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

by Darwin Porter

  Both Elizabeth and Burton wanted Mike Nichols to direct Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He’d been a cabaret entertainer and had directed plays on Broadway, but never a movie. Even so, Burton and Elizabeth insisted on him, and Jack Warner, who was releasing the movie, finally agreed.

  Whereas Edward Albee’s raw and raunchy dialogues had been acceptable as part of a live performance on Broadway, Warner feared that its obscenities would antagonize the Hollywood censors. He pointed out “thirteen god damns, three bastards, seven buggers, four screws, four sons-of-bitches or SOBs, and twelve variations of Christ’s name taken in vain, as in ‘Jesus H. Christ.’ There were also references to scrotums and one reference to ‘a right ball.’”

  Ultimately, Warners decided to defy the censorship code and released the film with much of the original dialogue intact. Writing in The New York Times, Stanley Kauffman noted that when Burton delivered the line about “hump the hostess,” old-fashioned Hollywood censorship came to an end.

  When Albee’s play had opened on Broadway, many critics claimed that it was really about two gay couples masquerading as straight. One critic wrote, “The dialogue should have been uttered by two gay queens, but Warner Brothers changed it to male/female relationship for the sake of the box office.”

  Elizabeth and Burton were offered a combined $4 million for their involvement in the shooting, which lasted from July to December of 1965. The first scenes were shot on location on the leafy campus of Smith College at Northampton, Massachusetts.

  At first, the college’s president did not want such a racy screenplay associated with his college, as he feared it would hold Smith up to ridicule. But after he received a $150,000 gift from Warner, and perhaps after realizing the literary and theatrical merit of the project, he changed his mind.

  Initially, Jack Warner had thought that Elizabeth was far too young to play Martha and that Burton was much too strong to play such a spineless professor.

  Ingrid Bergman was considered for the role of Martha, as were Rosalind Russell and Patricia Neal. “I got my hopes up,” Neal later said, “but once again, I lost a choice role to Taylor, and I was still furious over losing Suddenly, Last Summer.”

  Cary Grant was considered for the role of George, even Henry Fonda. Arthur Hill had created the role effectively on Broadway, and he was a candidate “for a day.” Peter O’Toole agreed to do it, but Warner preferred Jack Lemmon, who refused. “This gutless creature would destroy my male image,” Lemmon said.

  “The fucker didn’t mind dressing up like a girl with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot,” Warner retorted.

  Connie Stevens, the future wife of Eddie Fisher, wanted to play the whiny second female lead, but the role eventually went to Sandy Dennis. Robert Redford was asked to play the second male lead, but notified Warner, “I wouldn’t even read the script.” The part eventually went to the very talented George Segal.

  In preparation for her role as the middle-aged Martha, Elizabeth enjoyed packing on twenty-five pounds, devouring all the junk food and drinking all the alcohol she wanted.

  Nichols had some reservations about the deliberate transformation of Elizabeth into the stout, vulgar, embittered, and frumpy Martha. “It’s like asking a chocolate milkshake to do the work of a double gin martini. Wardrobe went through eight different wigs before Elizabeth and I could decide on the right one.”

  After the first week of shooting, and watching Elizabeth and Burton emotionally destroying one another during rehearsals and in front of a camera, Dick Hanley finally agreed thet the roles were right for his employers. “Actually, it was type casting,” he told Nichols. “All they had to do was transfer their off-screen battles onto the screen.”

  Of the film, Elizabeth wrote: “I think Martha is a desperate woman who has the softness of the underbelly of a baby turtle. She covers it up with the toughness of the shell, which she paints red. Her veneer is bawdy; it’s sloppy, it’s slouchy, it’s snarly. But there are moments when the façade cracks and you see the vulnerability and the infinite pain.”

  One scene called for Elizabeth to spit in Burton’s face. Not pleased, the director ordered take after take until she got it right.

  “At first, I thought it was rather lewd,” Burton said to Dick. “But eventually, it was a turn-on. It gave me a hard-on. But every day after shooting, I went back to my dressing room and fondled my balls. I wanted to make sure Elizabeth hadn’t castrated me.”

