Elizabeth also wasn’t satisfied just acting out dramatic scenes on the screen. She wanted a daily drama going on in her private life, too—and Burton was the man to do that.
A drunken Burton showed up unexpectedly at a dinner party at Villa Pappa at which Elizabeth and Fisher were entertaining twelve guests. Dick knew better than to turn him away, and therefore ushered him into the dining room. Burton immediately got into an altercation with Fisher.
The Ruin of Ptolmaic Egypt Starring Cleopatra and Marc Antony
“Why don’t you go back to your own home, you bastard?” Fisher said. “Go back to Sybil. She’s your woman, not Elizabeth. Elizabeth is mine.”
“Fuck you, you little faggot,” Burton said. “They’re both my women.” He looked over at Elizabeth. “Are you my woman?” His voice grew louder. “Well, are you? If you are, get your fat ass over her and stick your tongue down my throat.”
Elizabeth stood up and staggered toward Burton. In front of her other guests, she lip locked with him.
Fisher rose from his chair, staring in amazement and humiliation.
When Burton broke from Elizabeth’s lips, he turned to Fisher. “Keep her warm for me, okay?”
Aided by Dick, Burton staggered toward the door, where Dick helped him into his car to drive him back to his villa.
“He was a total basket case,” Dick later claimed. “He told me that Sybil was in London.”
At his villa, Burton asked Dick to put him to bed. In his elegantly decorated boudoir, Burton told Dick that he had to “take an urgent piss” and asked him to “take me to the bathroom.” Dick led him into the bathroom and directed him to the bowl. “I can’t do it,” Burton said. “Take it out for me.”
Dick unzipped Burton’s trousers, reached in, and removed his uncut cock, which he aimed toward the bowl. “After he took a horse piss, I shook it for him.”
“He then ordered me to undress him and put him to bed. I did as I was told. Before I left, he grabbed me and held my face close to his and stuck his tongue in my mouth. The next morning, when I saw him, I don’t think he even remembered my taking him home. I had never seen a man as wasted as he could get.”
An even more intense drama was unleashed the following Sunday night when Burton once again arrived unannounced at the Villa Pappa.
On that occasion, Fisher was as intoxicated as Elizabeth and Burton. “It was the strangest and most unexpected night I ever spent at the Villa Pappa,” Dick recalled.
On that particular evening, Burton seemed in a confessional mood. “I’ve heard that Elizabeth’s friends, faggots, like that Capote and Monty Clift, even that cocksucker Marlon Brando, are claiming that I’m just a hustler, using Elizabeth here as a stepping stone to stardom.”
“Are you?” she asked him.
In front of her guests, Burton admitted to her, “You’re a good piece of ass, but I’m also becoming a household word around the world—and I was never that before.”
“She burst into tears and ran from the villa,” Dick said. “Two of her security guards chased after her.”
Watching her leave, Burton said, “You know I don’t give a fuck where she’s going.”
A drunken Fisher looked at him. “Neither do I. For the first time in my life, I don’t give a hot damn.”
“Eddie, tonight I’m going to do what had been my original intention,” Burton told him. “When I got to Rome, I always planned to fuck your ass. I wasn’t even thinking of Elizabeth’s honeypot. Tonight, I’m going to fuck you. You can take it willingly, like a man, or else I’m going to rape you. Either way, you’re going to get it. Your choice.”
Dick searched Fisher’s face, expecting him to put up massive resistance. He found none. If anything, Fisher looked like an abused, defeated man who might surrender to anything. “I always knew that’s what you really wanted to do,” Fisher said to Burton. “I knew it was going to happen sometime. I might as well endure it and get it over with. Let’s go upstairs.”
As Dick stood in semi-shock, watching Fisher head up the stairs with Burton, Fisher called back to him. “If word of this gets out, I’ll claim that Richard raped me when I was drunk.”
Roddy was a late arrival at Villa Pappa that night. When he came into the living room, Dick told him what was going on upstairs between Fisher and Burton.
“I’m not at all surprised,” Roddy said.
“Eddie is always denying he’s a homosexual,” Dick said. “But he’s one of us.”
