Patricia Neal in Hasty Heart with future U.S. President Ronald Reagan “You know, an actress can learn to hate Elizabeth Taylor.”
Elizabeth had had more than her quota of champagne that night. She mischievously goaded Reagan, “Thank God you didn’t get arrested with Errol Flynn,” she said, “He told me that he went for you big time when you guys made Santa Fe Trail.”
“Errol is such a tease,” Reagan said, looking embarrassed. “He could have told you anything—and probably did—but I don’t go that way. If you ever run into Lana Turner, Betty Grable, or Susan Hayward, they’ll establish my credentials. But in your case, Elizabeth, ask yourself.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” Patricia later said. “I took that to be a confession. So, Ronnie had taken our little teen darling, Elizabeth, to bed. I couldn’t wait to tell Gary.”
Reagan wisely suggested that the next time they had dinner with Robert that each of them make no mention of his arrest, which, as Elizabeth had predicted, was covered up and did not appear in the newspapers.
When reunited as double-dating “couples” again, Neal suggested that Reagan and Robert take Elizabeth and her dancing at a local dance hall in Holborn that she’d heard about, and they agreed.
As Neal remembered the evening, “Elizabeth showed up way overdressed, in a gown designed by Christian Dior. We went to this hall where most of the other patrons were shabbily dressed, still suffering from wartime deprivation. All eyes turned to look at her. The British people still had their wonderful bravado about them. Elizabeth was moved when the patrons sang The White Cliffs of Dover, the name of that wartime movie she’d made when she was a child.”
That weekend, Elizabeth agreed to drive into the English countryside with Robert, Reagan, and Neal, in a large car driven by Hamish Thomson, a young dentist who wanted to show them the Cotswolds. During the slow drive there, Thomson suggested they play a game—“A little quiz I’ve read about in this London magazine. Everybody has to reveal a secret wish.”
Neal claimed that her wish involved Gary Cooper divorcing his wife and marrying her. Robert told them that he hoped Stanwyck would ask for no alimony when she divorced him. Elizabeth shocked the passengers in the car by claiming that her wish involved marrying Michael Wilding. When the game focused on Reagan, he said, “My wish—no, not my wish, my destiny—is to become President of the United States.”
One weekend when he wouldn’t be needed in the movie studio the following Monday, Robert went with Stewart Granger to the country house of one of his friends. Neal couldn’t join Elizabeth and Reagan because she’d eaten a slice of West Country ham that had poisoned her. “I’m spending all my time on the toilet,” she told Elizabeth.
Reagan called Elizabeth and asked her to go for dinner and dancing with him at the Ritz Hotel in London, and she accepted, although she would have preferred if Michael Wilding rather than Reagan had invited her.
“That was one very despondent date I had,” Elizabeth told Percy the following morning. “The reality of losing Jane Wyman seemed to have finally settled in. We sat in a remote corner of the Ritz Hotel’s lobby near a potted palm, and he broke down and cried. I held him in my arms and tried to comfort him.”
Reagan later pulled himself together and had dinner with her, but didn’t feel up to dancing. She agreed to go back to his suite with him.
“I thought if I threw him a mercy fuck—a term I learned from Roddy Mc-Dowall—that would cheer him up. But sex was about the last thing on his mind. He spent the rest of the evening talking about how he was going to run for senator from California.”
When Michael Wilding finally called her for a date, Elizabeth quickly dropped Robert, Reagan, and Neal in favor of spending time with this older British actor.
“When I told this trio good-bye, we made some vague promise about getting together in Hollywood,” Elizabeth told Percy. “Actually, I had no plans to see either of them again.”
In the years ahead, Neal would refer to Elizabeth as “that God damn bitch,” blaming her for “stealing the two most coveted roles of my lifetime.”
In the summer of 1958, Neal was in London playing Catherine Holly in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer. Her performance received rave reviews, and she called it the “most thrilling acting experience of my life.”
Producer Sam Spiegel came to see it and was impressed enough to acquire the movie rights, promising Neal that she could repeat her stage performance on the screen.