  “During the filming of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? our director, Mike Nichols, along with Burton and Elizabeth, privately entertained some super A-list guests,” Dick said. “It was pure gossip, but members of the crew claimed that Nichols was dating Gloria Steinem, but that he was merely using her as a beard to cover up his romance with Jackie Kennedy. He was crazy about the former First Lady. One day, he shut down production, leaving his superstars stranded while he flew to New York City to be with Jackie. When he returned, Nichols looked like the cat who’d just swallowed the canary.”

  Two views of Elizabeth Taylor as Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Lower photo: “Castrating George”

  As biographer Alexander Walker put it: “If Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? represented a coming-of-age for Elizabeth in more than one sense, the experience of playing it did not leave Burton unscathed. In him, it sowed the seed of discontent with their relationship. Playing an unfulfilled man touched a guilty dread that all the star appurtenances, all the spending in the world couldn’t extirpate. He needed to succeed as himself, on his own terms, and not as someone else’s husband—be it Martha’s or Elizabeth’s.”

  Marlene Dietrich to Elizabeth Taylor: “My dear, you are brave. Imagine having the guts to perform with real actors.”

  On September 23, 1965, the crew left Northampton, Massachusetts and flew to Los Angeles to complete the film. On the sound stage at Warner Brothers, Burton celebrated his fortieth birthday, although he seemed none too happy about it. To cheer him up, Elizabeth presented him with a white Oldsmobile Toronado.

  Judy Garland: “A bad moment onstage”

  He received another gift too—a surprise visit from Marlene Dietrich. She appeared on the set in time to watch a drunken scene with all four actors—Elizabeth, Segal, Burton, and Dennis.

  When Nichols called “cut,” Dietrich rushed over to Burton and kissed him passionately on the lips. “Oh, darling, you were vonderful, so vonderful. How marvelous. I see an Oscar in your future.”

  Finally, she turned to Elizabeth and gave her a very light peck on the cheek. “Elizabeth, my dear, you are brave. Imagine having the guts to perform with real actors.”

  What not to say or do at a drunken dinner party: Princess Margaret with Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon

  “Guts I have,” Elizabeth said. “When I get home, Richard and I are going to fuck like bunnies.”

  Back at their rented home that night, Elizabeth said to Burton, “So you’ve fucked Marlene Dietrich. It was obvious to everybody that you two world-class whores weren’t meeting for the first time. Marlene seems to get off fucking all my husbands—Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton himself. I wonder if she ever made it with Nicky Hilton.”

  A week later, arrangements were made for Elizabeth to dine with Lord Snowdon (Anthony Armstrong-Jones) and Princess Margaret at Le Bistro in Los Angeles, where Judy Garland was scheduled to sing.

  Whereas the A-list quartet sat together at a table for four, Dick Hanley and Roddy McDowall sat at an adjoining table in case they were needed.

  Dick later revealed that Elizabeth and Burton were “about the drunkest I had ever seen them.”

  During one of his rambling monologues, Elizabeth loudly interrupted her husband in a style that evoked something Martha might have said to her husband George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. “For Chrissakes,” she shouted at him. “Shut your fucking mouth!”

  “The most embarrassing point of the evening came when Burton reached in and fondled th
e breast of Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret.” Dick said. “I nearly fainted. The Princess got up and headed to the women’s room. When she returned, Judy was singing but tripped on a microphone cord. In front of the entire bistro, Burton yelled, ‘THAT JUDY—DRUNK AGAIN!’”

  Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon quickly made their excuses and left.

  Burton called the next day to apologize, but the Princess would not come to the phone. Burton told Dick, “Oh shit, the next time I visit London, the Queen will banish me to the Tower.”

  Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? cost $7.5 million, the most expensive black-and-white movie ever released. It opened in theaters in June of 1966, challenging and changing forever the censorship standards of the industry’s thirty-six year old Production Code.

  Edward Albee’s tense drama was both a financial and artistic success, earning Oscar nominations for both Elizabeth and Burton.

  “Rarely in the history of the Academy has an actress of Elizabeth’s stature faced such weak competition,” claimed columnist James Bacon.

