Elizabeth

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  In the fall of 1982, Elizabeth and Richard summoned their agent, Robert Lantz, to a home she was renting in Bel Air. When he showed up, Zev Bufman was there with Taylor and Burton. Lantz recalls, “I walked into the room and Elizabeth very excitedly said, ‘Robbie, we have decided to move forward with the best idea, ever. Just wait until you hear it.’ Then, after a big, dramatic pause:

  ‘ Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Private Lives.’

  “I made a face. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. Coming to Terms

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  In fact, I think it’s a terrible idea.’ Richard said, ‘But Noël Coward always wanted us to play it.’ I said, ‘Oh yeah? When? Certainly not now.’ They were both quickly peeved at me. I said, ‘Elizabeth, come into another room with me.’ And she did. Richard remained with Zev Bufman.

  Once alone with Elizabeth, Lantz repeated his objections. “Elizabeth, this is a terrible mistake,” he said. “Neither one of you is in any shape to do this kind of delicate drawing room comedy right now.” He tried not to make eye contact with her. Long ago, Richard had warned him that, when in a disagreement with Elizabeth, never look at her, “because if you look into those eyes, it’ll be all over. She will win.”

  “Are you mad?” Elizabeth asked. “Didn’t Richard just tell you that Noël Coward always wanted us to do it? Of course it’s right for us. And we’ll just make oodles of money. I promise you, Robbie, this shall work.”

  It was clear to Robert Lantz that there was no talking Elizabeth out of the idea, and averting his eyes wasn’t going to help either. It wasn’t just the inappropriate nature of the play for the kinds of actors they were; it was the personal drama he knew would result if his two clients were to once again join forces. However, he had worked for Elizabeth long enough to know not to disparage her relationship with Richard. “Okay,” he said, finally. “I will do everything you need me to do in terms of deal-making. But I won’t take a commission.”

  “What?” she said. “Robbie, you’re crazy! What in the world . . . ?”

  “Because it’s blood money,” he said. “This can lead to nothing but misery for you and Richard, and, as your agent and more importantly your friend, I absolutely refuse to profit from it.”

  Elizabeth couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She’d been represented by Lantz for many years and had never heard him come out so adamantly against one of her ideas. It made her take pause. “My God, you’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked, now seeming concerned that maybe he was right and she was making a mistake. It was a good tactic on his part. 358

  Elizabeth

  “I am quite serious,” he said, holding his breath in anticipation of her next move.

  “Well, then, fine,” she decided, taking an abrupt turn. “We’re doing the show anyway. Richard wants to do it, and so do I. I’m just going to take a chance and see what happens. I’ve been taking chances all of my life, Robbie, as you well know, and here’s another one,” she said, worked up once again. “I know our public. They will love it.”

  That was the end of the discussion.

  Though she expressed confidence in the future, Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of anxiety about anything that involved Richard. At around this time, she repeated an old habit, falling into the arms of a man she may have thought of as an intermediary lover. His name was Victor Gonzalez Luna, and he was a wealthy Mexican attorney, five years her senior. This new consort would be in her life for just a few months. She and Victor Luna ended 1982 by traveling together to the war-torn Middle East on a bizarre “diplomatic mission” Elizabeth had decided to undertake without the cooperation of President Reagan or the White House. “All it takes is love and understanding,” she declared on December 27, 1982, in a Tel Aviv press conference to explain how she might handle the strife between Israel and Lebanon. The less said about this venture the better. The trip was cut short after she was two hours late for a scheduled visit with several hundred wounded Arab and Israeli children. Actually, Elizabeth was in no shape at this time to be making faux diplomatic missions, nor did she know what she was talking about in this regard. When she returned, she took a job in Canada in late January 1983, filming a television movie with Carol Burnett called Between Friends. In it, she plays someone who eats and drinks to excess and who befriends a woman, Carol, who has indiscreet sex with men who are all wrong for her. “I like a man to be the boss,” Elizabeth said as her character in the movie. “Some of us just need a man, and I’m one of those.” It was an eerie case of typecasting in a movie that came and went without much fan-Coming to Terms 359

  fare. The best thing about it was watching Taylor’s easy rapport and camaraderie with her friend, the great Carol Burnett. Private Lives and

