Bio - 199 - Elizabeth Taylor: There Is Nothing Like a Dame

by Darwin Porter

  During a visit to Little Swallows, the distinguished art critic, Charles R. Stephens, said, “Victor and Francis were very, very close. One would start a sentence and the other would finish it. It was all too apparent that these two men were in love, but in the art world of London, I was accustomed to such liaisons.”

  Allen T. Knots, who worked at the time as an editor at Simon & Schuster in New York, visited Little Swallows as a house guest. “In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom. Out in the hallway, I saw both Victor and Francis chasing after each other. Each of them was totally drunk and jaybird naked. Victor and Francis occupied the master bedroom, and Sara slept in an adjoining room.” This was revealed by Knots to Robert Rhodes James, Victor’s biographer.

  Often, Victor was away on some political event. When he was not in London, Francis was seen with a tall, handsome, blonde-haired twenty-year-old, Marshall Baldridge, who worked as his assistant in Francis’ art gallery. Francis was about twenty-five years older than Baldridge

  During the late 1930s, Dame Rebecca said, “Victor was a man of great charm, but as an intellect, he was definitely a featherweight. He could be incredibly naïve.” She cited his strong support of General Francisco Franco and his Fascists during the Spanish Civil War.

  In Rome, Cazalet said, “I’m very impressed with Benito Mussolini. The government of Italy is a one-man show, and law, order, and prosperity reign supreme today.” In 1937, he visited a concentration camp in Bavaria, and later cited it for being “quite well run with no undue misery or discomfort. The prisoners seemed quite content.”

  But after that, just before the outbreak of World War II, Cazalet, along with Winston Churchill, opposed the appeasement of Adolf Hitler by Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Victor also became the leading exponent in England for the promotion of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He was most sympathetic to the plight of the Jews throughout history. He wrote, “If I were a Jew, I would cling onto the idea of a sovereign state for all I was worth.”

  Often, Victor and Francis preferred to spend weekends in London, with Sara and their son, Howard, stashed in Kent. The two men attended concerts together and often saw plays in the West End.

  On one occasion, they met a handsome and charismatic young actor, Laurence Olivier, and became intimate friends with him. A bisexual, Olivier often spent nights with Francis and Victor in their London flat. Olivier’s envious chief rival, John Gielgud, spread stories about how the three young men were involved in a ménage à trois.

  When he heard these rumors, Victor denounced Gielgud as “a silly old queen. He’s no doubt jealous that he’s not included.”

  During the summer of 1931, Sara prepared a special dinner for Victor and Francis in London at the home near Hampstead Heath. She had an announcement to make.

  At the end of the dinner, when the men sat in the library enjoying their brandy, she came in to tell her secret. “I visited the doctor today. We are going to have an addition to our family. Surely no little infant in all the world could be blessed to have two such wonderful fathers.”

  top photo: Baby Elizabeth, Sara, and brother Howard bottom photo: Baby Elizabeth with a guardian.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Girl With the Violet Eyes

  Sara Taylor completely distorted her version of Elizabeth’s birth when she wrote an article for McCall’s in 1954. “As the precious bundle was placed in my arms, my heart stood still. There, inside the cashmere shawl, was the funniest looking baby I had ever seen! Her hair was long and black. Her ears were covered with a thick black fuzz and inlaid into the sides of her head. Her nose looked like a tip-tilted button, and her tiny face was so tightly closed it looked as if it would never unfold.”

  Sara also declared that Elizabeth went ten days before opening her eyes. “That’s poppycock,” claimed Thelma Cazalet-Keir, Victor’s sister, who had been appointed as the child’s godmother. “I visited the day after the birth. Her eyes were not only wide open, they were as blue as a summer day.”

  In time, the child would become celebrated for her violet eyes.

  After leaving the Taylor home, Thelma reported back to the Cazalet family. “That is definitely Victor’s child. I think she should be named Elizabeth Taylor-Cazalet.”

