Elizabeth

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Perhaps their bond had something to do with the gravity of the high-profile project they were in Texas to film and bring to life: 122

  Elizabeth

  George Stevens’s sprawling, 197-minute, multigenerational saga detailing some thirty years in the life of cattle baron Jordan “Bick”

  Benedict (Hudson), his beautiful wife Leslie (Taylor), and their family as they go about their daily routine on their half-millionacre ranch, Reata. No sooner have Leslie and Bick married than Bick’s sister Luz (Mercedes McCambridge) and Leslie lock horns over the way the new mistress of the house takes over what had always been Luz’s province. Among their differences is Leslie’s intention to break down the walls of prejudice against the Mexican workers at Reata. But the real antagonist in the proceedings is Jett Rink (Dean), who goes through a gradual transition from dirtpoor farmer to millionaire after he strikes it rich in oil. Leslie’s and Luz’s differences are nothing compared to those that develop over the years between Bick and Jett.

  The film is an epic in every meaning of the word and would not only be popular with moviegoers, but would wind up winning for Stevens his second Oscar as Best Director in a film starring Elizabeth Taylor, the first having been for A Place in the Sun. Was she his muse, or merely his good-luck charm? Perhaps she was a little bit of both. Giant was Warner Bros.’ highest-grossing film of the year, earning back seven times its original cost of $5.4 million and garnering nine Oscar nominations. (Sadly, Dean never saw the release of the film; he died in a car accident a year before its release.) Although Elizabeth demonstrated a wide range in her acting, going from nubile teenager to handsome, sixtyish, matronly grandmother, she once again came up undeservedly empty at Oscar time, while her costars Hudson and Dean were both nominated for Best Actor, as was Mercedes McCambridge in the Supporting Actress category. Although nominated, Giant failed to gain the Best Picture Oscar. That would go to Mike Todd for Around the World in 80 Days.

  Between the emotional high of the commercial and critical success she enjoyed in 1951 with A Place in the Sun at Paramount and the epic, widely praised blockbuster Giant with Warner Bros. in 1956, Elizabeth had to endure a grueling schedule of seven films Finding Her Way

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  in five years, many of them unworthy of her talents, and none of them deserving of a place on her résumé. There were a couple of problems going on at the same time. First of all, having been robbed of her childhood, Elizabeth would have little sense of her self or of her self-worth as she entered adulthood. Therefore, she did not know what kinds of movies to make, which scripts were viable for her and which were not—who she was as an actress, let alone as a woman. Her confusion would become clearer in the future with the movies she’d make with Richard Burton, but in these earlier days it’s obvious that Elizabeth didn’t really have a career plan, or any idea at all as to what she would be best at in terms of acting. This uncertainty was compounded by the fact that she didn’t really have much choice anyway during these years. Because of contractual obligations, she had to make what was thrown at her or risk being suspended by MGM. Ironically, it seemed that she would always end up off the MGM lot for projects of substance. For instance, in the midst of her emotional disarray in her private life with Michael Wilding, MGM insisted on loaning her to Paramount as a replacement for an ailing Vivien Leigh in Elephant Walk. Then she made Rhapsody, from May through July of 1953. But wait, there were others, some of which have already been covered in this text: The Girl Who Had Every- thing, an inept remake of 1931’s A Free Soul; the big-budget historical spectacle Ivanhoe; Love Is Better Than Ever, a B-grade musical that was released two years after it was made (due to costar Larry Parks’s being blacklisted); and the Technicolor sudser costarring Van Johnson about lost love in post–World War II France, The Last Time I Saw Paris. (Actually, this one has a lot to commend it; Elizabeth’s performance is haunting and it’s filmed beautifully.) And there was one more that she would rather have not done— Beau Brummell, the movie with which she finished 1953 and began the new year of 1954. Though these are terrible films, it has to be said that Elizabeth Taylor always did her best with such mediocrity, and she was always a riveting screen presence. Even when there was no reason for her to invest herself 124

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  emotionally in the work, she gave it her all and transcended these mostly inferior projects.

