Victor Mature with Anita Ekberg in Zarak
But what was happening in room 106 with Elizabeth Taylor was hotter than what was happening on screen.
In a society where women wore veils and covered their bodies, Elizabeth shocked locals by wearing tight sweaters, revealing her large breasts, and short skirts without stockings. She purchased silk caftans but never wore them. “You look like some god damn bitch in heat,” Wilding told her.
“If I have the name, why not play the game?” she shot back at him.
The Wildings occupied suite 106 in the Dersa Hotel, some forty miles from the seedy French and Spanish-colonial Mediterranean port of Tétouan. One afternoon, Wilding came home two hours early and found Mature in bed with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth emerged from her involvement with all that beefcake to yell at her husband, “Get the hell out of my room. I’m getting fucked by a real man.”
That night, Wilding moved into a separate room two doors down, and Mature occupied Elizabeth’s suite.
After Zarak was wrapped, Elizabeth flew back to Los Angeles, and Wilding headed for London, where he stayed with Stewart Granger, who was filming interior scenes for Bhowani Junction (1956), and having an affair with Ava Gardner.
Wilding told him about Elizabeth’s affair with Mature.
“I know Mature,” Granger recalled. “He is a big, craven lump of lard with a dick that is like a sledgehammer, or so I’ve heard.”
Since Mature, too, was in London at the time, Granger sought him out and asked him to apologize to Wilding. “Mature was a massive fellow but a chick-enshit at heart,” Granger said. “He agreed to apologize. I told him if he’d fucked Jean Simmons, I would have broken his fucking jaw.”
One night, Wilding came home and told Granger how Mature had apologized. “The most extraordinary part of it was that while he was apologizing, he sort of bent his knees.”
Granger picked up on that immediately. “Okay, Michael, he apologized by giving you a blow-job—that’s okay. In addition to being the greatest stud in Hollywood, Mature is also a cocksucker. Everyone in the business knows that.”
“I didn’t,” Wilding said, “but I do now.”
When Wilding returned to Hollywood, he discovered that Elizabeth had taken up with Frank Sinatra.
News about the Taylor/Mature affair broke in Confidential magazine under the heading of WHEN MIKE WILDING CAUGHT LIZ TAYLOR AND VIC MATURE IN ROOM 106. The exposé ran in July of 1956.
Instead of what Elizabeth actually said to Wilding, Confidential, in print, asserted its version of what she told him: “Remember how silly you looked at 6am, dancing around with those stripteasers you’d brought home to our house wearing nothing but a G-string on your head? Well, snookums, you look just as silly now. So close the door before mama catches cold.”
***
“Like those crazed bobbysoxers of the 1940s, Elizabeth had this thing for Frank Sinatra,” claimed Roddy McDowall. “Like Marilyn Monroe, she played his records all the time in her dressing room and at home—and was wild about him. She once told me, ‘I wanted Frank to take my virginity, but, alas, Peter Lawford beat him to it.’ It took a little time, but Elizabeth finally got her man, Frankie. But like all our fantasies, it didn’t exactly work out the way she’d dreamed.”
Nearly all of Elizabeth’s biographers seemed unaware of her affair with Sinatra, which occurred during the final months of her marriage to Wilding. It began after Elizabeth returned from Texas and resumed when she returned from Morocco, where Wilding was filming Zarak. While he remained in Morocco (and later during his time in England), Sinatra and Elizabeth were seeing each other virtually every night.
The source of details about the Taylor/Sinatra affair was Peter Lawford, after he was “banished” from the Rat Pack. Ironically, Lawford was the subject of a biography called The Man Who Kept the Secrets by James Spada. Over the years, the keeper of the secrets spilled many of them.
It was Lawford who first told Sinatra that Elizabeth’s marriage to Wilding was all but over except for the divorce. “They sleep in different rooms and go for days without speaking to each other,” Lawford claimed. “You always said you wanted her. Here’s your chance to move in.”