  The little girl was born with a genetic mutation—distichiasis, aka a double set of eyelashes. Child actor Roddy McDowall would later recall that during the making of Lassie Come Home (1943), the director called out, “Get that girl off the set—she has too much eye makeup on, too much mascara.”

  Back in the makeup department, it was ascertained that Elizabeth was wearing no mascara at all. “That double set of eyelashes was the real thing,” Roddy said.

  Elizabeth also had a localized form of hypertrichosis, which in the cases of most babies with the condition disappears after they’re three months old. However, in Elizabeth’s case, this chromosomal abnormality would sometimes reoccur, especially on her arms, and she’d have to have excess hair removed by electrolysis. One morning, her then-husband, Richard Burton, said he woke up in the dark and reached for his wife. “Bloody hell, I thought I’d gone to bed drunk with a fucking monkey.”

  The excess hair on Baby Elizabeth’s body soon faded away, and she began to be viewed as a very beautiful young girl, except for her big head. When she was old enough to form an opinion of herself, she said, “What a podge! A big head set on a dumpy body.” And although her adult face would be universally applauded, her body often drew mixed reviews.

  Her birth in 1932 was registered in the very unfashionable blue collar district of Hendon, bordering chic Hampstead. Years later, Elizabeth would claim that she had been born in Hampstead, although her future husband, Richard Burton, would remind her, “Ducky, you were just a low-rent girl from Hendon.”

  As she grew older, her brother Howard called her “Lizzie the Lizard.” From then onward, she always hated to be called “Liz.” All of her friends knew to refer to her as “Elizabeth.” She was furious in 1995 when C. David Heymann published a thick (and well-respected) biography of her and entitled it Liz.

  An art patron, Philip Beaver, purchased two valuable paintings from Francis at his Mayfair gallery and was invited back to Golders Green for dinner. He recalled the night. “I saw them socially, and both Sara and Francis looked unhappy. Francis drank a lot. I don’t think he wanted to be a family man. He spent most of the evening talking about Victor Cazalet. There was a story making the rounds of Mayfair that Francis had once been arrested in a gents’ toilet for inappropriate behavior. Their son, Howard, was a classic beauty. I was shown Elizabeth in her cradle. She was a strange little thing, with lashes so long they’d have looked more appropriate on a Soho tart. She still had her baby hair and a thick downy pelt. Who would have thought that such a little creature would grow into one of the world’s most glamorous women?”

  As each passing year went by, Elizabeth grew into the dark-haired beauty that she was to become. Victor doted on her, buying her expensive presents. In many way, he seemed more like a father to her than Francis.

  When Elizabeth turned three years old, she came down with her most serious illness to date, a harbinger of many afflictions that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

  Hearing that she’d been running a fever of 103°, and how desperately ill she was, Victor drove through “buckets of rain” for ninety miles to reach her side. He stayed with her, often sleeping with her in his arms and doctoring her himself, until her fever broke. According to his biographer, Robert Rhodes James, after three weeks by her side, ignoring his commitments, both business and political, he finally left. But he formed a bond with her that would last forever, even beyond his death.

  With money provided by both Victor and Howard Young, now back in New York, the Taylor family lived an upperclass life, with a full-time chauffeur, three maids, a private chef, and a nanny. Victor and Francis made frequent commuter flights to Paris, where they bought fashionable frocks “for our little daughter.” />
  When Elizabeth was old enough, Victor bought her her first horse, which she named “Betty.” She rode it around his 3,000-acre estate. Later, she would claim that, “My greatest happiness as a child was riding Betty through the woodlands of Kent.”

  “I had the best of both worlds,” Elizabeth later said. “The lovely countryside of Kent and that beautiful home in London where I would wander through the Heath every afternoon.”

  In a touch of irony, the Hampstead house where Francis and Sara lived had previously been owned by Augustus John, the Welsh painter who before World War I was known as the leading exponent of post-Impressionism in Britain.

  In London, his work was compared to that of both Matisse and Gauguin. A great deal of his fame rested on his style of portraiture, which was both imaginative and extravagant. By the 1920s, he’d become Britain’s leading portrait painter, interpreting subjects who included T.E. Lawrence (the famous Lawrence of Arabia), Tallulah Bankhead, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy.