  Mike Todd

  E lizabeth Taylor had never met anyone quite like Mike Todd. A good-looking guy with a firm, square jaw and jet-black hair, he had lean cheeks beneath steady brown eyes. He had the build of a prizefighter. His skin was ruddy, described by one magazine as “like a rock granite quarry, after a dozen years of being battered by rainstorms.” It wasn’t his appearance that set Todd apart, though. It was his unquenchable spirit. He loved his life and lived it to the fullest, and after so many years with the dour Michael Wilding, Elizabeth couldn’t help but be attracted to someone like him. Being in his presence somehow filled her with hope for the future. She would find, in talking to him, that he had a brilliant mind, always with a project in the offing or a great idea in development. His was a steely determination to succeed. He was also a man of unquestionable integrity, she would learn, his word his bond. In a sense he was a combination of the best traits of her two husbands: Nicky Hilton’s drive and ambition and sense of financial security, with Michael Wilding’s patience and understanding. He was also a powerful and self-sufficient man, very much, it could be said, unlike her own father. On paper, it looked like Elizabeth couldn’t go wrong with Mike Todd, even if he was twice her age. If there’s one thing Mike offered Elizabeth that no other man before him could, it was his scathing, even mischievous wit. Elizabeth likes to tell the story of the time, before the world knew they were a couple, when Todd took her to a dinner party and in-Finding Her Way 125

  troduced her as “Tondelayo Schwartzkopf.” The hostess couldn’t take her eyes off her. Finally she went over to Elizabeth and said,

  “I have to tell you, you look a lot like Elizabeth Taylor . . . only heavier.” Todd got a kick out of that and slapped Elizabeth on the rump. “See that, I told you, you were getting fat,” he said. Mike Todd was born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen on June 22, 1907, in Minneapolis. He was a busy man when he met Elizabeth. With only a sixth-grade education, Todd had made a name for himself, first as a Broadway producer in 1940 with The Hot Mikado, a takeoff on the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. He produced nine more shows between 1942 and 1946, and in recent years he had produced about twenty musicals, burlesque shows, and strip revues. He’d also developed a revolutionary camera system called Todd-AO (Todd American Optical), which basically gave the viewer a widened screen experience. The first film to utilize the process, and to great success, was Oklahoma! in 1955. He had two prior marriages, one to actress Joan Blondell. Todd had had business problems in the past—he was bankrupted twice—but in recent years he had amassed quite a fortune. He had just finished making the epic Around the World in 80 Days when he met Elizabeth. Based on Jules Verne’s 1873 novel of the same name, Todd’s last film was in many ways a reflection of the man himself—

  a big, brassy, costly, colorful, larger-than-life epic. With this his valedictory picture, he broke all the rules, using his legendary charms to attract top international stars—from Marlene Dietrich and Frank Sinatra to Noël Coward and Peter Lorre, plus more than forty others—to perform for scale, the minimum pay that the Screen Actors Guild allowed its members to accept. The title says it all—a Victorian gentleman makes a bet that he can orbit the globe in eighty days. At a cost of $6 million, a paltry amount by today’s standards but quite a sum for its time, the film went on to gross in excess of $42 million ($403.8 million in today’s dollars). In addition to a Best Picture Oscar, it would earn four others. After his latest round of success, Mike Todd would never look back—not that he was ever the kind of man who did so, anyway. 126

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  He was like Elizabeth in that respect: always moving forward, never ta
king the time to reflect on the past. Or, as his biographer Art Cohn wrote about Todd: “He is reborn each day without knowledge of the past. He has no yesterdays, no reminiscences or regrets. The man he was the day before or twenty years before is a stranger to him and he has no interest in knowing him. What is done is done for; he must start clear at each moment.”

  The day after MGM announced Elizabeth’s separation from Wilding, Todd said he wanted to meet with her at MGM. He was late arriving, and she sat in the commissary sipping a Coke and steaming about his tardiness. When he finally showed up, he grabbed her by the hand and dragged her to an empty office, without saying a word. He then sat her down and, for the next hour, proceeded to tell her how much he loved her, and how determined he was to make her his wife. He would not take no for an answer, he said. “Don’t horse around,” he finally concluded. “You know you’re going to marry me.”