Before Wilding went to Morocco, Elizabeth accepted an invitation to visit Sinatra in Palm Springs. Her husband had gone off to San Francisco with Stewart Granger for the weekend. At first, she seemed reluctant to accept Sinatra’s invitation, but he was very persuasive. He told her he’d send a limousine to Beverly Hills to pick her up and drive her to the desert.
Arriving in Palm Springs, she was greeted at the door by Sinatra, who wore an orange (his favorite color) shirt and white shorts.
“As you know, I’m sure, I just adore Monty Clift,” she told him. “You guys were terrific in that Eternity picture. But he warned me not to fall in love with you, because he is already in love with you himself.”
“Monty’s loss will be your gain,” he told her, kissing her on the lips.
Later, Lawford pressed Sinatra for details of the torrid weekend. He would in time learn a lot more from Sinatra, but for the moment, the singer merely said, “I taught her how to drink Jack Daniels.”
Lawford learned that Elizabeth and Sinatra had sex “more than once.” A lot of the time was spent with him listening to complaints about her loveless marriage to Wilding. During his recitations about his own tales of woe, he told her about how much in love with Ava Gardner he’d been—“and still am.” But he added a postscript: “She’s a woman not to be trusted. If you took Ava on a honeymoon, you’d surely catch her at some point going into the bushes with one of the busboys.”
Elizabeth admitted that Wilding had been a father figure to her, and, as such, he was doomed to outlive his usefulness when she matured. “I escaped to find peace and tranquility with Michael, which was better than getting the shit beat out of me every night by Nicky Hilton.”
The British actor confessed, “In the beginning, I tried to guide her and influence her, but after a few months, when I opened my mouth, she told me to shut up. In contrast, Marlene Dietrich listened to me for hours, or at least pretended to.”
As her marriage to Wilding entered its death throes, Elizabeth secretly dated Sinatra with Lawford serving as “the beard.” One night, a waiter at a dive in San Fernando Valley must have tipped off a photographer from a newspaper. The photographer arrived at a restaurant where Elizabeth was dining with both Lawford and Sinatra. The manager alerted Sinatra, who exited through the kitchen. Lawford left through the front door, telling the photographer, “Dining alone tonight.”
When Elizabeth got serious about her affair with Sinatra, he more or less deflected it, since it was obvious that she wanted to marry him after she divorced Wilding.
Both of them were lounging nude by his pool at Palm Springs one Sunday afternoon when she asked him, “What is your philosophy of life?”
“You gotta love living. Dying’s a pain in the ass.”
As the days went by, Elizabeth grew more and more dependent on Sinatra, although he was not really in love with her. He’d told Lawford, “I’ve had Ava, the most desirable woman in the world. But I lost her. Right now, I’m screwing the second most desirable woman on the planet, Elizabeth Taylor. Not bad for a skinny little kid from Hoboken.”
One night, she arrived at his home in Beverly Hills without an invitation, showing up unannounced on his doorstep. Fortunately, he was alone that evening, as he’d been dating other women during the course of his affair with Elizabeth.
Alarmed by her physical appearance, he invited her in, demanding to know what had happened. Resting on the sofa in his living room, she revealed that she’d told Wilding, “I’m in love with Frank Sinatra and I want a divorce. He’s not a violent person, but he slapped my face. I fell back over a coffee table, and my back is in agony.”
“The son of a bitch,” Sinatra muttered. “I could get him for that. In the meantime, I’m going to get help for you.”
He cal
When Wilding showed up at Sinatra’s house, demanding to know where his wife was, Sinatra slugged him.
Wilding wasn’t the only one to experience Sinatra’s notorious temper. Three weeks after Elizabeth’s release from the hospital, he was dining with her at one of his favorite restaurants in Palm Springs. The manager knew to keep fans away from Sinatra’s table, because he was aware of how much the singer hated autograph seekers.
However, on that night, the manager failed to alert a new waiter. It was the star-struck waiter who asked both Elizabeth and Sinatra for their respective autographs. But whereas Sinatra refused, Elizabeth graciously complied. She turned to Sinatra, “I’ll sign for both of us.” Then, in large letters so that he could read what she’d written, she wrote “ELIZABETH SINATRA.”