  Private Miseries

  N oël Coward’s Private Lives is a comic gem that’s served couples well for more than fifty years. One of those couples was the playwright himself, who teamed with Gertrude Lawrence, one of the theater’s greatest stars, when the play debuted at the Times Square Theater in New York on January 27, 1931. (Coward and Lawrence were supported by Laurence Olivier and his then wife Jill Esmond.) A hit, it ran for 258 performances. Next up, in a revival in 1948 at the Plymouth, was Tallulah Bankhead and Donald Cook, who after 248 performances took the show on the road and played to packed houses all across the country. (Could Elizabeth have thought that since she’d made such an impact as Regina in The Little Foxes, a role originated by Bankhead, perhaps lightning would strike twice?) The play opens with two newly married couples, Elyot and Sybil and Amanda and Victor, who are honeymooning in the same hotel in Deauville, France. The problem is that Elyot and Amanda were once married and, through happenstance, are reunited when they share an adjoining terrace with their new spouses. It’s a clever comedy that takes wit and subtlety to pull off. Elizabeth and Richard were a lot of things, but subtle wasn’t one of them.

  By the second week of March, Elizabeth and Richard were in New York to begin rehearsals for the play, which was to be di-360 Elizabeth

  rected by Milton Katselas. The show also starred John Cullum and Kathryn Walker. The durable Coward comedy of manners quickly became “The Liz and Dick Show” by advance publicity and was so overhyped that theater critics seemed to be rubbing their hands together, just waiting to pounce on it with all fours. For her stay in New York, Elizabeth moved into Rock Hudson’s castlelike apartment building in New York, the Beresford on 81st Street with its striking views of Central Park. The night before the first run-though, Elizabeth found herself in a restaurant with her date, Victor Luna, and Richard and Sally Hay, Richard’s new girlfriend. It was a wretched evening. “I need a headache pill,” Elizabeth said at one point, according to the waiter who served them.

  “So be a dear and get me a drink. Jack Daniel’s on ice.” Then, ten minutes later, “I need a pill for my tummy. Another Jack Daniel’s, please.” Had it not been for the presence of her daughter Maria and her new granddaughter Elizabeth Diane, she might not have been able to get through the night. Her greatest frustration was that she couldn’t get Richard’s attention. He wouldn’t allow a moment’s eye contact with her, as if he sensed that one look in her direction would start a fight he would never be able to finish. All of his focus was on the safe bet for him, which was Sally. He couldn’t have been more solicitous toward her. Elizabeth hated the way he acted when he was with her. Even in her best times with Richard, he had never been so giddy. It was all an act, she decided. He was faking it, trying to make her jealous. As the night wore on, everything he did that made Sally giggle made Elizabeth want to smack him across the face.

  The next day, at that first rehearsal, she showed up without so much as having read the play, let alone memorized any of her lines. As usual, Richard not only knew his lines, but hers as well. Once upon a time, that was a habit of his that she had found appealing. Now she just found it irritating. In his diaries of this time, Richard wrote about some of the rehearsals for Private Lives,
the first being on March 13. He noted that, in terms of her beauty, Elizabeth’s face was “OK, but [her] fig-Coming to Terms 361

  ure, splop!” On the next day, the fourteenth, he said that she was in such bad shape she couldn’t even read the script. He found her to be as “exciting as a flounder” as she rehearsed, but still had hope that she would soon rise to the occasion. However, he predicted

  “a long, long 7 months.” He also wrote that Elizabeth had begun to bore him, which he never would have imagined possible so many years earlier when they’d first met. “How terrible a thing time is,” he observed. Twice an hour, he wrote, she would complain to him about her abject loneliness. Though concerned about her, he admitted it would not have bothered him in the least if he had to be replaced in the role.

