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

by Darwin Porter

  “Thank you for anything you can do for me,” Elizabeth said. “But I’m afraid that the idea of teaming me romantically with Gable is a bit much.”

  “Not in today’s Hollywood,” Crawford said. “Clark can make love on the screen with a twenty-year-old, as can Gary Cooper. Male stars over fifty can keep rolling along, but when most actresses reach forty, or even before, they’re considered has-beens. The Hollywood Hills are full of them.”

  Adrian had to leave, but said that within ten days, he’d design the perfect dress for Elizabeth’s screen test.

  After he was gone, Crawford invited Elizabeth upstairs to her combination bedroom/dressing room. Going inside, Elizabeth noticed the rumpled bed covers so recently vacated by Gable. Crawford had installed a bar in her bedroom and poured herself a hefty vodka, although Elizabeth turned down any beverage.

  Ready for business, Crawford suggested that Elizabeth strip so as not to ruin her pretty dress with make-up. Elizabeth pulled off her dress but left on her bra and panties. She sat at a vanity table laden with creams, lotions, powders, beauty accessories, and lipsticks.

  As Elizabeth would later tell Dick Hanley, “Crawford painted several faces on me, none of which satisfied her. She even painted a ‘Joan Crawford mouth’ on me, but it looked ridiculous. Neither of us was satisfied with the results. She had continued to drink and was getting sloppy. Completely without warning, she began fondling my breasts. At first, I was shocked. I just couldn’t believe it. This legendary man eater was a part-time lesbian coming on to me. I almost panicked, but kept my self-control.”

  “How did you escape alive?” Dick asked.

  “I got up and quickly slipped on my dress and headed for the door. I told Crawford that I had hardly learned how to sleep with men, much less women. She made an ugly grimace. She told me, ‘You obviously don’t appreciate what I can do for you.’ I left the room. She stood at the door watching me go. I thanked her for everything and asked her to make my apologies to Clark.”

  “Downstairs, I asked the maid to call me a taxi. I had to wait nervously for fifteen minutes on the front stoop. When the taxi pulled up, I jumped in and headed for home. It would be my last visit to Crawford’s house.”

  If Elizabeth thought she was through with Crawford, she was wrong. The temperamental star would come into her life once again.

  ***

  Dick Hanley came into Elizabeth’s dressing room an hour before the scheduled beginning of her screen test with Gable, and was amazed at how MGM technicians had transformed her look. “Holy shit!” he said. “Is that a twenty-four-year-old Hedy Lamarr sitting on that stool?”

  Adrian had designed a stylish black dress for her with a plunging décolletage. An MGM hairdresser and two make-up experts had painted an alluring and almost sultry face on Elizabeth.

  Although she still had trepidations about appearing on screen with Gable, she was thrilled with her new look. “Where is that little girl from National Velvet?” she asked her mirror in front of everyone.

  After the finishing touches were applied, Dick escorted her to Gable’s dressing room. As she came into his room, he revealed to her one of his “beauty secrets,” as he jokingly referred to them. “I’m applying hemorrhoid ointment to reduce the size of the bags under my eyes,” he told her.

  “You don’t need to,” Dick said in jest. “You look young enough to play Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

  Under Sara’s guidance, Elizabeth had carefully memorized her lines for the test. The script concerned a widower recovering from the death of his loving wife in an airplane accident. The material seemed inspired by the 1942 airplane crash that had taken Gable’s third wife, Carole Lombard.

  Elizabeth’s role was that of a young woman who, since she’d been a girl, had been in love with the character played by Gable. He was her father’s best friend. In the loop, she urges Gable to come out of mourning and form a new life with her.

  Her most memorable line was, “Love has no respect for age, national border, color, race, or sex.” That line was far too provocative to have been included in an A-list movie in the late 1940s, but she nonetheless delivered it with passion and conviction.

  After complimenting Elizabeth on her startling new look, Gable gazed intently at his own remade face. “I swear I don’t look a day over thirty-nine.” He turned to Elizabeth. “They painted you so you look like you’ve been around for half a century. Many women marry men fifteen years older than they are, so we just might get away with it.”