“Imagine my surprise when I picked up the paper to read that Elizabeth Taylor had signed to do the part with Monty Clift,” Neal said. “Losing that role to Taylor was one of the hardest professional blows of my life. I still cannot talk about it without bitterness.”
“There was more to come,” Neal said. “I was for a time the leading candidate for the role of Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I was ready to sign the contract. Only Bette Davis stood in my way. Guess what? I picked up the morning paper to read that Miss Elizabeth Taylor, cunt from hell, had signed to do the role with her husband du jour.”
Elizabeth herself often discussed the irony of what she called “the second act for Ronnie and me. No Hollywood script, regardless of how far-fetched, would have me playing the housewife of a Republican senator, John Warner, hanging out at the White House with Ronnie, the President of the United States, and Benny Thau’s fellatio artist, now installed as First Lady of the Land, a position once occupied by Eleanor Roosevelt.”
***
Orson Welles, a larger-than-life creature, once claimed, “I have always had the hots for Elizabeth Taylor.” After three postponements, he finally came to visit Sara and Elizabeth at their suite at Claridges.
Settling in for a drink, he lamented how difficult it was for him in post-war Hollywood. “During the war, I could have any woman I wanted. There was no competition. All the men were overseas. Today there are one hundred actors competing for every job. Everybody has a film script to sell. I want to continue making movies, but I have this unfortunate habit of spending all my money on women. No one seems to want to lend me any more dough.”
“Perhaps Louella Parsons hasn’t forgiven you for Citizen Kane and your depiction of her boss, William Randolph Hearst,” Elizabeth said.
“I haven’t forgiven her for all the rotten stuff she wrote about me during my marriage to Rita [a reference to Love Goddess Rita Hayworth],” Welles said. “Of course, much of the failure of my marriage was my own fault. A beautiful woman comes alone, and I can’t resist her. Maria Montez, Judy Garland, Lucille Ball…well, maybe not Lucille.”
“You certainly are known for seducing beautiful women,” Sara said.
“That is so true, yet during my last visit to Hollywood, Guinn Williams, the one they call ‘Big Boy,’ attacked me at the Brown Derby restaurant, accusing me of being a queer. I demanded that he apologize. He didn’t. Instead, he took a knife and cut off half of my tie.”
“Perhaps you should have cut off something of Big Boy’s,” Elizabeth said.
Welles looked startled for a minute. “You do have a wicked sense of humor, which makes you all the more adorable.”
After an hour of exchanging Hollywood gossip, Welles invited Elizabeth, but not Sara, to meet a special guest, who was also staying in a suite at Claridges. Sara seemed miffed that the invitation didn’t include her.
A knock on the door of the “special guest’s” suite summoned a maid from India, dressed in a sari. Elizabeth and Welles were ushered into the living room of the suite where they had to wait fifteen minutes for their host to appear.
“The suspense is killing me,” Elizabeth said, “From the smell of perfume, I gather our host is really a hostess.”
Suddenly, Marlene Dietrich emerged from the bedroom, wearing a silvery gown and draped in white furs, ready for an evening at the Café Royal with Welles.
“Oh, the darling girl with the violet eyes,” she said to Elizabeth.
“Miss Dietrich,” Elizabeth said, st
anding up. “You are so very lovely.”
“It’s all an illusion, my dear,” Dietrich said. “I’m far too old to still be alive.”
Welles came forward to kiss Dietrich. Then he quoted from Shakespeare, “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale…”
She cut him off. “I know, I know. I’m called the timeless wonder. But time always wins.”
She came over to Elizabeth and held her hand. “Orson and I must be leaving soon, but I really wanted to see you in the flesh. It is true: You are without a doubt the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“But becoming less of a girl every day,” Elizabeth said.
“Don’t wish for youth to go by too quickly, or you’ll regret it,” Dietrich warned. “Oh, to be sixteen again. Didn’t you know, my child, that the dream of every red-blooded man involves crawling into bed with a girl of sixteen?”
“If I didn’t know that, I’m finding it out now,” Elizabeth said.
