Furious Love

by Sam Kashner

  Despite the seclusion and luxury of the Ponti estate, the Burtons’ reconciliation lasted only nine days. First of all, Richard was drinking again (having sent his internist packing), which had finally become intolerable to Elizabeth. And Richard had heard about the attentions of Henry Wynberg, whose name he continually, and contemptuously, mangled, calling him “Mr. Wiseborg,” or “Weinstein,” or, simply, “the used-car salesman.” Now, Elizabeth suspected Richard was having an affair with his sultry costar, especially when she happened to see the draft of an article he was writing about her for Ladies’ Home Journal. He had never written such lavish praise of another woman before—certainly not for public consumption. He praised Sophia as “[t]all and extraordinary. Large-bosomed. Tremendously long legs…Beautiful brown eyes set in a marvelously vulpine, almost satanic face…” But when he described her as “beautiful as erotic dreams,” that phrase was uncomfortably close to his earlier description of Elizabeth as “beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography.” She now felt she had proof that the two were more than just friends.

  After what had happened in Budapest, during the shoot of Bluebeard, Elizabeth was furious. “I knew he was flirting his head off,” she recalled, “and she was flirting right back, both of them speaking in Italian, which made me feel ridiculously left out. I thought, I’m not going to sit here and watch this. Screw them both!”

  So the Burtons separated again, and Elizabeth checked into a baroque, seven-room suite in the Grand Hotel in Rome, where she was to begin filming The Driver’s Seat the following day. Miserable, she arrived very late to the set, where she was overwhelmed by a standing ovation by cast and crew. She told her producer, Franco Rossellini, that she never thought she could ever feel as awful as she did on the day of Mike Todd’s death, but she was wrong. “Today is the second sad day in my life. I am desolate,” she told him. She and Burton both put in a call to Aaron Frosch, to begin divorce proceedings.

  Like her lonely character Barbara Sawyer in Ash Wednesday, Elizabeth spent days in bed when she wasn’t working on her new film. “I don’t want to be that much in love ever again,” she told a friend. “I don’t want to give as much of myself. It hurts. I didn’t reserve anything. I gave everything away…my soul, my being, everything.” She sought consolation with Andy Warhol, who was in Rome to appear in a cameo in The Driver’s Seat. She poured out her heart to him during a long lunch, over drinks and tears, while she distractedly pulled all the leaves off of a decorative tree near their table. But lunch with Andy did not end well. She discovered that he had been secretly taping her anguish with his state-of-the-art, micro-cassette tape recorder, for use in Interview magazine, which Warhol had recently founded. Elizabeth jumped up, furious, and pulled the tape out of the micro-cassette with her long fingernails, destroyed it, and departed, prompting Warhol to later ask the question, “Gee, she has everything—magic, money, beauty, intelligence. Why can’t she be happy?”

  And so, again like Barbara in Ash Wednesday, she took a lover—the ever-ready Henry Wynberg, who quickly flew in from Los Angeles to console Elizabeth in Rome.

  On July 31, John Springer announced that Aaron Frosch was drawing up divorce papers for the Burtons. They were, of course, both concerned about the impact of the divorce on their children. Michael was on his own, but seventeen-year-old Christopher was still in school and living with his uncle Howard in Hawaii. Liza, sixteen, and twelve-year-old Maria were in boarding schools in Switzerland. Sixteen-year-old Kate was attending the United Nations School in New York, living with Sybil when she wasn’t flying in to be with Richard and Elizabeth. They continued to regard Richard as very much their father, though Richard had often reminded Michael and Christopher to honor Michael Wilding as their true father, and Liza to honor the memory of Mike Todd. The meaning of fatherhood had always been important to Richard. Throughout the Burtons’ nine-year marriage, they had done all they could to shelter their brood from the paparazzi and the prying questions of journalists. When not in school, the children had spent fabulous vacations aboard their floating zoo, the Kalizma, or chasing lizards and playing in the sun-warmed waves at Busseria, their private beach in Puerto Vallarta. The three eldest had appeared as extras in The Taming of the Shrew, and had reveled in their mother’s unending, effortless glamour. Whatever emotional costs inflicted upon them by the turmoil of their parents’ lives—and their parents’ drinking—remained private, except for Kate. Kate would later appear in Tony Palmer’s brilliant documentary about Burton, In from the Cold, recounting how she told her father to stop drinking or she would never see him again.