  When Augustus John moved out of his Hampstead house for other digs, he’d abandoned several of his paintings, leaving them still hanging on the walls. Francis seized them as his property and shipped them to New York, where Howard Young sold them at exorbitant prices.

  Acclaimed English portraitist Augustus John (right figure, above) with the then-toast of London, Tallulah Bankhead, and his portrait of her

  Francis and Victor often visited John, who had a habit of not finishing and discarding paintings that displeased him. Several times, Francis discreetly rescued them from the garbage and quietly sent them to New York where they, too, brought high prices. Francis, in fact, is interpreted today as the dealer who was most instrumental in making John famous among consumers and critics in America.

  In spite of Francis’ exploitation of John, the two men became friends. Francis was astonished at John’s “insatiable sexual appetite,” as the artist himself defined his condition. “My appetite has destroyed the women who love me best,” John told Victor and Francis. As art critic Brian Sewell said, “He was driven to draw the women whom he bedded, and bed the women whom he drew.”

  Many of John’s drawings were of beautiful nudes. Introduced to Elizabeth when she was six years old, he asked Sara and Francis if he could paint her. Both of them were overjoyed, and so was Victor. However, when Sara learned that Elizabeth would have to pose in the nude, she objected.

  Years later, in Hollywood, Elizabeth would express her deep regret. “I should have posed bare ass for Augustus. My God, that painting today would be worth millions.”

  When she came of age, Elizabeth attended school at Byron House, which was known for being “snobbish and strict” and reserved for children of only the finest families. She rebelled at the green cotton smock she was forced to wear like the rest of the girls. “I don’t ever want to dress like the rest,” she told her teachers. “When I grow up, I will wear only clothes designed just for me.”

  Elizabeth also studied dance at the Vacani Dance School on Brompton Road, run by Pauline Vacani and her daughter, Betty. Years later, in Hollywood, Elizabeth claimed that she attended school with the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. But that wasn’t quite true. For the royal sisters, a private instructor was sent to teach dance to the girls at Buckingham Palace. Betty denied that Elizabeth ever studied ballet at the school, as she’d later tell interviewers. “We didn’t teach ballet to girls that young. Elizabeth learned dance routines such as tap, polka, and such social dancing as the waltz.”

  The Duchess of York (Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) in 1935 with her daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose

  Members of the royal family did, however, attend an end-of-semester recital. The Duchess of York (later to become Queen Elizabeth, wife of George VI) attended, bringing the royal daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. After her presentation, Elizabeth (Taylor), dressed as a butterfly, remained on the stage by herself, curtsying and taking bows until the stage manager was forced to draw the curtain. Sara later recalled the incident. “I had given birth to a ham.”

  Before she left England for America, Elizabeth did meet Margaret Rose on two other occasions when they were very young. “She gave me my first cigarette—called a fag—to smoke. I smoked it, or rather choked on it, and we talked about boys. Margaret and I were very advanced for our age, and we were thinking about the opposite sex when most girls our age were still nursing their dolls.”

  Sara noticed this early interest in boys. “Elizabeth was maturing too fast.”

  Francis told both Victor and Sara, as well as Thelma, that there was no cause for alarm. “Haven’t you heard of childhood sexuality? Five-year-old kids can show an interest in sex. If you don’t believe me, go sign up for a session with Anna Freud. She practices in London and is said to be an expert on child sexuality.”

  Top photo: Young JFK in 1937, and (bottom photo) the future Ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s, Joseph Patrick Kennedy (“Papa Joe”) and his wife, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, in 1938

  Elizabeth and Margaret Rose would meet again officially on several more occasions.

  In addition to introducing Francis and Sara to leading members of English society and politics, Victor also introduced them to prominent Americans living in London. In 1939, none was more famous than Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.

  At one point, Victor had suggested to Ambassador Kennedy that he should have his portrait painted by Augustus John. Victor invited Rose Kennedy and the Ambassador for a visit at Francis’ Mayfair art gallery, knowing that he could make the arrangements for such a portrait.