“He’s bi,” Roddy said. “I think Elizabeth likes bisexual men. Look at her track record. I’ve known about Eddie for a long time.”
Roddy claimed that once, after Fisher had left Debbie Reynolds during their marriage, that he’d rented an apartment on Sunset Boulevard. “While he was there, his most frequent sleepover was that gorgeous little hunk, Ricky Nelson. Ricky is bi himself, and most of inside Hollywood knows that. Ricky has had two big crushes in his life—Eddie Fisher and Elvis Presley.”
“That explains why Eddie went so willingly upstairs to his fate,” Dick said. “The little shit is probably enjoying it.”
Two hours passed before Burton emerged from upstairs. Fisher remained in the master bedroom.
Glenys Roberts, writing in London’s Daily Mail, on the 20th anniversary of Burton’s death in 2004, wrote: “Some claim Burton first tried to seduce Liz’s then husband, Eddie Fisher, and turned to her only when he was rebuffed.”
That was not exactly what Dick reported.
Outside, Burton got into a vehicle driven by his chauffeur and presumably headed home.
After telling Roddy good night, Dick drove to his own apartment. When he got there, he found Elizabeth sitting up in his bed having a drink. She had let herself into his apartment with a passkey he’d given her.
She told him that she’d called her bedroom telephone at Villa Pappa and was shocked when Burton picked up the receiver.
“When he heard who it was, he said, ‘Hello, luv, I’m fucking your husband right now. One tight ass on our little Jew boy, a perfect bottom, and he’s loving it.’ Then the jerk slammed down the phone on me.”
About fifteen minutes later, there was a pounding on Dick’s apartment door. Burton was shouting, demanding to be let in.
Elizabeth ordered Dick to keep him out, but he disobeyed her, because he knew that Burton would break down the apartment’s rather thin door.
“He came into my living room like a madman,” Dick said. “He was calling her every name he could—some in Welsh. I recognized the word ‘cunt’ repeated endlessly. Like a caveman, he headed for the bedroom.”
There, Burton discovered Elizabeth in bed by herself. In front of Dick, he ripped off her bedcovers. “You fucking sagging-titted, no-talent Hollywood cunt!” he shouted at her. “Eddie loves you so much, and you treat him like shit. From now on, I’ll be fucking him instead of you!”
Of course, that drunken threat was never realized. Far from being offended, she seemed excited by this abuse.
As she told Life magazine in December of 1964, “I adore fighting with Richard. It’s rather like a small atom bomb going off. Sparks fly, walls shake, floors reverberate!”
“He practically dragged her out the door,” Dick said. “She seemed to love it. I knew she’d gotten off on Mike Todd beating the shit out of her. The pattern was being repeated with Burton. They disappeared for two days, and no one knew where they went. I was the poor sucker who had to call Mankiewicz the following morning. Did I ever get hell!”
***
Mankiewicz was asked what it was like to work with such temperamental stars. “When you’re in a cage with tigers, you never let them know you’re afraid of them—or they’ll eat you.” The director responded. “The one thing I could expect from them was the unexpected. If Elizabeth and Sybil weren’t enough for Richard to handle, he showed up one day with a bimbo.”
During his appearance on Broadway in Camelot, Burton had launched a torrid affair with Pat Tunder, a beautiful showgirl from the Copac
abana.
From Rome, he’d sent her a ticket to join him during the filming of Cleopatra. “I’m importing a piece of ass,” he told Roddy.
On the day after Tunder’s arrival, Burton did not show up on the set until eleven the following morning. He arrived with a hangover and one arm protectively around Tunder. Elizabeth was forty feet away, surveying his arrival with the showgirl.
Publicist Brodsky later said, “Elizabeth just stood there, looking daggers at both Burton and the Copa-cutie. Ironically, those daggers were mixed with steamy, passionate stares. After make-up, Burton walked over to her. An angry Elizabeth confronted him. ‘You kept us waiting.’”
“What a switch,” he said. “It’s about time someone kept you waiting for a change.”
After being confronted with Elizabeth’s anger, fueled by jealousy, Wanger ordered Tunder off the set. Two days later, he arranged for his office to provide her with a one-way ticket back to New York.
