To escape from him, she called Mervyn LeRoy, the newly appointed director of Quo Vadis?, a replacement for John Huston. She begged him to find a place where she could hide from Nicky. When she arrived on the set, he told her that the best place for her to hide was in a crowd scene. He ordered her to go to wardrobe, where she was attired in a toga, and instructed to join the extras. For one entire week, she played the role of a Christian martyr in a replica of the Colosseum.
“I got this fucking job as an extra, while that rat fink, Nicky Hilton, searched all over Rome for me,” Elizabeth said.
As a means of accommodating her, LeRoy had to cut short the involvement in the film of Claire Davis, a British starlet. “I begged Taylor not to accept the role, because I was pregnant at the time and needed the job to qualify for health insurance. She refused to listen to me, claiming that LeRoy would give me another part. He didn’t, and I lost all around. To me, Elizabeth Taylor was spoiled and heartless.”]
***
As a means of coinciding with her new sultry image of herself, Elizabeth decided she wanted to be photographed by Philippe Halsman, who had famously photographed a long-time friend of his family, Albert Einstein, in 1947. Halsman’s other subjects would eventually include Pablo Picasso, Winston Churchill, Judy Garland, Alfred Hitchcock, John F. Kennedy, and Marilyn Monroe.
Stewart Granger
She was intrigued by Halsman’s background. A Latvian Jew, he moved to Austria with his family when he was a child. In 1928, he was sentenced to four years in prison for patricide, having allegedly murdered his father during a hill-climbing expedition in the Alps. After appeals to Austrian authorities from both Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, Halsman was released from prison in 1931 and kicked out of Austria.
In the United States, Elizabeth Arden used his photograph of model Constance Ford against a backdrop of the American flag in an ad campaign for “Victory Red” lipstick. The image became one of the iconic symbols of War War II.
When Elizabeth met Halsman in 1949, he was collaborating with the sur-realist artist Salvador Dalí.
Elizabeth had been particularly amused by his 1948 Dalí Atomicus, depicting three cats airborne, a bucket of thrown water, and Dalí himself floating in mid-air.
Life magazine arranged for Halsman to photograph Elizabeth in his studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In the photograph, Elizabeth’s violet eyes appear rather vacant; her figure voluptuous, and three-quarters of her ample breasts are exposed. Her gown was described as “the color of melted money.” Edith Head once ordained that green was not a sexy color for a woman, but Halsman disagreed. He’d later enshrine Grace Kelly in green chiffon against Grecian columns.
“You have bosoms,” Halsman shouted at her during their photo shoot. “Stick them out!” She followed his instructions.
To protect her husband from this teenage femme fatale, Yvonne, Halsman’s wife, made it a point to remain in the studio throughout the photo shoot. “I was struck by the sight of her arms. They were covered with what Philippe called ‘dark eyelashes,’ an abundance of unsightly black hair.”
Elizabeth later recalled, “Philippe saw I had a woman’s body and insisted I exploit it for the camera. In one day, I learned how to pose provocatively. In short, I developed sex appeal.”
On seeing Halsman’s portrait before it was published, critic Richard Roud asserted, “Elizabeth Taylor looks like a girl who would really put out and I mean really put out.”
Yvonne reported that Elizabeth arrived at the photo shoot alone. When it was over, she said, “I have no date for tonight. All the men seemed to assume I’m heavily booked. But no one has called me, even though the papers have reported I’m in New York. I’m facing a lonely evening.”
During her time in New York, Elizabeth made that “lonely girl” remark to a number of people. Somehow, the word got out, because at seven o’clock that night, the phone rang in her hotel suite.
It was from another sultry star, this one male. Actor Steve Cochran, who had thrilled her with his sexiness in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), was on the phone. “What you doing, doll?” he asked.
“Waiting for you to call,” she said, inviting him up to her hotel suite at eight that night.
“I can get there even earlier,” he told her, “because I’m in your hotel lobby right now.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I’ve got a lot to be pretty sure about,” he told her.