That was too much for him to take. Right in the middle of the dinner, he told her, “We’re going back to the house.”
“I want to finish my meal,” she protested.
“Then take a god damn taxi home,” he shouted at her, barging out of the restaurant.
In a drunken state, she arrived about an hour and a half later at his desert villa. A servant let her in. “Where is that Italian bastard?” she shouted.
“He told me to tell you he’s driving back to Los Angeles tonight,” the servant said. “You can stay on and use the house if you wish to.”
She left the following morning. Back in Beverly Hills, her calls to Sinatra went unanswered. When she phoned Lawford, he told her, “Frank flew to New York.”
She wanted Sinatra to abandon all other romantic entanglements and marry her, but he adamantly refused.
In desperation, she called Lawford and told him the bad news. “I’m pregnant. A doctor just informed me of this lovely tidbit. Maybe Frank will come to his senses. Having a kid out of wedlock doesn’t go over big in Hollywood.”
When he heard the news, Sinatra bluntly told her, “I’m not going to marry you. We’ll have to see that that kid in the oven doesn’t become fully baked.”
Elizabeth had told Wilding that during her last bout in the hospital, she’d instructed her doctor “to do whatever is necessary, but see that I don’t get pregnant again.” Obviously whatever surgical procedure she’d hinted at had never happened.
He arranged for the abortion. Details are lacking, and Lawford was not forthcoming with what happened next. It is believed that Sinatra’s close friend, gangster Mickey Cohen, played a role. Somehow, Cohen could pull off these things.
One night at a Hollywood party, Elizabeth encountered Ava Gardner, and those two beautiful actresses, after a couple of drinks, became confidential with one another. Elizabeth admitted to Ava that Sinatra had insisted that she abort their child, even though Elizabeth had wanted to have his baby.
“I’m an old hand at aborting Frank’s babies,” Ava told her.
In the aftermath of the abortion, Elizabeth was very bitter toward Sinatra and wanted nothing to do with him. But in time, she forgave him and resumed her friendship with him.
During her first marriage to Burton, Sinatra’s manservant remembered serving drinks to Sinatra, Burton, and Elizabeth, each star lying nude by the pool at his villa in Palm Springs. “I just assumed Mr. Sinatra and Miss Taylor had let bygones be bygones.”
***
When Kevin McClory returned from his international travels for Mike Todd and for tasks associated with the release of Around the World in 80 Days, Elizabeth was waiting for him. Apparently, he had not learned of her affair with Frank Sinatra.
He was, however, almost certainly aware of her adulterous affair with Victor Mature, because Confidential, in one of its more accurate articles, had published insider details, obviously from some anonymous source who was privy to very “confidential” tidbits of their sexfest.
“Love had nothing to do with my fling with Vic,” Elizabeth told Janet Leigh. “It was about his dick. Every woman in Hollywood should sample it— and many of them do.”
Wilding was left with the care and feeding of their sons, as Elizabeth spent her romantic Saturday and Sunday nights with McClory in her Malibu beach house. Often the “two lovebirds,” as Shirley MacLaine defined them, had dinners with the red-haired actress and her husband, Steve Parker, who eventually became a film producer in Japan.
In later years, MacLaine told Elizabeth the secret of a happy marriage. “I live in America, Steve lives in Japan, a perfect arrangement.” She also confessed, “I have one vice—fucking, even if it means with three different men in one day.”
Ava Gardner with Frank Sinatra
Ava to Elizabeth Taylor: “I’m an old hand at aborting Frank’s babies”
McClory later asserted, “Elizabeth was a very difficult person not to love. At that time, I was having a real struggle visualizing myself getting married to a star like Elizabeth with my meager finances.”
“One night, we dined with Shirley and Steve, who had a boxer, a marvelous animal. We got back to the house and the dog had been sick and messed all over the floor. Without any hesitation, Elizabeth, who was wearing a lovely frock, got down and scrubbed up the mess. Right then and there I said, ‘This is the woman for me.’ I knew then she was the girl I was going to marry.”