  Elizabeth expressed surprise. “If this was what getting swept off your feet was like,” she said later, “well, I must admit, as much as a brute as I thought he was, I was still quite flattered.”

  From there, things moved quickly. Before she was even divorced, Elizabeth accepted a $30,000 pearl “friendship ring” from him. It was soon replaced by a 29.4-carat diamond engagement sparkler, for which Mike paid $92,000—a huge sum at that time for a piece of jewelry. It was so large, she liked to call it her “ice skating rink.” It was actually Mike who started Elizabeth down the road of collecting expensive jewels. She’d always enjoyed a good piece, but with Mike she took that simple enjoyment to a whole new level of admiration.*

  * Elizabeth would develop a vast knowledge of jewels, understanding the geographical origin of all of the pieces in her vast collection and appreciating their great beauty. Her book Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair with Jewelry is a musthave for any fan of Elizabeth’s who wants to know the stories behind her many beautiful pieces of jewelry. “I don’t believe I own the pieces,” she wrote. “I believe that I am their custodian, here to enjoy them, to give them the best treatment in the world, to watch after their safety, and to love them.”

  Finding Her Way

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  As a suitor, Mike Todd was obviously a good deal more exciting than Michael Wilding. A charming rogue, he was crass and sometimes vulgar, but also extremely rich, generous, and romantic. For instance, every Saturday he celebrated the weekly anniversary of their meeting, gifting Elizabeth with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls, and designer clothing. Elizabeth fondly recalls the day Mike presented her with a ruby-and-diamond set she cherishes still. It was about three months into their marriage and they were staying at La Fiorentina, a lovely villa outside Monte Carlo near St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. She had been swimming laps in the pool, wearing her (circa 1880) diamond, platinum, and gold tiara (of course!). Mike came out of the villa holding a box. He went to the edge of the pool, and she swam toward him to greet him. His eyes full with warmth, he knelt down before her and opened the box. In it was the most beautiful ruby-and-diamond necklace she’d ever seen. Elizabeth let out a squeal as Mike put the baubles, from Cartier, around her neck. Then he brought forth from the box two matching ear pendants. Still on his knees, he fastened them to her earlobes. But he wasn’t finished yet. He went back to the box for a matching bracelet, which he attached to her wrist.

  “I shrieked with joy,” Elizabeth recalls, “put my arms around Mike’s neck, and pulled him into the pool after me. It was a perfect summer day and a day of perfect love.”

  One story famously told through the years has it that when Mike first presented her with the delicate diamond tiara she would wear while swimming, she went into another room to try it on and then emerged nude, except for the tiara. They then had sex, it’s been reported, while she wore the tiara. Who knows if that story is true? However, there was something inherently sensual about the jewels and the furs and the boats and the liquor and everything else about Elizabeth that was over the top. One can actually imagine her running around naked in her tiara, making love to a sexy man, and then playing with her jewels in bed afterward, all the while sipping a flute of the best champagne. Few people thought critically about the behavior of movie stars back then, 128

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  when it came to alcohol, anyway. For instance, Mike would boast,

  “She drinks champagne at breakfast every morning,” as if it was a badge of honor, a glamorous thing to do . . . not as a possible indication of a drinking problem. (All Elizabeth has said about the tiara publicly is that Mike gave it to her because he viewed her as his queen, “and I wore it because he was my king.” It adorned her head at the Academy Awards when Around the World in 80 Days won Best Picture.)

  Mike treated his raven-haired beauty not only to expensive gifts, but also to a whirlwind life that included private planes, yachts, fancy automobiles, and extravagant estate living with Picassos and other works of fine art. He was also a passionate lover, giving her the kind of powerful intimacy and connection that had been missing from her life with both of her previous husbands. When she wanted tenderness, he was as gentle as a puppy in spite of his outward roughness. But his gentleness was never, and could never, be mistaken for weakness. “Mike was strong, which was very good for me,” she once observed. “I will get away with murder if I can. I used to try, out of my perversity, sometimes to drive Mike mad. I’d be late, deliberately just fiddle around and be late, and I loved it when he would lose his temper and dominate me. I would start to purr because he had won.”