As she’d later confide to Dick Hanley, “I knew I was in for some action. When Steve had appeared with Mae West on the stage in Diamond Lil, she’d told half of Hollywood how well endowed he was.”
Additional praise for this tough guy, who portrayed hoods and cutthroats in the movies, came from Joan Crawford, with whom he was to co-star in The Damned Don’t Cry (1950). The stud was not opposed to letting other actors or singers, such as Merv Griffin or Danny Kaye, “service” him, although he preferred teenage girls like Elizabeth, who had long held his attention. After seeing her in National Velvet, he told his producer, Samuel Goldwyn, “I’d like to kidnap that little number and rape her ten times a day.”
As she’d recall to Dick, “Steve and I never left my suite that night. We called room service when we got hungry. He’s really white trash, but glorious white trash. I’ve never been so down and dirty with a man before. He forces a really decent girl to do filthy things. But he made it fun, really exciting.”
She also claimed that Steve wanted “to make it a permanent thing with me, but I turned him down. Every gal should have a few sleazy nights in her life, but not on a regular basis—that’s not my style. He’s one of Hollywood’s really bad boys, and will probably make a lot of police news in his life before he dies young.”
“Frankly, I’m afraid of him. But give the devil His due. He’s the best sex I’ve ever had and may ever have again.”
***
Millions ultimately saw Philippe Halsman’s photograph of Elizabeth in Life magazine, but it captured the eye of one man in particular. The aviation hero and movie mogul, Howard Hughes, became fascinated by her, especially her breasts. He was the man who had developed a cantilevered bra for Jane Russell to wear in The Outlaw (1943), the most erotic Western ever made at that time.
Hughes told his public relations agent, Johnny Meyer, who was actually his pimp, “I’m going to marry Elizabeth Taylor in spite of the difference in our ages. When a man has money, what does age matter to a woman?”
***
When director Norman Krasna, guided by MGM executives, assigned Elizabeth Taylor to co-star with Van Johnson in The Big Hangover (1950), both stars knew, after reading the script, that it was a “silly, boring comedy.” Johnson was cast as a war veteran and an up-and-coming young lawyer who was in a wine cellar in France during a bomb attack, breaking most of the bottles, almost drowning him in a river of wine. Now everytime he gets a whiff of alcohol, he has hallucinations, acts irrationally, and imagines that his dog is talking to him. Elizabeth was cast as the daughter of his boss, who makes it her mission to save him from his dilemma. She denounced her role as “the stooge part.”
Krasna frankly admitted, “I’m a lousy director, But I’ve got bills to pay.” Unlike George Stevens in A Place in the Sun, this director’s camera paid virtually no attention to what the press referred to as Elizabeth’s “burgeoning sexuality.”
Johnson and Elizabeth had been correct in predicting that the only thing big about The Big Hangover was that it was a big flop at the box office. It opened in May of 1950 at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and at Loew’s State Theater in New York, playing mostly to empty houses. Even so, as a means of holding on to Elizabeth, MGM raised her salary to $2,000 a week.
For the most part, the reviews were bad, The New Yorker asserting that, “Miss Taylor is beautiful and cannot act. This puts her one up on Mr. Johnson.”
Elizabeth had a long-standing crush on Johnson, who in the 1940s had been defined by the studio’s PR
staff as “The Boy Next Door.” In real life, he was anything but that, and led a rather active homosexual lifestyle. Character actor Keenan Wynn was Johnson’s lover and best friend. Wynn was married to the former stage actress Evie Lynn Abbott.
When it became apparent that word was rapidly spreading that a hot MGM property like Johnson was gay, Mayer issued a bizarre mandate. He told Wynn that he would not renew his contract if he didn’t divorce Evie so that she could enter into an arranged marriage with Johnson.
Although all parties later regretted being forced into such an arrangement, they agreed to Mayer’s terms. Even after Johnson’s marriage to the former Mrs. Keenan Wynn, her former and present husbands continued their love affair with one another, although Johnson had many dalliances on the side.