One evening, Elizabeth was dining at Chasen’s with McClory when a call came in at around nine o’clock from MGM’s Benny Thau, who was working late. He’d tracked her down. “Please come to my office tomorrow at ten o’clock,” he told her. “You’ll love what I have to tell you.”
The following morning, Thau greeted her warmly. “My darling,” he said. “We at MGM know you’re going to be our next big star. Okay, there were some rotten pictures, but beginning with your next film, you’re going to become big, I mean big, right up there with Marilyn Monroe, Susan Hayward, and Jane Wyman, each of whom is box office. Do you know when you’re a star? When I was in Japan, I noticed that the face of Susan Hayward was imprinted on the package of every condom. Now that’s bigtime.”
“What is this delicious surprise for me?” she asked. “You’re going to re-make Little Women… yet again?” She didn’t disguise the sarcasm in her voice.
“We’re going to film the Yankee version of Gone With the Wind. It’s going to be the picture of the decade. It’s called Raintree County, and as its star, you’re going to win an Oscar, the first of many, I’m sure. And we’re casting Montgomery Clift as your co-star.”
***
While Around the World in 80 Days was being edited, Mike Todd called Kevin McClory into his office. McClory later recalled the conversation:
TODD: “Everyone knows who you’re dating, and I don’t think it’s right.”
McCLORY: “What do you mean?”
TODD: “You know what I mean. Elizabeth Taylor, that’s who.”
McCLORY: “Her marriage to Wilding is on the rocks. We are in love with each other and plan to marry as soon as her divorce comes through. I will work for you around the clock, but my private life, Mike, is my own personal business.
TODD: “What you’re doing is a sin.”
In the wake of that conversation, McClory thought about Todd. “Hello Kettle, meet Pot.”
Three days later, as he continued editing his film, Todd told McClory, “You know, I’d like to meet the Wildings. I might use them to publicize our film. We could all go out on that big boat I’ve rented, The Hyding.” It was a 117-foot yacht.
“If that would please you, I’m sure they’d be delighted,” McClory said, planning to extend the invitation that night for a trip to begin on June 29, 1956.
Todd had a mixed motive. He’d long wanted to meet Elizabeth, but he also planned to film a Japanese training vessel in the Santa Barbara harbor for use in his movie.
With McClory and Dick Hanley, Todd’s new secretary, as fellow passengers aboard the yacht, Wilding and Elizabeth came aboard, but immediately separated once on deck.
All eyes focused on Elizabeth in her tight-fitting flamingo pink pants that outlined her crotch and her violet-cashmere sweater that accentuated the color of her eyes. She delivered her familiar refrain: “Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?”
Mike Todd came to the rescue with a chilled bottle of champagne. “Not since Cleopatra set her gilded foot onto her barge has such a dazzling queen taken to the sea.”
“Flattery will get you anything,” she said. “And I’m not bullshitting.”
Todd ordered one of his handsome waiters to keep Elizabeth’s ruby-colored champagne glass full throughout the rest of the trip.
Evelyn Keyes, “Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister” from Gone With the Wind, more or less volunteered as Elizabeth’s “chaperone” for the duration of the cruise.
She’d been previously married to directors Charles Vidor and John Huston. Although not married, Keyes and Todd had been living together like man and wife for the previous three years.
Keyes was “preening proud” of an engagement ring Todd had presented to her the night before. It was a 29.4 carat diamond engagement sparkler for which he’d paid almost $100,000, a stunning price back then for a piece of jewelry.
Three views of Evelyn Keyes Upper right: as Scarlett O’Hara’s little sister in Gone With the Wind
“I just know that any day now, he’s going to propose to me,” Keyes told Elizabeth. “I’ve got to be careful I don’t lose it. It’s too big for my finger, and Mike is going to take it back and get it resized.”
The next time Keyes saw that diamond sparkler was months later on the finger of Elizabeth Taylor when she was married to Todd. Elizabeth often cited that ring as the beginning of her love affair with very large and very expensive diamonds.
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