Elizabeth Taylor
Page 17
RELEASE DATE: May 26, 1968
RUN TIME: 113 minutes, color
SUMMARY: Sissy Goforth, a wealthy widow who has buried five husbands, reigns with an iron fist over a private island in the Mediterranean. Ever-declining health portends her time may be up next, though she will never admit weakness. Sissy’s sole activity at her villa is to belt out dictation of her memoirs to her secretary, Miss Black, between occasional visits from her dear friend, the Witch of Capri. Sissy’s world is shaken up by the unexpected arrival of poet Chris Flanders. The man is also known as the Angel of Death for his habit of being on hand at the demise of many a wealthy matron. His presence brings new life to the island for a time and awakens feelings in Sissy not felt for years. But how long will the budding amour—and Sissy herself—last?
Listening attentively to Boom! director Joseph Losey. Costar Joanna Shimkus, who later married Sidney Poitier, is seen behind Elizabeth.
With the Witch of Capri, Noël Coward
The Angel of Death seems to be working true to form as Sissy succumbs to a coughing fit.
Setting up a shot against the backdrop of the Sardinian coastline
REVIEWS
“Boom! Boom! Boom! That’s the effect that the screen’s most exciting team, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, will have on most people in their new picture. . . . Universal’s weirdly fascinating drama is a tour de force for Elizabeth Taylor who doesn’t hesitate to play to the hilt the role of Flora Goforth, a dynamic woman with a touch of insanity. Burton’s magnetic personality and the superb quality of his voice captures and holds the viewer’s attention.”
—New York Daily News (Wanda Hale)
“Mr. Williams can always write beautiful set pieces—moving, enigmatic parables about life and death, flashes of sardonic humor and passages of lengthy exposition that contain more drama than the surface action of the film. However, in Boom! they’re like bright little clearings in an otherwise dim forest. Miss Taylor, who is not a subtle actress, has no trouble with the robust, shrewish aspects of the multimillionaire from One Street, Ga., but it’s impossible to see the vulnerability in the woman Williams described as ‘a universal human condition.’ . . . As the Angel of Death, Mr. Burton is earnest and mellifluous. The one unequivocal success is a brief appearance by Noël Coward as the Witch of Capri, Mrs. Goforth’s wickedly gossipy friend.”
—The New York Times (Vincent Canby)
Noël Coward, Richard Burton, and Joseph Losey observe as Elizabeth takes kabuki instruction for a brief scene.
With Burton and Michael Dunn
With director Joseph Losey
Losey instructs stars Coward and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was on crutches after slipping on the deck of their yacht in Portofino, where they greeted Rex Harrison.
When traveling Elizabeth and Burton lived on their yacht, known as the traveling kennel for dogs. This is shortly after completion of Boom!
notes
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S THE MILK TRAIN DOESN’T STOP HERE Anymore was a play written with the flamboyant stage actress Tallulah Bankhead in mind and reportedly inspired by the Marchesa Luisa Casati, an even more flamboyant European socialite of the early twentieth century, known at her eccentric best for walking around town with a pair of cheetahs on leashes. The Williams story existed in several iterations over the years. It began as the short story “Man Bring This Up the Road!,” from which the play was drawn. Milk Train then saw two versions on Broadway, both of which failed to meet the success expected of the celebrated Williams. The play opened in January 1963 starring Hermione Baddeley. That show closed after a fairly brief sixty-nine performances, but in that time Baddeley earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in the lead role of Sissy Goforth, a juicy character for any strong female actress. Williams then saw his muse, Tallulah Bankhead, revive the show in 1964, to only more disappointing results as the play closed just three days after its debut.
If anyone could remove the curse from Milk Train for the film adaptation, it was thought that Elizabeth Taylor was the one to do it. After all, big-screen versions of the Williams plays Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer had been supremely successful in her capable hands. Milk Train, however, did not seem an ideal Williams vehicle for her, as she was admittedly too young, vital, and healthy-looking in the role of the aging, dying Sissy. Still, she played the role with her usual gusto, and succeeded in presenting an engrossing characterization under the direction of Joseph Losey.