  Before they headed out, she apologized to him for not having been there when he returned to pick her up at Joan Crawford’s house.

  “I understand,” he said. “I’ve known Joanie for years. Now you know her secret. She walks on both sides of the street. But the less said about this, the better.”

  “My lips are sealed,” she promised.

  When a waiter with late morning coffee arrived from the commissary, Gable looked very sternly at Elizabeth. “Listen, kiddo, we have one thing in common. Both of us are depending on this screen test to chart our futures in film. You want to stop playing some little girl attracted to animals, and I want to continue playing romantic leads through the 1950s. But a whole army of young actors in their twenties are beating down doors in Hollywood. Dick was in Mayer’s office when we talked about this. Tell her what we talked about, Dick.”

  Clark Gable with Elizabeth Taylor in 1948

  “It was agreed that every decade produces a different type of star, both male and female,” Dick said. “Take Clark here. In the 1930s, he represented the Depression Era hero, never better than in It Happened One Night. But World War II changed everything. Benjamin Thau—you must meet him—has convinced Mayer of the new type of male star coming up.”

  “Exactly what kind of guy are you talking about?” she asked dick.

  “A John Derek type, someone you know only too well,” Dick said. “Pretty boys like Guy Madison. I bet that cocksucker Henry Willson is auditioning three or four of them as we speak. Monty Clift is the new pretty boy in town, but in his case, he can act. I don’t know about some of the others.”

  In the years to come, Elizabeth would not only watch this prediction come true, but in many cases, she’d get involved as a friend or lover of various members of this new beefcake brigade—Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson, Robert Wagner, Tab Hunter, James Dean, Troy Donahue.

  “No wonder Clark Gable didn’t feel he’d fit into these changing tastes in male stars,” she said.

  Before leaving his dressing room, Gable said, “Style in actors change like style in clothing and other things. I’ll either keep abreast of those changing styles or become a has-been. You’ve got to change your image too, Elizabeth, or risk becoming a distantly remembered child star of the 40s.”

  “You’re so right, and I begin that today,” she told him. “I’m surprised that an established star like you agreed to a screen test.”

  “It was for my own protection,” Gable said. “In The Hucksters, when they wanted to cast Deborah Kerr, I asked for a screen test with her so I could determine if we had any chemistry. Ava Gardner was in that picture, too, and I knew Ava and$I had screen chemistry. In fact, Mayer has talked about having me try to re-create with Ava what I had going on the screen with Harlow and Crawford during the 30s.”

  “Maybe I’ll become your new screen partner,” Elizabeth said.

  “That remains to be seen,” he told her. “When I appeared with Anne Baxter in Homecoming, where she played my young wife, I got a lot of shit thrown at me because of the difference in our ages.”

  “Let’s go see what we can do,” she said, taking his hand.

  Facing a noon-day camera at MGM studios, Gable and Elizabeth emoted, fervently, their dramatic scene together, ending in a passionate love scene.

  She’d later tell Dick, “I really got to him. I could feel it getting hard. I think we’ll burn up the screen in that test.”

  Mayer demanded that Dick, his secretary, show the screen test to him first,
asserting, “I will rule on it.”

  Watching the test with Dick, Mayer was silent, but Dick noticed him fidgeting in his seat.

  When the lights came on, Mayer stood up. “Destroy every god damn copy of that fucking test. No one must see it. It’s obscene. Gable comes off like a dirty old man robbing the cradle, and Taylor looks like a teenage whore.”

  The film was destroyed before Elizabeth got to see the screen test. Although she beseeched Dick for details, all he could safely say was that, “Mayer said that Gable looked far too old to be playing love scenes with you. But he thought you looked terrific, and he’s making plans to co-star you with Robert Taylor. He was born in 1911 and Gable in 1901. Bob still looks handsome and with him there won’t be that great mountain to climb when it comes to age—only a steep hill.”

  “Bring him on,” Elizabeth said. “Any older actor except for that disgusting Wallace Beery. I just want to play a grown-up on the screen.”