  It’s interesting that Elizabeth sought such dominance, especially since she had felt so manipulated as a child star. One would have thought that as an adult she would have rebelled against the notion of any kind of domination. But instead she began to mirror her parents’ relationship and endeavor to rule her husbands in much the way Sara had Francis. But still, as her mother’s daughter, she would never allow herself to submit to any such mastery. The predictable result in her life—from Mike Todd onward—

  would be, for the most part, sheer chaos. Of course, it’s easy for outsiders to see as much, especially retrospectively. At the time, Elizabeth was just enjoying herself—and she would never really be one for self-examination anyway. “Every woman should have a Mike Todd in her life,” she wrote in her 1987 memoir Elizabeth Finding Her Way

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  Takes Off. “God, I loved him. My self-esteem, my image, everything soared under his exuberant, loving care.”

  “He was a very rebellious sort of guy who went against the grain and he taught her to be that way,” observed the columnist and friend Liz Smith. “She was quite different after meeting Mike Todd. He said, ‘Audacity makes the star’ and she began to live that motto. They had big fights, and they made up and fought again, loudly and blatantly. Then they made up again and he would spoil her with presents. After Mike, she would always have these sorts of relationships that had a lot to do with fighting and making up.”

  Mike would also be physically abusive from time to time. He wasn’t brutal, like Nicky Hilton, but if she stepped terribly out of line, in his view, he would not hesitate to shove or push her, or even smack her across the face. Violence was definitely an element of the relationship. Still, there were many good times with Mike Todd. Though Elizabeth lived with him on a grand scale, the small moments with Mike are the most memorable to her, and also to the people who knew them. Albert Skinner was a young paralegal in 1957, whom Mike Todd had taken under his wing. “I helped handle everything from the business surrounding Todd-AO to the big party at Madison Square Garden,” he recalled. “I don’t think Todd has ever been understood, historically. He was a lot more fun than people know. He, I, and Elizabeth did a lot of crazy things in Chicago, me just tagging along for the ride.

  “For instance, I remember how much fun we had running from paparazzi. Once, we were coming out of a restaurant and, as always, the photographers were waiting. We had a car there, but Mike grabbed Elizabeth and said, ‘No. Let’s make a run for it!’ She said, ‘But to where?’ He s
aid, ‘It’s Chicago, baby. Who cares?’ Off they went, with me following. Mike and I were in our suits, Elizabeth in a cocktail dress, her high heels in her hands, running barefoot. We ran for blocks with the media guys in hot pursuit on foot, in and out of alleys, down crowded streets. She was squealing and 130

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  laughing the entire time. Finally, we ducked into a dark nightclub and tucked ourselves into a corner where we had drinks and watched the performance of a drunken blues singer. I remember suddenly noticing that everyone in the club was looking at us. When Elizabeth had to go to the ladies’ room and got up and walked off, all eyes were on her. She knew it. She carried herself as if she knew she was on display, very regally with an air about her. There was something about her, though, that made people feel unable to approach her. She later told me that it was an art, looking accessible but making people understand that you were totally inaccessible. ‘Never look anyone in the eye, ever,’ she would say. ‘You have to walk with your vision about two inches above the heads of everyone in the room, and with a smile that is as meaningless as it is broad.’ In the club, Elizabeth and Mike got up to dance in each other’s arms, and I watched them knowing that they were meant to be together and would probably always be together. It just seemed like a perfect fit to me.

  “We left the club and went back on the lam. ‘Let’s go!’ exclaimed Elizabeth, and off we went, running through the rainslicked streets of Chicago, followed again by the paparazzi. She was whooping it up and laughing and taunting them, saying,

  ‘Catch us if you can, you bastards!’

  “We ducked into a dark movie theater, where they were playing, much to our astonishment, Giant. So we sat in there watching it for a while and the whole time I was thinking, ‘What if these people in here knew that Elizabeth Taylor was in here with them?’