  As for Elizabeth, the only time she ever cried after reading what had been written about her was when Life magazine questioned her devotion as a mother. She loved her children and tried to give them as “normal” a life as she was capable of. “Let’s face it, I was a freak,” Elizabeth later admitted. She didn’t see her first baseball game until she was in her mid-fifties. “I never went to a senior prom. I wasn’t a normal teenager. I wasn’t even doing the things my brother was doing, or the girl across the street.”

  The only child of Richard’s that he kept locked out of his life was Jessica, living in an institution on Long Island, for which Richard paid, and paid, and kept on paying.

  A few days after his impending divorce was announced, Richard began filming The Voyage, moving between the Pontis’ villa and the Kalizma, moored off of Palermo. He refused to take Elizabeth’s calls. He rattled around the massive yacht, drinking cases of white wine, entertaining journalists onboard, just because he was lonely, though surrounded by the boat’s crew and by members of his entourage. He missed the presence of his children, and he missed Elizabeth most of all.

  Sophia accepted an invitation to spend a weekend on the yacht, though Burton still denied that they were having an affair. Indeed, an affair seems unlikely, as Sophia was devoted to her husband, and the two of them actually spent most of their time talking about Elizabeth or playing Scrabble (Sophia often beat Richard, to his dismay). It’s doubtful that Richard would return Carlo and Sophia Ponti’s hospitality by having an affair with his host’s wife, even if he were capable. When he wasn’t playing Scrabble and flirting with Signora Ponti, he was trying, unsuccessfully, to dry out.

  Holed up on the Kalizma, Burton would go out drinking at a Palermo hotel with crew members from the yacht, who had to watch him carefully now. Not so long ago, when he was with Elizabeth, he had ended a night of pub crawling with Gianni Bozzacchi and had nearly drowned. Standing at the edge of the marina, Burton had jumped into the water to swim back to the Kalizma. Bozzacchi—who was not drinking, and who was not even a swimmer—jumped in after him. The next morning, Richard had asked Bozzacchi how they’d gotten back that night, and Bozzacchi, who’d almost drowned rescuing Burton, angrily replied, “You fuckin’ English!”

  “Welsh!” Burton corrected.

  “English! Welsh! I thought we were gonna die!”

  De Sica, too, was concerned about his star actor, who seemed like a man determined to kill himself with drink. “He came onto the set shaking, in a daze. It broke my heart to see him…”

  In October, the Ladies’ Home Journal got into the act by analyzing the Burtons’ marriage and separation in their popular column, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Except they retitled it, for the Burtons, “Why This Marriage Can’t Be Saved,” listing, among the couple’s many challenges, “Public pressure to be always on display, to live up to manufactured identities—to glow and sparkle regardless of fatigue, indigestion, or hangovers” “too much togetherness” “too much drinking and partying” “Elizabeth’s severe back trouble and other health problems…an emotional strain on any marriage” and, finally—tactfully stated—“Richard’s reported ‘drinking problem.’” They were accurate in all their assessments. What the article didn’t say, and the author could not have known, was that Richard faced that classic dilemma: he felt he couldn’t live without Elizabeth, nor could he live with her.

  Richard was
still writing to Elizabeth, but if he was hoping to bring about a reunion, his behavior made that impossible. On October 9, he wrote to Elizabeth from Rome:

  E. T. Burton

  It may very well be that this is [the] last time that your last name be, in my presence I mean, the same as mine, but I bet you the impossible bet that when I am on my last bed and nearing the eternal shore that the words Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth BURTON will be on my lips.

