’…”: Ibid.

  36 “Please rewrite …”: Ibid.

  36 “Please omit the following dialog …” Ibid.

  37 “The players, barely visible …”: “Cinema: The New Pictures,” Time, September 10, 1951, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,815385,00.html.

  5. 1951–1955

  39 Stevens directing Taylor is detailed in William Mann, How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood (Boston: Houghon Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 102

  40 “Nick’s every bit as dynamic …”: Hedda Hopper, “When a Girl Marries,” Modern Screen, November 1956, 96.

  40 Musical version of An American Tragedy: Hedda Hopper, “Crosby, Hendrix to do ‘Tragedy’ with Music,” Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1949.

  41 “It must be those huge breasts of hers …”: Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 626.

  41 “should never have been made by me …”: Elizabeth Taylor, quoted in Randy Taraborelli, Elizabeth (New York: Warner Books, 2006), 113.

  43 Hudson chooses Taylor for Giant: Amburn, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, 61.

  6. Giant, 1956

  44 “bringing back many people …”: “SINDLINGER FINDS MOVIE GROWTH SPARKED BY SUCCESS OF GIANT,” press release from Albert Sindlinger Associates, Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, March 1, 1956, George Stevens Archive, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS.

  45 “There they found …”: Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Vintage, 1980), 23.

  48 “Reading Giant …”: Jonathan Yardley, “Ferber’s ‘Giant’ Cut Down to Size,” Washington Post, May 8, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/07/AR2006050701112.html.

  52 “depicts the erosion …”: Peter Biskind, Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983).

  53 “aggregate of pluralist values …”: Ibid., 293.

  7. 1956–1959

  54 “Bick Benedict …”: Copy of ad in Giant publicity file, George Stevens Archive, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS. (All quotations from this ad are in the same file.)

  55 “the extreme mental duress …”: Dr. John H. Davis to A. Morgan Maree, letter re: “Elizabeth Wilding,” March 12, 1956, George Stevens Archive, Department of Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS.

  57 Clift’s drinking: Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 295.

  57 “gone on the wagon …”: Interview with Kevin McCarthy, January 16, 2008. (All McCarthy quotations are from this interview.)

  59 “Get those goddamned cameras …”: Elizabeth Taylor, quoted by McCarthy.

  60 “They are two of a kind”: Heymann, Liz, 157.

  60 Mike Todd and Fred Waller at the 1939 World’s Fair: Avery Gilbert, What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life (New York: Crown, 2008), 154.

  61 “The nose is really a sex organ …”: Tony Kushner, Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika (1995), act 1, scene 6.

  62 Smell-O-Vision vs. AromaRama: Gilbert, What the Nose Knows, 154–63.

  63 “At one point, the audience …”: Time, quoted in ibid, 161.

  64 “Tenn always joked …”: James Grissom to M. G. Lord, e-mail, July 31, 2010.

  64 “He advised strangers …”: Meade Roberts, quoted in Heymann, 180.

  65 “to her front”: Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 34.

  65 “America’s Sweethearts”: Ibid., 36.

  66 “Mike’s dead …”: Hedda Hopper, quoted in Mann, How to Be a Movie Star, 228.

  6
6 “kitchen date”: Debbie Reynolds and Bob Thomas, If I Knew Then (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1962), 9.

  66 “Saying Grace …”: Ibid.,116.

  67 SORRY TO DISAPPOINT …: Sam Spiegel, quoted in Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, Sam Spiegel: The Incredible Life and Times of Hollywood’s Most Iconoclastic Producer, the Miracle Worker Who Went from Penniless Refugee to Show Biz Legend, and Made Possible The African Queen, On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 209.

  8. Suddenly, Last Summer, 1959

  68 More women than men receiving lobotomies: Jack El-Hai, The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 290.

  69 Maiming of Rosemary Kennedy: Ibid., 173–74.

  69 Freeman nominated Moniz for Nobel Prize: El-Hai, The Lobotomist, 226–27.

  70 “lobotomobile”: Randy Kennedy, “A Filmmaker Inspired by Lobotomy,” New York Times, April 29, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/movies/a-filmmaker-inspired-by-lobotomy.html?scp=1&sq=lobotomobile&st=cse.

  70 American Academy of Pediatrics: Pam Belluck, “Group Backs Ritual ‘Nick’ as Female Circumcision Option,” New York Times, May 6, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/policy/07cuts.html?scp=1&sq=u.s.%20doctors%20clitorectomy%202010&st=cse.

  75 “They have so many of these torture groups …”: Interview with Gore Vidal, Los Angeles, March 19, 2008. (All Vidal quotations are from this interview.)

  75 “Galileans”: Gore Vidal, Julian (New York: Signet Classics, 1964), 21.

  77 “Ingmar Mankiewicz”: Sam Spiegel, quoted by Vidal.