Steve Cochran
Johnson and June Allyson in the late 1940as had been billed as “America’s Sweethearts.” It was Allyson, Elizabeth’s friend, who warned her, “Get over your crush. I used to date Van, and he’s handsome and charming, but our dates were arranged by MGM for publicity purposes. After a premiere, he would dump me back on my doorstep, and run off with his boyfriend of the moment. Van and I are friends, but we’ve had our arguments in the past, especially when we both pursued the same man at the same time. We ran into serious conflict when we fought over which of us was going to sleep with Peter Lawford.”
“The public believes what it reads in those movie magazines,” Elizabeth said. “Thank God our fans don’t know what’s really going on in Tinseltown.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Allyson said. “Thank God I’ve got an understanding husband—one who overlooks my indiscretions.”
She was referring to her marriage to actor/singer Dick Powell, who had been married to Joan Blondell, who had been married to Mike Todd, who would soon wed Elizabeth herself.
“Let’s face it,” Allyson said, “many of us in Hollywood change boyfriends as often as we change our panties.” At the time she made that pronouncement, she was lusting for the handsome actor Alan Ladd, who was himself a bisexual.
Even though no romance ever developed between Johnson and Elizabeth, they became friends and would co-star in a future movie together. She was only mildly surprised when Roddy McDowall called her and announced that he had fallen madly in love with Johnson, and they were “having a wild affair. “He’s got eight inches and gets rock hard,” he assured her.
To celebrate their “engagement,” Elizabeth invited several of her friends to a beach party, based in the vicinity of the Taylor cottage in Malibu. Everybody had a date except her. Peter Lawford heard about it and called her to ask if he could show up with “the love of my life.” He was referring to the handsome young actor, Tom Drake, who had played “the boy next door” opposite Judy Garland in Meet Me In St. Louis (1944).
Elizabeth called Roddy and asked him if it would be all right “to invite your ex.”
“You mean Peter?” Roddy said. “Of course, we’re still friends, even though we no longer bump pussies together.”
Dick Hanley was invited as Elizabeth’s escort. “It is said that the sexual revolution didn’t reach America until the hippie era of the late 1960s,” he recalled years later. “But actually, young stars such as Elizabeth and Roddy launched it in Hollywood in the early 1950s. A lot of good-looking guys and gals of all sexual persuasions were thrown together, and everybody was making it with everybody else’s boyfriend the following weekend. A typical example was Elizabeth and her friend, Janet Leigh. They double dated a lot in those days and often switched boyfriends from weekend to weekend. Elizabeth, believe it or not, often ended up getting Janet’s boyfriends after she’d auditioned them.”
“A case in point involved the notorious gangster, Johnny Stompanato, who was Mickey Cohen’s right hand henchman,” Dick said. “Janet dated him briefly before he took up with Elizabeth. Regrettably, Johnny eventually met Lana Turner, and they began the most notorious affair in Hollywood history. Too bad Lana fatally stabbed him. In his short, sex-filled life, Johnny made a lot of horny women and a lot of gay guys very happy.”
Dick claimed that he was sitting on a beach blanket with Elizabeth the afternoon of her Malibu party when Leigh introduced Johnny to Elizabeth.”
“Janet appeared on the beach with a tall, handsome, dark-haired guy with a great build on him,” Dick said. “He was wearing a skimpy white bikini that was virtually see-through. It looked like a handlebar, and it was still soft.”
Leigh introduced her new boyfriend only as “Johnny,” without including a last name.
When Leigh and Johnny went for a swim, Elizabeth turned to Dick. “I think he wants me. He undressed me with his eyes.”
“Do you think what he’s showing in that bikini is real—or is it padding?” Dick asked.
“I’m sure that sooner than later either you or me—or perhaps both of us— will find out for ourselves,” she said. “Janet shouldn’t have squatter’s rights on Johnny. It looks to me like there’s plenty to go around for all of us.”
Before the end of the party, Johnny spent some time alone with Sara. Elizabeth heard her mother laughing at his jokes.
top photo: Tom Drake
lower photo: Van Johnson
After her guests had left, Elizabeth went to take a shower. Her mother was in the kitchen preparing supper. “I hope you don’t mind, but I met this charming young man. His name is Johnny. He told me he’s a businessman in Los Angeles, and I suspect he’s very rich. I gave him your phone number.”