  In November, Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Wynberg returned to California, stopping in London to visit Laurence Harvey, who was now near death from lung cancer. Elizabeth cradled her dying friend. She had already survived the deaths of many in her forty-one years of life—Mike Todd, Monty Clift, Francis Taylor, Dick Hanley, Ifor Jenkins. Even Nicky Hilton, her unfortunate first husband, had died at the age of forty-two, alone except for three male nurses in his sixty-four-room Holmby Hills mansion. When his physician had arrived to forcibly take Hilton to Menninger’s Psychiatric Hospital, he’d greeted the doctor sitting up in bed, holding a loaded pistol. He would die a few months later of a heart attack.

  For the next four months, Richard continued to deteriorate, drinking heavily and taking up with a number of young women. Philip Burton, in touch by telephone, was concerned about him. Though outwardly carousing, Burton was still tortured by the loss of Elizabeth, and he wrote her from Venice just before flying to New York.

  Hotel Danieli/Royal Excelsioni/Venice

  You asked me to write the truth about us…I suffer from a severe case of “hubris,” an overweening pride. Prometheus was punished by the gods forever and is still suffering in all of us for inventing fire and stealing it from the gods. I am forever punished by the gods for being given the fire and trying to put it out. The fire, of course, is you…

  You are probably the best actress in the world, which, combined with your extraordinary beauty, makes you unique. Only perhaps Duse could match you (Garbo and Bernhardt make me laugh). When, as an actress, you want to be funny, you are funnier than W. C. Fields; when, as an actress, you are meant to be tragic, you are tragic…

  …The belligerence that has developed between us is inexplicable…. Love, however (however much I deride it) is an overwhelming factor. It is something that will live with me forever with or without you…. It will not strictly be any of my business, but if for e.g. I happen to come across a snap of you in a nightclub laughing with another nameless group of people, I shall add some more pain to my already pained mind.

  …

  On November 28, 1973, Elizabeth entered the University of California Medical Center for yet another operation, this time to remove an ovarian cyst. Henry Wynberg arranged to spend the night in a room adjacent to hers while she recovered. But his presence wasn’t enough. When she got word of Laurence Harvey’s death while recuperating from her three-hour operation, Elizabeth felt such a profound sense of loss that she did the only thing she could do to make the pain go away. She called Richard and told him that she couldn’t bear the idea of living and dying alone. Burton had once written to her, “If anybody hurts you, just send me a line saying something like ‘Need’ or ‘Necessary’ or just the one magic word ‘Elizabeth,’ and I will be there somewhat faster than sound.”

  The words Elizabeth uttered were, “Can I come back home?”

  This time he took her call. Taking three days off from filming (and paying Ponti $45,000 for each day he missed), Richard flew from location shooting in Sicily to Los Angeles, an exhausting trip that took him by way of the North Pole. He walked into Elizabeth’s hospital suite in Los Angeles and the first words out of his mouth were, “Hello, Lumpy, how are you feeling?”

  Elizabeth, giddy with delight, answered, “Hi, Pockface.”

  “The next thing I knew,” Elizabeth later recalled, “he was by my bedside and we were squeezing the air out of each other and kissing each other and crying. ‘Please come back with me,’ he asked. You’ve never seen anybody heal so fast. It was as if the Grand Maestro had placed a hand over my incision and healed me up.”

  Turning to one of Elizabeth’s nurses, in his best Henry VIII voice, Burton declared, “I’m the husband. I want my bed.”

  Henry Wynberg discreetly left the hospital and drove himself home.

  The next day, Richard wheeled Elizabeth out of the hospital. He was beyond caring what effect the sight of him pushing her in a wheelchair would have on their film careers. It was enough that she was all right, enough that they were leaving the hospital together. They flew back to Italy so Burton could resume filming.