  “Have I got news for you, sweet cheeks,” Dick said. “In your next picture, entitled Julia Misbehaves, you’ll get to co-star with your all time dreamboat, Peter Lawford. Not only that, but you’ll elope with him in the film—perhaps you’ll run off with him in real life too, if you work it right.”

  ***

  At long last, Errol Flynn was back in Hollywood and called Elizabeth. She immediately berated him, accusing him of filming the two of them having sex.

  He immediately denied it. “I have done things like that in the past. I admit it. But not with you. Such a film, if it got out, could have me brought up on another statutory rape charge. This time I might not get off. I might go to jail, where I’d have to endure countless rapes. I imagine half the men in any prison would want to fuck Errol Flynn. I may be an idiot, but I’m not that much of one.”

  She didn’t believe him and slammed down the phone.

  “A week later, her more compassionate side emerged when Dick Hanley told her that Flynn had been rushed, in critical condition, to a hospital.

  He accompanied her to Flynn’s room at Los Angeles’ Monte Sano Hospital. They found him perspiring heavily, with a temperature of 102° F. “Last night it was 104°,” he told them. “I’m also suffering from the world’s worst cast of hemorrhoids. The doctors can’t operate on me right now because of my temperature. I’m also suffering from a recurrence of malaria.”

  In his weakened condition, he talked to them about the trouble he was having trying to film The Adventures of Don Juan. “That bastard, Jack Warner, sent me a telegram. Because of my hemorrhoids, he’s worrying that I can’t film a dueling scene.”

  Two days later, she returned to the hospital where she found Flynn with a temperature of 103° F. He was also in the grip of pneumonia. “My piles grow worse by the day,” he said. “If anything else happens to me, I think I’m going to die.”

  She assured him that he’d recover, although when she returned the following afternoon, she found him newly infected, suffering from chest congestion. “A quack has shot me full of penicillin. Some fucking good it did. Now I have an ear infection that’s driving me crazy.”

  After his release from the hospital, he called her and told her he was going to Phoenix, Arizona for some rest and recuperation. He phoned her again in three days. “I heard from Warner. He assured me, in his words, ‘with the sun beating down on your vivid kisser, you’ll soon be your normal self again and your twelve inches will be back in operation.’ The next day, he sent another telegram. The fucker told me, ‘there was an error in my previous telegram. Delete the phrase twelve inches and insert six inches instead.’”

  “At least you can laugh at yourself. That’s a sign that you’re getting better,” she said.

  He called her when he returned from Arizona. She asked him about the dueling scene. He explained that the fictional setting was the king’s palace in Madrid. “As Don Juan, I was to make a seventeen-step leap to duel the Duke of Lorca—Robert Douglas, that is—in a sword fight to the death. They shot the scene with our doubles because Robert had an injured knee. Both of my doubles refused to do it. They got Jock Mahoney [later a famous screen Tarzan] to make that leap. He made the jump all right, but didn’t handle his sword the right way. It castrated the other double. That poor stunt man will now have to go through life without his balls—poor guy.”

  He also asked her about her own career, and she explained that she had been heavily made up to look older for a screen test with Gable.

  “Quite the opposite with me,” he told her. “I have to go in two hours early to be made up. The old queen who does my face claims it takes him all that time to cover my debauchery. I’m not in my prime these days, dear girl.”

  Errol also told her that, “I got Nora a cameo in the movie.”

  That was his first reference to his second wife, Nora Eddington. Elizabeth always wondered where he stashed her while he carried on his adventures and his various amours, brawls, whore-mongerings, drug abuse, and heavy drinking.

  One afternoon, when she had no work, Elizabeth went to Warners to join Errol for lunch. Here, he introduced her to the director Vincent Sherman, who had previously made love to such stars as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

  She arrived in time to hear a fight between Sherman and Flynn over his crotch. Flynn had ordered the wardrobe department to shorten his jackets so that they only partially covered his crotch. Sherman had seen the first take, and he protested that Flynn’s “protrusion was too pronounced.”