  A deal was never struck, but Francis bonded with the Ambassador and Mrs. Kennedy. The expatriate Americans got along so well that the ambassador invited Sara, Francis, and Victor to a lavish party at the American Embassy on Grosvenor Square in Mayfair.

  This was reciprocated by an invitation from Victor for the Kennedy family to spend a Sunday at his sprawling estate in Kent. It was on this occasion that a seven-year-old Elizabeth Taylor met the handsome and charismatic John F. Kennedy, who was twenty-two years old at the time.

  Elizabeth would often discuss that afternoon with her friends in Hollywood. “I thought Jack was handsome, tall, rich, and on the prowl. For the first time, I cursed myself for being so young. When he flashed that smile at me, I melted.”

  JFK and the young Elizabeth went horseback riding together. “I knew he wanted to be spending his Sunday with an older and more beautiful girl, but he was very gracious to me, although I could see that the look in his glazed eyes was far away.”

  Elizabeth later said that before the day ended, “I became very bold. Before we got back to Victor’s home for dinner, I said something that must have amused him to no end. I told him that when I grew up, and that would be sooner, not later, I planned to marry him. When he looked at me with a most doubtful expression, I told him ‘Even if you’ve not the kind of man who wants to get married, I plan to make you my boyfriend.’”

  “You mean, you and me…lovers?” he asked.

  “That’s right. “You and me.”

  In spite of her young years, Elizabeth turned out to be clairvoyant.

  Two views of Baby Elizabeth: left photo: Intuitively preparing for National Velvet, and right photo: a class portrait from 1937. Five-year-old Elizabeth is the fourth figure from the left.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Elizabeth’s Imaginary Parents:

  SCARLETT AND RHETT

  When the British government, in the spring of 1939, began passing out gas masks to Londoners, Sara Taylor decided it was time for Francis to evacuate Elizabeth and Howard to the relative safety of “Fortress America.” Even Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy at London’s American Embassy advised them to leave as soon as Francis could close down his affairs.

  Francis could not stand the thought of being torn away from Victor Cazalet, but his British lover demanded that he go. Victor’s close friend, Winston Churchill, h
ad told them, “Hitler will not be appeased even if we offered him Southeast England. He’d then demand all the British Isles.” Francis agreed to send Sara and his children back to the U.S., but told Victor that he wanted to stay with him in London during the upcoming war, which Victor was convinced could break out at any minute.

  Victor and Francis were at London’s Victoria Station to escort Sara, Howard, and Elizabeth off on the first stage of their departure aboard the SS Manhattan, scheduled for an eight-day crossing to the port of New York. Elizabeth always remembered her last Sunday in London, as Victor held her hand, showing her the trenches being dug around Hyde Park.

  Baby Elizabeth with her older brother, Howard

  Aboard the vessel, Elizabeth, her mother, and her brother were made painfully aware of the oncoming war. Most of their fellow passengers were Jews fleeing the Nazis in Austria and Germany. Elizabeth heard much talk of Hitler’s takeover of the hopelessly outmaneuvered Czechoslovakia.

  Before her departure from London, Elizabeth had cut out a picture from The Times showing three smiling faces—the Joseph P. Kennedys, Sr. and Jr. and the dashing John F. Kennedy. She took her mother’s scissors and cut away the ambassador and his oldest son. She then attached the picture of young JFK to her cabin wall.

  Noticing this unprecedented interest, Sara penned a letter back to Francis in London. Before the ship reached New York, she’d write him a total of eight letters, each posted upon the ship’s arrival in the New World.

  In one of them, Sara wrote, “Elizabeth is not only showing an interest in boys, but in young men such as that divine Jack Kennedy, the ambassador’s son. What happened on that horseback ride they took? At Elizabeth’s age, I was not interested in boys, but in my new doll, or in my new dress. I fear we can expect the announcement of an early marriage for our only daughter. As for Howard, he is so beautiful, I have to keep a constant watch on him to protect him from some of the passengers, who appear to me to be pedophiles.”