  Their reunion made news around the world. On NBC, news anchor John Chancellor wryly announced, “Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are reconciling permanently—as opposed to temporarily.” In London, workers at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum dragged the Burtons’ figures closer together, though not quite as close as they had been before.

  The couple spent that Christmas at Casa Kimberly in Puerto Vallarta, where they had perhaps always been happiest, and Burton gave Taylor a 38-carat diamond. But until, and unless, Richard was able to finally confront his demons and stop drinking altogether, they were, in his words, “doomed fools.”

  Three months later, the Burtons flew to Oroville in northern California, where Richard began work on The Klansman, a movie for Paramount about racial violence in a small Southern town before the Civil Rights era, written by the well-regarded Southern chronicler William Bradford Huie. After a long hiatus, Burton was finally making a movie in the United States. His costar was Lee Marvin, the “better class of drunk” to whom he had lost his Academy Award for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold eight years earlier. Indeed, Marvin would prove a better class of drunk, staying relatively sober as he barely kept up with Burton’s three bottles of vodka a day. Taylor was also drinking, but no one could touch Burton.

  Despite being reunited with Elizabeth, Richard drank continuously, suicidally, from morning till night, by now unable to control the shaking in his hands. By now, he was in the final stage of alcoholism, a condition he still—amazingly—denied that he had. Nothing but a medical intervention could save him now.

  In The Klansman, Burton played a Southern landowner gone to seed, complete with a limp and Southern accent, but the limp was real, due to Richard’s recurrent gout. Lee Marvin saw how much Richard was suffering, once nearly bursting into tears when he couldn’t get a line right. He was also in pain from acute sciatica and old injuries, which caused severe pain in his left arm and a constant hunching of the shoulders. “It was a wonder he could move at all,” Lee Marvin later commented. “He had guts, and I admired that. He never complained of being in pain. I’d say, ‘Rich, are you okay?’ and he’d say, ‘Just a little discomfort.’ Discomfort! Jesus, the guy was in fucking agony!”

  And, with his out-of-control imbibing, Richard began womanizing again. He started flirting with bit players in the production, and when word got out, young women began hanging around the set, hoping to be picked up by the famous actor. He met an eighteen-year-old waitress in front of the local jail, invited her into his trailer, and the next day bought her a $450 ring. The waitress, a former “Miss Pepsi of Butte County,” made the front page of the local newspapers. He also briefly became involved with a thirty-three-year-old married woman with three children, until her husband showed up on the set, threatening to shoot Richard.

  Even Burton knew he was out of control. Gianni Bozzacchi saw that Richard was tortured by his own cheating on Elizabeth, “which was only at the end, when the drinking became terrible,” Bozzacchi recalled. “I remember Richard, with tears in his eyes, saying to me, ‘Gianni, why do I do it? I love this woman so.’ He wasn’t just destroying himself with drink, he was destroying himself with guilt.”

  The journalists smelled blood in the water and flocked to the set. In the mid-1970s, alcoholics were still considered objects of scorn and the butt of jokes. The idea of alcoholism as a genetic disease, like diabetes, had not yet taken root in the public imagination. Even the public relations lia
ison for the movie took advantage of the situation, realizing that any publicity for the film was better than none, and he invited the press to watch Burton’s public disintegration. Reporters took delight in baiting the actor, yelling out, “Tell us about Dylan Thomas! Tell us something about Wales!” They then described Burton as a human wreck, scribbling down and printing his anguished, liquor-inspired words, which he tossed out like worthless coin: “My father was a drinker, and I’m a drinker, and Lee Marvin is a drinker. The place I like best to be in the whole world is back in my village in Wales, down at the pub, standing with the miners, drinking pints and telling stories. One drinks because life is big and it blinds you,” he declaimed. “Poetry and drink are the greatest things on earth. Besides women. There’s something to death, and something to truth, and we’re after them, all our beautiful lives on earth. Liquor helps.”