  “Jack Warner won’t go for it. Perhaps you could handle it more modestly and do what I tell ballet dancers to do when they’re bulging out of their leotards: Pull up your thing and put a piece of tape across it. Then put on a tight-fitting jockstrap or codpiece.”

  “Listen, sport,” Flynn said. “I’ve done many things for Warner’s in my day, but I’m damned if I’ll tape up my cock for them. Right, Elizabeth? I’m sure she agrees.” He then invited her to the commissary to have lunch with him.

  Sherman later recalled, “Flynn was Warner’s biggest headache. Women and liquor were the devils that tormented him. He could not resist a pretty girl.” The director later admitted that he was astonished that a young beauty like Elizabeth would show an interest in Flynn. “He had reached his peak and was rapidly descending, just like his role model, John Barrymore, had done. But I’ve never understood women, especially if that woman calls herself Bette Davis.”

  Over lunch, Flynn told Elizabeth that Doris Duke had hooked up again with Porfirio Rubirosa whom she had married in Paris in 1947. “Doris and Porfirio have invited us to dinner: When not involved with their other lovers, they’re spending a few days here in L.A.”

  Both Rubirosa and Duke were tabloid fodder, and Elizabeth was thrilled at the idea of spending time with these media stars. That the tobacco heiress was also the richest woman in the world added an extra excitement.

  Elizabeth would later relate in detail the evening she spent with Rubirosa and Duke. “It was my first really grown up evening, and I’m sure a sign of things to come. I was no longer treated as a child, and I was in adult company talking about adult things. The wonderful thing is I felt like I belonged.”

  For years, she’d read about the adventures of Doris Duke and her many lovers, who had included Cary Grant, Aristotle Onassis, General George C. Patton, and lots of Hawaiian beach boys.

  Peter Lawford had described Rubirosa’s legendary endowment: “It’s at least eleven inches long and thick as a beer can. Doris has a preference for dark meat.” The playboy of the Western world was originally from the Dominican Republic and had a very dark complexion.

  ***

  At dinner, Flynn congratulated Duke and Rubi for getting back together again.

  “Marriages, divorces, it’s just so much paperwork from the state,” Rubi said. “Governments should stay out of one’s boudoir.”

  “Rubi and I will continue to come and go from each other’s lives and bedrooms as frequently as we choose.” Duke said. “Whether we’re married or divorced ha
rdly matters. Of course, there will be other men or women in our lives. For people like us, that must always be the rule. We are citizens of the world, not just one country. Errol is like us.”

  “I can only aspire to be like you. Just the idea of being tied down to one person sounds boring to me,” Elizabeth said.

  “Hear, hear!” Flynn said. “I, of all rogues, agree with that sentiment.”

  “When government interferes in one’s life, there’s always a problem,” Duke said. “The State Department tried to confiscate my passport because they came across a picture of me entertaining Hermann Göring before the war. I entertain lots of people, regardless of their politics. If Hitler had invited me to Berlin, I would have gone. Likewise, if the Roosevelts had invited me to the White House, I would also have accepted.”

  “Just because of who we associate with, J. Edgar Hoover thought Doris and I were Nazi spies,” Flynn said,.

  “That’s bullshit,” Rubi said. “They were not Nazi spies. As for me, that’s perhaps a story for another day.”

  Over dinner, Duke called Rubirosa “Rube” instead of the more commonly used “Rubi.” “I decided I wanted a real man, so I purchased the best on the market,” she said, looking over at him.

  “When Doris married me, she thought she owned me,” Rubi said. “After all, she’d paid for me. But I’m not a sex slave on an auction block. During the first week of our honeymoon on the French Riviera, I ran off with another woman.”

  “But I got even,” Duke said. “When he came back to my hotel suite after a few days, he caught me in bed with two black musicians that a club in Cannes had imported from New Orleans.”

  “Doris adores black musicians,” Flynn said.

  “So I see,” Elizabeth said. At that point in her life, she was a bit taken aback by biracial liaisons.

  Doris Duke with Porfirio Rubirosa in Paris in 1947

  “The more I learned about Rube—jewel thief, Nazi sympathizer, rogue, world class liar, whoremonger—the more I adored him” Duke said.