In addition to everything else, I didn’t need three females battling over who was going to get Dick Burton’s cock,” he said. “I’m under constant attack from the offices of Fox in Hollywood and New York. They claim that the Taylor/Burton affair is like a cancer growing on us. If this budget keeps ballooning, I’ve been warned that there may be no 21st Century Fox.”
With Tunder safely out of the way, Burton somehow got Elizabeth to forgive him for this indiscretion with a showgirl. It would become a pattern repeated often during the two times they would marry in the future.
Just as Elizabeth began to feel secure that Burton might divorce Sybil and marry her, an unforeseen event happened: Richard was summoned to Paris to appear in a cameo for Darryl F. Zanuck in his production of The Longest Day, a big-budget film epic detailing the D-Day invasion of Normandy during June of 1944.
From London, Sybil flew to Paris to rejoin her errant husband. Reporters spotted them having dinner at Maxim’s. That night, Burton downed three stiff drinks of vodka and three bottles of champagne.
As he was leaving the restaurant, reporters crowded around him. “Are you going to marry Elizabeth Taylor?” one of them shouted at him.
“I’m already married to Sybil here,” Burton said. “And I’m staying married.”
This interchange was reported in the Paris newspapers the following morning, and Dick relayed the news to a disappointed Elizabeth.
Richard Burton: Re-enacting the Allied Invasion of Normandy was less stressful than filming Cleopatra in Rome.
Back in Rome after completing his assignment on The Longest Day, Burton claimed that the rumors of an affair with Elizabeth were “bloody nonsense.”
Fisher seemed to realize that Elizabeth was still pining for Burton, and he volunteered to go to Switzerland to spend time there, allowing her to sort out her dilemma of which man to love.
“At that time, poor Eddie was grasping for straws,” said Roddy.
“Oh, no Eddie,” Elizabeth pleaded. “Don’t leave me…ever!”
“I talked with Richard when he got back from Paris,” Roddy said. “He just couldn’t make up his mind…Sybil or Elizabeth.”
On the set the next day, Burton was hung over and so was Elizabeth. They’d spent the night together in Dick Hanley’s apartment. At least for that one night, the choice had been Elizabeth. Burton tried to explain it to Roddy. “I need Sybil for emotional support and Elizabeth for sex.”
For lunch, Burton and Elizabeth agreed to meet with scriptwriter Philip Dunne, who urged Burton to agree to accept the role of Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy, with Spencer Tracy playing the Pope. Burton promised to get back to him with a decision about that offer.
“They spent all their time with me fighting with each other, and I knew that Burton wasn’t really interested in playing the difficult role of Michelangelo,” Dunne said. “Of course, Charlton Heston was only too eager.”
As the Burton/Taylor love affair heated up, the members of Burton’s entourage who were loyal to Sybil, mostly those from England and Wales, bonded together to defend her.
Burton had hired Ifor Jenkins, his brother from Wales, as his bodyguard. Jenkins became so enraged at Burton for what he was doing to Sybil “that he beat the shit out of him,” Roddy claimed. “Richard had a black eye, a cut lip, and a rip on his cheek. He missed several days of work until his face healed.”
His fellow Welshman, the respected playwright and actor Emyln Williams, a former lover of Burton’s and a great admirer of Sybil’s, flew to Rome to chastise him. Williams and Burton got into a shouting match. “Elizabeth Taylor is just a third-rate chorus girl,” Williams claimed.
Unfortunately, Williams delivered that assessment just as Elizabeth walked into the room. Consequently, he faced a stream of obscenities worse that any lorry driver could have delivered in any of the seedy pubs of Wales.
After confronting one attack after another, Burton became fed up with people telling him what to do. “So I said to Liz, ‘Fuck it! Let’s go out to fucking Alfredo’s and have some fucking fettuccine.’”
When Burton complained about being hounded day and night by the press, Brodsky reminded him: “You can’t deny an affair with Elizabeth and then be seen alone with her on the Via Veneto at three in the morning.”