A family road trip during a day off from filming. All of her children are seen: Michael, Maria, Liza, and Christopher
A candid, in transit between Venice and Sardinia, where the film was shot
The costarring role of the Angel of Death/Chris Flanders, had been portrayed on the stage by Tab Hunter, indicating that a younger man would be most appropriate for the part. Sean Connery was Williams’ first choice, but he passed on the project, leaving the door open for Elizabeth and Richard Burton to again join forces on the screen. Another departure from the original play was the casting of Noël Coward as the Witch of Capri. The character was originally female, but it hardly mattered: Coward was superb in the role. Also in the cast was Elizabeth’s brother, Howard Taylor, who made a cameo early in the film.
Another highlight of the movie, ultimately released under the title of Boom! instead of Money Train, was the work of production designer Richard MacDonald. His art direction made the film a sight to behold, though credit for the film’s beauty must obviously also go to location shooting on the picturesque Mediterranean coast of Sardinia, Italy. Tennessee Williams ultimately said he was proud of Boom! but, like past versions of Money Train, it was not profitable after a lavish $10 million had been expended on the production.
For all its scattered strong points, Boom! was Elizabeth and Burton’s third successive film that failed to deliver at the box office.
For all its scattered strong points, Boom! was Elizabeth and Burton’s third successive film that failed to deliver at the box office. They now took some time to make films individually though, as ever, they traveled together wherever work took them. Elizabeth said, they were “incapable of being sweet stay-at-homes, sweet lie-a-beds.” The Burtons’ home, more often than not in this period, was their yacht, Kalizma (a conglomeration of the names of their daughters Kate, Liza, and Maria).
Preparing for the camera. Her long-time hairstylist, Alexandre de Paris, is at work on her up-do.
Secret Ceremony
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
CAST
Elizabeth Taylor Leonora
Mia Farrow Cenci
Robert Mitchum Albert
Peggy Aschcroft Hannah
Pamela Brown Hilda
Michael Strong Dr. Walter Stevens
Angus MacKay Vicar
Robert Douglas Sir Alex Gordon
George Howell first cleaner
CREDITS
John Heyman, Norman Priggen (producers); Joseph Losey (director); George Tabori (screenplay), based on story “Ceremonia Secreta” by Marco Denevi; Gerald Fisher (photography); Richard Rodney Bennett (music); Richard MacDonald (production design); John Clark (art director); Leslie Hammond, Hugh Strain (sound); Richard Dalton (assistant director); Reginald Beck (editor); Klara Kerpen, Susan Yelland (costumes); Marc Bohan (Elizabeth’s costumes); Alex Garfath (makeup); Alexandre de Paris (Elizabeth’s hairstylist)
RELEASE DATE: October 23, 1968
RUN TIME: 109 minutes, color
SUMMARY: Cenci, a strange young girl, becomes attached to a prostitute who bears a striking resemblance to her mother, whose death Cenci never accepted. In turn the woman, Leonora, feels a connection to Cenci because she reminds her of her own dearly departed daughter. She plays the role of Cenci’s real mother, stepping into the late woman’s enviable wardrobe and assuming her place as head of a rich home. To Cenci’s paternal aunts, Leonora pretends to be the sister of the girl’s late mother. But one person not buying her story is Cenci’s estranged stepfather, Albert,
who harbors an incestuous passion for the girl. Cenci is too unstable to realize the wrong he does her, but shortly after Albert’s arrival, his presence combined with increasingly mixed emotions about Leonora leads the girl to commit suicide. Leonora enacts revenge on Albert.
Elizabeth and Mia Farrow, a disturbing (and disturbed) twosome in Secret Ceremony
REVIEWS
“Mia Farrow has given an extraordinarily touching portrait of a wistful girl seeking something in her mentally disturbed loneliness. Elizabeth Taylor, by turns forceful and vulgar, is a definite person, though far from recognizable as any kind of prostitute of public record.”