  Other nominees for the Best Actress Oscar of 1966 included Anouk Aimée for her performance in A Man and a Woman; and Ida Kaminska for The Shop on Main Street. Evoking the competitiveness of two sisters, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, two other sisters, the Redgraves (Lynn and Vanessa) were also nominated, Lynn for her role in Georgy Girl and Vanessa for Morgan.

  Unlike Elizabeth, Burton faced stiff competition at the Oscars, and he knew it, predicting that Paul Scofield would win for his role in A Man for All Seasons. Burton resented all the adoring press reports that referred to Scofield as “one of the giants of the British stage.”

  Other nominees included Alan Arkin for his role in The Russians Are Coming; Michael Caine in Alfie; and Steve McQueen for his role in The Sand Pebbles, but none of those other actors was a favorite.

  The Academy Award presentations were scheduled for the evening of April 10, 1966 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

  Elizabeth and Burton were in the south of France at the time, filming The Comedians (1967), a politicized satire of Haiti under the repressive military regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. [Duvalier had refused entry into Haiti to the film crew.] Just so that she could be with Burton, she had agreed to appear in a supporting role, giving him—for the first time—top billing.

  She wanted to fly back to Los Angeles for the Oscar ceremony, but he refused to let her go, despite her conviction, “I’m bound to win.” She was therefore forced to call Anne Bancroft and ask her if she’d accept the Oscar in her absence.

  Burton told Dick Hanley that he could not tell her the real reason he didn’t want them to fly back to L.A. “I feel I’m going to lose, and I don’t want to be humiliated in front of 150 million TV viewers while Elizabeth lords it over me with her Oscar. Instead, I told her that I’d had a bad dream, and that my dream was a premonition that she’d die in a plane crash like Mike Todd.”

  Shortly after the winners for the year’s Best Actor and Actress were announced in Santa Monica, Peter Lawford put through a call to Elizabeth in France, telling her that she had won the Oscar, but that Burton had lost.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Dick later said to Roddy McDowall. “Instead of being overjoyed at her second Oscar, all I heard was this torrent of profanities. She was absolutely hysterically furious and in a violent rage that Burton had lost.”

  The majority of Academy members had been impressed with Elizabeth’s bravery in abandoning her customary beauty as a vehicle for her portrayal of a sloppy, foul-mouthed, graying voluptuary like Martha. But a violent storm of criticism broke out when she didn’t show up in person to receive her Oscar. Among other things, she was accused of not respecting the Academy.

  The criticism was compounded when Sandy Dennis did not show up to receive her own Oscar as Best Supporting Actress either. Dennis was on the East Coast at the time, filming Sweet November (1968). She could have flown to Los Angeles, but confessed, “I have a fear of flying.”

  The evening’s host, Bob Hope, quipped: “I know why Elizabeth couldn’t come. Leaving Richard in Paris would be like leaving Jackie Gleason locked in a deli.” The Oscar historian, Anthony Holden, said, “Burton was snubbed because he’d antagonized most of the men in Hollywood by sleeping with their wives.”

  Elizabeth seemed to know that with her Oscar for Virginia Woolf, she’d reached the apogee of her film career. More riches, more diamonds, more husbands would be in her future, but a role like Martha would never be offered again.

  In their reactions to her lackluster future films, critics would often be vicious, as in the case when she appeared with Burton in Doctor Faustus (1967). The critic for The New York Times claimed, “Her eyeballs and teeth were dripping pink in what seems to be a hellish combination of conjunctivitis and trench mouth.” Even more scathing attacks awaited her.

  Biographer Kitty Kelley commented on Elizabeth’s new persona in the years ahead: “With a raunchy laugh and double entendre lines, Elizabeth Taylor has become the cinema’s quintessential shrew, cursing and castrating her way across the screen in a series of unsuccessful movies.”

  Two views of Elizabeth Taylor in Boom! as the richest woman in the world. lower photo: In Kabuki costume with Noël Coward as the Witch of Capri

  Even in reference to many of her future roles, Rex Reed referred to her as “a hideous parody of herself—a fat, sloppy, yelling, screaming banshee,” sometimes giving the impression that he was writing about her performance as Martha.