Burton referred to the relentless paparazzi who followed them day and night as “ravenous jackals.” Their affair was viewed as an event of such international importance that it was written about by journalists who usually covered only politics.
Walter Lippmann, America’s most respected journalist and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, arrived in Rome to record his own impression of “the Liz & Dick saga.” Elizabeth and Richard were friendly with the noted journalist, but gave him no insight into their private life.
He noted that the Nubian slaves who were hired as part of Cleopatra’s grand entourage into Rome had to be painted black because Mankiewicz had decided that “they weren’t black enough,” Also, this costly scene had to be reshot for $155,000 because one member of the public had not been chased away. He was filmed in modern dress, among hundreds of extras, sitting on a stone eating an ice cream cone.
Elizabeth trusted her butler, Fred Oates, until he gave an interview to Photoplay. In it, he called her “a dictatorial empress, a true-to-life Queen of the Nile who treated her husband like a virtual slave, rejected telephone calls from her parents, invited guests for supper and then refused to dine with them.” He referred to Fisher as “a submissive man” in the article. Needless to say, Elizabeth hired a new butler.
Max Lerner more or less agreed with Oates about Fisher. He wrote, “Elizabeth Taylor devoured men like Eddie Fisher for breakfast and spat them out at lunch. She couldn’t stomach weakness in a male. Vulnerability, yes; sappiness, no.”
Meanwhile, Fisher had flown to New York for recording sessions. He tried to put up a brave front.
In New York on March 30, 1962, Fisher held a press conference, denouncing claims of his wife’s romantic involvement with Burton as “preposterous, ridiculous, absolutely false.”
Congress Reacts as Cleo Goes Global:
German-language poster for “Kleopatra.” Inset photo: Crusading Georgia Congresswoman Iris Blitch
In front of reporters, he placed a call to Elizabeth in Rome. He said he wanted her to announce that there was no foundation to the Taylor/Burton romantic rumors.
“Well, Eddie,” she said, as they listened in. “I can’t do that because there is some truth in the story.”
“Thanks a lot,” he snapped at her before slamming down the phone. In full public view, in front of a coterie of journalists, he had been humiliated.
Le scandale, as it came to be called, drew fire from around the world. On the floor of Congress, Iris Blitch, a Democrat from Georgia, called for the revocation of Elizabeth’s passport.
Ironically, Blitch sent her protests to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, not knowing that he found Elizabeth “desirable” and not “undesirable,” based on his own sexual trysts with her in Hollyw
ood. Of course, RFK took no action on Blitch’s demand.
“Blitch?” he asked his staff. “Now what does that rhyme with?
At the dedication ceremony of his library in Abilene, Kansas, Dwight D. Eisenhower denounced “the vulgarity, the sensuality, and, indeed, the downright garbage that Hollywood uses to promote its latest assault on morality and decency.” He did not mention Burton and Elizabeth by name.
The world press began to denounce Elizabeth, Rome’s Il Tiempo calling her “this vamp who destroys families and shucks husbands like a praying mantis.”
Vatican Radio claimed the Taylor/Burton affair endangered the “moral health of society.” L’Osservatore della Dominica called Elizabeth an “erotic vagrant.”
Pope John XXIII himself, or so it was said, when reading the draft of the Vatican attack on Elizabeth, had personally written in the phrase “erotic vagrancy.”
“Elizabeth didn’t give a cup of rat’s piss what the Pope or the Vatican had to say about her morals,” said Roddy. “In fact, Richard and Elizabeth basked in their notoriety, heading off together for a weekend of romance and primal screams.”
Elizabeth and Richard slipped away to the small coastal resort of Porto Santo Stefano, positioned some one-hundred miles north of Rome.
That night, Elizabeth and Burton got into a violent fight over his refusal to divorce Sybil.
In the bathroom, she grabbed a bottle of Seconal and swallowed all of them.
When he realized what she’d done, he plunged his fingers down her throat, making her vomit. “She was foaming at the mouth,” he later said.
The reception desk was able to summon a local doctor to check her out, and the incident, at least for the moment, was kept out of the press.
According to Burton, the next day, a Sunday, “We drank ourselves to the point of stupefication and idiocy.”
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