—New York Post (Archer Winsten)
“Secret Ceremony is Joseph Losey’s best film in years—incomparably better than Accident. The opulent, lacquered decadence works well this time, with Mia Farrow as a rich, mad orphan, whose mother Elizabeth Taylor pretends to be and, in effect, becomes. Robert Mitchum is good as Miss Farrow’s stepfather, in a relationship as violent and complicated as relationships in movies like Accident and Reflections in a Golden Eye tend to be. In all the elaborate fetishism and dragging prose, there is a touching story of people not helping enough. There is also a ceremonial quality—coffins like cribs, parallelisms, people reunited in death—that turns crude and embarrassing at times; although I don’t usually like this colored genre of sick ritual film, I rather liked this one.”
—The New York Times (Renata Adler)
Elizabeth mourns her daughter. Farrow’s character transfers her affection for her late mother to a mysterious woman she runs into on a public bus.
notes
IN 1968, FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF THE MACABRE CLASSIC Rosemary’s Baby and already famous as the child-bride (and soon to be divorcée) of Frank Sinatra, Mia Farrow was Hollywood’s newest sensation. The team from Boom!, producers John Heyman and Norman Priggen and director Joseph Losey, had the brainstorm to star Farrow opposite Hollywood’s longest-running (though at thirty-six by no means old) sensation, Elizabeth Taylor. The screenplay by George Tabori that they were preparing to film was a strange one filled with ambiguous, disturbing, and oftentimes violent characters, and box-office insurance by way of the stars would be vital to give the feature an inherently saleable quality lacking in its story.
The relationships between all of the women in the film are interesting, if not precisely drawn out or explained.
Secret Ceremony was indeed bizarre, but like so many films of the period, takes on a quality of fascination in latter-day viewings as a work of art that seems far removed from the present-day world. The relationships between all of the women in the film are interesting, if not precisely drawn out or explained. Alongside Farrow and Elizabeth, the top supporting roles were played by Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown. Robert Mitchum was third-billed though he comes into the proceedings quite late and winds up in a tragic end for his troubles. It was a women’s film all the way.
Unusual roles were no longer unusual for Elizabeth, as she played them fairly frequently. Farrow, too, showed daring in her choice of roles, particularly for an actress just getting her footing in the Hollywood firmament. Renata Adler in The New York Times lamented, “from Rosemary, the lapsed Roman Catholic neurotic, to this doomed, loony child must be a harrowing professional route.” Reward for her offbeat choices came when Farrow was nominated for an award as Best Actress by the British Academy in recognition of the parallel roles in Rosemary’s Baby and Secret Ceremony. The nomination also acknowledged her performance in the romantic drama John and Mary.
Elizabeth was no stranger to unusual roles by the late 1960s.
Convinced the woman is her late mother come back to her, young Cenci dotes on the mysterious, beautiful lady.
Black was a predominant color in the dark story. Farrow’s famous blonde bob was covered by a long, black fright wig.
With Robert Mitchum, who played the sinister Albert
Preparing for an important scene
This scene of Elizabeth and Farrow taking a bath together was cut from television screenings—that and many other scenes.
The tale of Secret Ceremony proved too hot to handle when it was offered up for the mass exposure afforded by television. NBC joined forces with the film’s production company, Universal Pictures, in producing an alternate, sanitized version for TV screens. Suggestions of prostitution, child molestation committed by Mitchum’s character, a lesbian relationship (or at least thoughts on the part of Farrow’s Cenci), and a scene showing Elizabeth and Farrow in the bath together, were stripped from the print for television. New scenes, involving none of the stars or makers of the film, were shot to offer exposition and explanation of some of the greater lapses in continuity in the story—which were mostly caused by the TV editor’s scissors in the first place—and to show that no crime went unpunished in the film. The interest factor in the doctored version of Secret Ceremony now makes such prints a treasure among collectors.
The tale of Secret Ceremony proved too hot to handle when it was offered up for the mass exposure afforded by television.