  In 1968, Burton was still married to Elizabeth, although he admitted to a friend, “I often experience the middle aged catastrophe of falling in love with some pretty little blonde for five minutes.”

  The year found him cast with Elizabeth in one of their biggest mistakes, Boom! (1968), in which they starred with Noël Coward playing “The Witch of Capri.”

  Boom! was based on the Tennessee Williams play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, which had starred Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter, and which had closed on Broadway, an abject flop, early in 1964 after only five performances.

  Actually, Bankhead had recommended Elizabeth for the role. “Who better to play Flora Goforth, the richest woman in the world, a promiscuous, pill-ravaged, drunken slut who is the world’s biggest joke than Elizabeth Taylor? She need only play herself.”

  Also in 1968, Burton wanted to show his continuing love for Elizabeth by purchasing the world famous 33.19 carat Krupp diamond for her for $307,000. The diamond had a notorious association with the Krupp family, German industrialists who had been involved in the deportation and forced labor of Jews during the Nazi era.

  Elizabeth, who had converted to Judaism in 1959, said, “I thought it perfect for a nice Jewish girl like me to end up owning the Krupp diamond. How ironic!”

  To buy the diamond, Burton flew to New York and bid against America’s most fabled jeweler, Harry Winston.

  Back in London, he presented it to Elizabeth aboard their yacht, Kalizma, moored on the Thames River. She was thrilled with the diamond, later describing it as “so complete and so ravishing, like the steps leading into eternity and beyond.”

  But ten years later, in 1978, Elizabeth sold it to New York dealer Henry Lamberet for $5 million, admitting to friends, “I never really liked the damn thing.”

  Thirty-three years later, after her death on Wednesday, March 24, 2011, at the age of 79, the Krupp Diamond was worth $30 million. She had always regretted selling it.

  Shortly after Burton’s presentation to her of the diamond in 1968, she said, “I was wearing it at midnight when I had the best sex of my life. In fact, the best fuck before or after.”

  Aboard their yacht, Kalizma, one night in 1973, she stood with Burton and spoke what were perhaps the most melodramatic words she’d ever uttered. She sounded like Princess Alexandra del Lago, the fictional, spectacularly unfulfilled heroine of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, a role she’d play on TV in 1989.

  “That old ene
my of time is marching in on me. I must inevitably face the final curtain, which is likely to come sooner than later.” She turned to Burton. “You will always be at my side, won’t you?”

  “I’ll never leave you,” he promised.

  “We will live happily ever after, won’t we?” she asked.

  “That we will, luv. Only problem is, what comes after they lived happily ever after?”

  ***

  “Everything that I have done in my life that is a mistake, I will admit is a mistake and answer for it. But I am not going to answer for an image created by hundreds of people who do not know what’s true or false. That would take me from here to Doomsday.”

  —Elizabeth Taylor

  Elizabeth Taylor

  1932 - 2011

  REST IN PEACE

  THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

  Over decades of meeting and talking with celebrities, Darwin Porter accumulated a vast trove of stories about Elizabeth Taylor. “Everyone who I came into contact with, from Mary Astor to Tallulah Bankhead, had a tale to relate about Elizabeth, either good or bad, often a combination of both,” Darwin said.

  Of the people sucked into the whirlpool enveloping Elizabeth, no sources were more insightful than actor Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth’s secretary, Dick Hanley.

  “I think these two men knew Elizabeth and her secrets better than anybody, and they were dear friends of mine,” Darwin said.

  As a child actor, Roddy bonded with Elizabeth on the set of the 1943 Lassie Come Home, and they remained “soul mates” until death.

  Dick Hanley had been the private secretary of Louis B. Mayer for many years before going to work for Mike Todd. After Todd’s death, Dick became Elizabeth’s private secretary and “handler.”

  According to Darwin, “Dick and Roddy talked endlessly about Elizabeth, but not for publication. They loved her dearly, but were also aware of her vanities and foibles. Wherever they are today, I hope they forgive me for sharing their confidences about Elizabeth with her thousands of fans, though during my conversations about her at the time, they were ‘off the record.’”