“For once in your life, you did something right,” Elizabeth said, unfastening her top as she headed for the shower.
***
In the late 1940s and early 50s, actor Farley Granger was known as “the most beautiful male animal in films.”
Elizabeth had known him when she’d attended a studio-run schoolhouse for its stars under the age of eighteen. Farley, Peggy Ann Garner, and Roddy, among others, were Elizabeth’s fellow schoolmates.
During the making of The Big Hangover, Elizabeth was often a guest at parties thrown by Van and his wife, Evie Johnson, who had become one of the most prominent hostesses in Beverly Hills, on a par with Edie Goetz, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, according to the Ronald L. Davis biography, Van Johnson: MGM’s Golden Boy.
On two separate occasions, Elizabeth attended these soirées with Judy Gar land, who invariably would kick off her shoes and entertain guests of the Johnsons. “She always drank too much and got out of control,” Elizabeth recalled.
Henry Willson, the most notoriously homosexual talent agent in Hollywood, was a frequent guest at the Johnson parties. On the side, he provided Van with handsome young men eager to have sex with an established star.
One night, Willson brought a young actor he’d recently renamed Rock Hudson. Tall, masculine, and extraordinarily handsome, he was introduced to Elizabeth.
He was so in awe of her, he had almost nothing to say. In time, of course, he would become one of her closest friends and confidants. Later, she’d meet another of Willson’s homosexual discoveries and protégés, Tab Hunter. The studio would arrange publicity dates between them in her future.
Phyllis Gates, who worked for Willson and later entered into a marriage of convenience with Hudson, told Elizabeth, “My boss is a virtuoso at arranging sexual affairs—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, you name it, he’s a master.”
One night, Dick Hanley escorted Elizabeth to the Johnson home, where she had a talk with Van’s wife and charming hostess, Evie.
Both Elizabeth and Evie bonded over their mutual dislike of Louis B. Mayer, Evie referring to him as “a dictator with the ethics and morals of a cockroach.”
“Mayer told me that if I didn’t divorce Keenan and marry Van, as a means of suppressing rumors about his homosexuality, that he would not renew Keenan’s contract,” Evie said. “I was young and stupid and let Mayer manipulate me. I’m sorry I ever did that.”
“Whatever you do, Elizabeth, don’t marry a homosexual or bisexu
al husband,” Evie advised her.
“I’ll insist they be straight as an arrow,” Elizabeth said.
One night, Farley Granger called and asked if he could escort her to one of the Johnson parties. Elizabeth was aware, through June Allyson, that Farley and Van Johnson were having a torrid affair.
At the party, which lasted until dawn, she and Farley had far too much to drink. Evie asked him to put Elizabeth to bed in one of their guest bedrooms.
As she would relay to Dick Hanley the following Monday, “I woke up nude in bed with Farley Granger. I found him devastatingly attractive.”
She told Hanley that “before we made an appearance around noon, we did it—and he’s definitely bisexual. A beautiful man and a beautiful lover.”
Both Farley and Elizabeth joined Van and Evie beside their swimming pool for lunch that day.
“I left late that afternoon,” Elizabeth said, “but Farley stayed on with the Johnsons for two more weeks—how convenient for Van.”
“Farley and I dated two or three more times,” Elizabeth later recalled. “But one day I got a call from Shelley Winters. She told me to leave Farley alone or else she’d cut off my left tit. Why not the right one? By that time, I’d moved on from Farley and it didn’t matter. A few months later, Shelley called me in tears, claiming that Farley had met Ava Gardner and was involved in an intense affair with her.”
[In New York in November of 1963, in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Farley met his life partner, Robert Calhoun, who remained at the actor’s side until Calhoun’s death in 2008. Farley himself died in 2011.]
***
In the period preceding her first marriage, Elizabeth seemed to race from one man to another. One reporter asserted, “[Elizabeth] is the Lana Turner of the younger generation, turning into a real man-eater.”
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