“I heard that you met with George Bernard Shaw,” Welles said before downing the rest of his drink. “How did that meeting of two legends go?”
“Like you, he’s a genius,” Dietrich said. “You’re well aware that when I meet a genius, I kneel in front of him. Once on my knees, I unbuttoned his fly and removed his penis. I made love to it. Of course, I had to do that before we could sit down and talk.”
Elizabeth didn’t know how to respond to that. “Miss Dietrich, I will treasure meeting you, one of my great honors. You are today’s Helen of Troy, the Queen of Sheba, Cleopatra reincarnate.”
“You are so very kind,” Dietrich said. “But I’m the mere wife of a chicken farmer, my dear Rudy.”
That was a reference to her husband, Rudolph Sieber, with whom she no longer lived but never divorced. “We must meet again soon. I will share with you my secret of vinegar and ice water douches. It will prevent pregnancy.”
She reached down to kiss Elizabeth. Her lips were very, very wet.
Back in her own suite, Elizabeth told Sara, “I simply adore Marlene. I’m sure she’s going to become one of my very best friends.”
“Perhaps you’d rather her be your mother instead of me?” Sara said.
“Mother, jealously doesn’t become you.”
During that evening at Claridges, Elizabeth could hardly have imagined that in a few short years, she and Dietrich would be competing for the love of one man, and that “The Kraut” (as Ernest Hemingway called her) would seduce at least four of her future husbands and many of her lovers.
***
Twenty years her senior, Michael Wilding was still handsome, in an offbeat kind of way. Elegant and polished, he talked, walked, and moved in a manner common to British aristocracy. In many ways, he evoked the decorum of Victor Cazalet, her standard for measuring an English “gent.”
During their first outing together, he took her to The Salisbury, a pub and “watering hole” for many actors in London’s West End. “The food is ghastly, but so English it will make you homesick.” He ordered steak-and-kidney pie for both of them.
After lunch and a walk through Mayfair, he took her to the National Gallery, where he told her that his dream had been to become an artist before “I wandered into acting.”
After the museum, he guided her through some of the war-torn neighborhoods of London, a city still recovering from Hitler’s last desperate attempt to destroy it. He told her many stories of the bravery and endurance of Londoners during their worst hour. At one point, she was moved to tears.
Back at Claridges, she filled Percy and Sara in on the details of her day. Then, after a brief rest, she put on her most revealing dress, since he’d invited her to dinner downstairs in the hotel’s elegant dining room. Over dinner, she said, “I feel like Queen Victoria will walk in the door at any minute.”
She urged Wilding to consider migrating to Hollywood, but he dismissed the idea. “I feel there are few roles for cultivated English gentlemen in post-war Hollywood. I think there would have been more parts for me in the 1930s. Someone wrote in The Times that I was the poor man’s answer to Ronald Colman. I’m not sure there are that many roles for Colman himself these days.”
She apologized for never having seen any of Wilding’s films.
With a sense of self-mockery, he said, “You mean to tell me you haven’t seen The Courtneys of Curzon Street, Piccadilly Incident, Tilly of Bloomsbury, or Spring in Park Lane? At least my next picture will be a change of pace for me. My producer, Henry Wilcox, told me that my sophisticated wit, if I dare call it that, and my English sensibility would never go over in Tinseltown. David Niven is the best example of that. Americans like Gary Cooper and John Wayne…and, I might add, Elizabeth Taylor.”
He told her that Alfred Hitchcock had signed him to film Under Capricorn in New Zealand with Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten. “Hitch said to watch out for Ingrid. He claims she’d fuck a tree. Margaret Leighton is going to be in the film, too. I find her talented but rather toffee-nosed. I don’t go for her at all.” [Ironically, Leighton would eventually become Wilding’s fourth and final wife.]
Elizabeth’s competitor for the affections of Michael Wilding: Marlene Dietrich
“I’ve already met with Cotten,” Wilding said. “We sniffed at each other at first— you know, like two suspicious dogs. Now we like each other. He calls the upcoming film Under Crapicorn.”