A test shot for Secret Ceremony. This wig was never used in the film; Farrow got to wear one though.
Elizabeth, as ever, got along well with her costar, Mia Farrow.
The film was shot on location in London. During their time there Elizabeth and Richard Burton attended a wedding with Boom! costar Noël Coward.
The Only Game in Town
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
CAST
Elizabeth Taylor Fran Walker
Warren Beatty Joe Grady
Charles Braswell Lockwood
Hank Henry Tony
Olga Valéry Hooker
CREDITS
Fred Kohlmar (producer); George Stevens (director); Frank D. Gilroy (screenplay), based on play by Frank D. Gilroy; Henri Decaë (photography); Maurice Jarre (music); Herman Blumenthal, Auguste Capelier (art directors); Walter M. Scott, Jerry Wunderlich (set decorations); Jo De Bretagne, David Dockendorf (sound); Robert Doudell (assistant director); William Sands, John W. Holmes, Pat Shade (editors); Mia Fonssagrives, Vicki Tiel (Elizabeth’s costumes); Alexandre de Paris (Elizabeth’s hairstylist); Frank La Rue (Elizabeth’s makeup)
RELEASE DATE: January 21, 1970
RUN TIME: 113 minutes, color
SUMMARY: Fran Walker is a showgirl attempting to save enough money to escape Las Vegas, a place which she has come to revile. She meets Joe Grady, a cocktail-lounge piano player who forms an immediate crush on her. Fran gives in to temptation and sleeps with him if only to take her mind off the disappointing reality of her affair with a married man named Lockwood. Fran and Joe agree to a no-strings-attached living situation in which they keep each other company while keeping Fran’s mind off Lockwood and keeping Joe’s penchant for gambling in check so he can save enough money to leave Las Vegas. Lockwood comes back into Fran’s life with a vengeance but she eventually has the courage to leave him once and for all. The only problem left? Getting Fran and Joe to admit they are madly in love with each other.
In the movie with Beatty. He is ready to move more quickly than she is.
At a party at Maxim’s in Paris during filming
On the set with a young fan
Grocery shopping with Beatty
A lot of star power went into The Only Game in Town, to no avail.
notes
THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN WAS THE SCREEN ADAPTATION OF a play by Frank D. Gilroy that debuted on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on May 20, 1968, and then closed after just sixteen performances. Tammy Grimes and Barry Nelson fulfilled the two lead roles of a play consisting of just three characters. In spite of its failure to enthuse Broadway audiences, Twentieth Century Fox purchased the screen rights to the play for $750,000 and hired Frank Gilroy to write the screenplay himself. George Stevens, who had directed Elizabeth in two of her greatest films, A Place in the Sun and Giant, was to be reunited with his violet-eyed leading lady after a thirteen-year hiatus from working together.
T
he studio wanted Elizabeth to star in The Only Game in Town so badly that producer Fred Kohlmar agreed to shoot a movie set in Hollywood’s neighboring desert town of Las Vegas in far-off Paris, where Elizabeth wanted to be so that she would not be separated from Richard Burton, who at the time was making Staircase in the City of Light. Exteriors and establishing shots were filmed by a second unit in Las Vegas. Location filming in Paris cost the company a considerable sum, in addition to the $1,250,000 salary paid for Elizabeth’s acting services. What Elizabeth wanted in those days she could get, but it was not out of diva posturing on her part. She simply had certain requirements to make a film and producers could take it or leave it. Going back to Cleopatra, when she asked for $1 million because she never dreamed she would get it and did not care if they turned her down, not caring if she did a film she was not passionate about empowered Elizabeth to make whatever demands she wanted.
Elizabeth was to star opposite Frank Sinatra in The Only Game in Town at the time the film was originally set to go into production, but the starting date had to be postponed due to a recurrence of overwhelming back pain suffered by Elizabeth. By the time she was again prepared to work, Sinatra had to bow out of the production and was replaced by the brother of Elizabeth’s great friend Shirley MacLaine: the hot young star of Bonnie and Clyde, Warren Beatty.