Before leaving her that evening, he invited her to accompany him to Broad-lands, Lord Mountbatten’s country estate, where he was hosting a dinner/dance in honor of Lord John Brabourne, who had married his daughter, Patricia Mountbatten. “Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip will be there.” Wilding said.
But before the ball, Elizabeth was privileged to meet the future Queen of England at a command performance of the film That Forsythe Woman, starring her friends, Greer Garson and Errol Flynn.
Standing in a receiving line beside the former screen queen, Myrna Loy, Elizabeth met Queen Elizabeth (the former Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon) and her daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, who in a relatively short time would ascend to the throne after the death of her father, King George VI.
That weekend, in a chauffeured Rolls Royce, Elizabeth was driven to Broadlands with Wilding, Henry Wilcox, and his actress wife, Anna Neagle.
By ten o’clock that night at the ball, arrangements were made for Prince Philip to dance with Elizabeth Taylor. As she’d later reveal to Percy, “I pressed up against him and got the desired response. I think I really excited him, but with his princess in the room, what could he do? I am definitely targeting him as a future conquest.”
By midnight, Wilding was drunk on champagne. He was approached by Lord Brabourne, who informed him that it was his turn to dance with Her Royal Highness, Princess Elizabeth. Wilding protested, “I’ve had too much to drink. I’m afraid I’ll step on her royal toes.” But His Lordship insisted.
At her table, Princess Elizabeth told Wilding, “I’m reluctant to dance with you, having seen you dance on the screen.” Nonetheless, she arose and walked to the dance floor with him as the band struck up a waltz.
“Thank God,” she said. “I feared the band was going to play a rhumba. I can never get the hang of those Latin rhythms.”
After the dance, he dutifully returned her to her table and said, “I’m relieved that I got through the dance without hitting you.”
She gave him a startled look. He’d meant to say, “without kicking you.” But he was so embarassed, he thanked the princess and retreated back to Elizabeth (Taylor).
Wilding saved the last dance for her, holding her tightly in his arms. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Oh, Michael,” she said. “I never want to leave you.”
Wilcox and Neagle spent the night in the same room in a nearby hotel, where separate bedrooms had been assigned to Elizabeth and Wilding. When Elizabeth articulated an account of the night’s events to Percy, she said, “I kept my door unlocked all night waiting for him, but he never dropped in for a visit. In his affair with Stewart
Granger, is Michael strictly a bottom?”
“No, he’s both a top and a bottom, Stewart strictly a manly top,” Percy claimed.
“You precious angel,” Elizabeth said. “You do seem to know everything about British actors.”
“It’s my calling in life,” he told her.
Three days later, Percy escorted Sara and Elizabeth to the airport as the first segment of their previously scheduled return to the U.S. Claridges sent a separate London taxi for transport of their luggage.
After exchanging many hugs and kisses with Percy, she disappeared into the VIP lounge at Heathrow. To her surprise, Wilding was waiting there for her. Sara discreetly removed herself to enjoy tea and some movie magazines.
The airplane to New York didn’t leave for another hour, and Wilding sat with Elizabeth, holding her hand and talking intensely with her. No one knows what was said, and she avoided revealing anything to her confidants, but it was obvious that an intense bond had been formed between them.
He was seen giving her a deep throat goodbye kiss. A flight attendant overheard his final words to her and reported his words to the press: “Grow up very, very fast and come back to me.”
***
Elizabeth had first met and befriended Merv Griffin at one of Roddy Mc-Dowall’s Sunday afternoon barbecues.
From the beginning, the future TV talk show host was impressed with her beauty and her kindness. He told Roddy, “She is the least judgmental person I know. She seems to recognize that all people have needs—and that love takes many forms.”
Witty, charming, bisexual, and generically English: Michael Wilding. Unknown in America, but big in Britain
When they were first introduced, she talked to him about the perils of being a child star. “Hedda Hopper told me there is no second act for child stars in movies. ‘What awaits a child star?’ she asked me. ‘A decline in fans. A dwindling bank account. Personal disasters in relationships. Booze. And premature death. Most child stars can’t adjust to life when the sound of applause no longer rings in their ears.’”
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