  Private Lives previewed at the Shubert in Boston on April 7 for a limited run, then at the Lunt-Fontanne on Broadway (where Richard had appeared back in 1964 in Hamlet) on May 8, 1983. Opening night was a mess. The curtain went up thirty-five minutes late. Then the intermission between the first and second acts was longer than the first act! The next morning, Frank Rich in the New York Times wrote a raspberry of a review: “[It has] all the vitality of a Madame Tussaud exhibit.” Other reviews were equally brutal, both in newspapers and on television. Only Joel Siegel of ABC seemed hopeful, stating that “more time might have improved the production.” During the play’s rehearsals, Elizabeth had asked the director, Milton Katselas, “Should we play it like the audience is looking into our bedroom window?” “Yes,” he said. It didn’t work. Burton, though sober at the time, suddenly refused to stick to the script despite having been the only one to know the show inside out by the first rehearsal. His ad-libs threw off the other cast members, who were expecting to be cued by his lines.

  “I think there is some fun in it for me,” Burton said at one point early in the play’s New York run. “Especially when I start inventing my own lines.”

  Though it was savaged by the critics, the public rushed the box office and the show made enough money in advance sales that it, quite literally, had to go on. Elizabeth and Richard downplayed the effect their poor notices had on them. In actuality, though, it 362

  Elizabeth

  was a stressful time. Richard was not used to being panned for his stage performances, and he felt that if Elizabeth hadn’t been sharing the stage with him, the show would have been received quite differently. However, the simple mathematics of the box-office figures made it clear: Their fans wanted “Liz and Dick” together again. The opportunity to see the two stars up close and in person was too tantalizing to resist. If the public only knew what was going on backstage . . .

  Obviously, Richard understood the unspoken—that Elizabeth had designs on him and a possible third marriage—and he was not interested. He was in a different phase of his life that Sally had brought him. He was trying to take care of himself, and the less emotional chaos around him, as Sally saw it, the better. Everyone knew only too well that melodrama had always been Elizabeth’s forte, and even when there was none inherent to the day’s events, she would find a way to create it.

  Elizabeth was deeply upset over the critical reaction Private Lives received. It seemed to some present during the run as though she was also playing the victim for Richard’s benefit, in the hope that he would try to rescue her from her misery. She would head directly to her dressing room and lock the door before performances. During table readings (where actors run their lines to refresh their memories) she would hang her head and mumble her speeches. “Richard got the distinct impression that Elizabeth was waiting for him to throw her a lifeline,” said one of the production staff. If that was the case, however, Burton wasn’t biting. In fact, the combination of the poor reviews and Elizabeth’s unpredictable moods led him to want out.

  Richard had heard that John Huston was directing the film adaptation of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, and he put in a call to the famous director, expressing his interest in the project. Huston’s response was just what he had hoped—he offered Burton the role. The job would have to begin in August. Of course, Richard knew he was under contract to Private Lives, but he believed that it wouldn’t be a problem. Elizabeth was the Coming to Terms

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  show’s producer; she had even formed a corporation, the Elizabeth Taylor Theater Company, to get the show produced. He had always managed to get his way with his ex-wife in the past, and he thought she could now be persuaded to release him from his contract, even though cutting short his participation would mean that someone else would have to be in his place in the very important city of Los Angeles, the final tour stop in October. After numerous attempts to speak to her about his upcoming scheduling conflict, though, it became clear that Elizabeth was avoiding him. Finally, Richard had to schedule a sit-down meeting with her. She, as producer of the show, was obliged to attend it. Richard, Elizabeth, and two of their associates met at the Laurent Hotel in New York, where Richard was to plead his case. Elizabeth showed up at the meeting with her “producer hat” on, and appeared relaxed and businesslike. Richard explained to her that he had a wonderful opportunity to work with John Huston, his Night of the Iguana director, on a project about which he was extremely excited, Under the Volcano. He needed to be released from Private Lives. Elizabeth listened to her ex-husband’s pitch, then took a few moments to deliberate.

  If Elizabeth had ulterior romantic motives where Richard was concerned, they certainly had not been successful, had they? Here was this man she had felt such a deep connection with, once again wanting out. This time though, she had power. A piece of paper made him obligated to stay with the production—to stay with her. She made her decision.

  “Richard, I think it would be very wrong to disappoint our fans,” she told him. “So I have to say no.” She was not going to let him out of his contract. Finally she held him in her grasp, and this time she wasn’t letting go.

  For a moment, Richard was speechless. “Very well, then,” he announced as he rose to leave, his tone deep and theatrical. Elizabeth must have sensed his building fury. “Now, Richard,”

  she said, “please don’t be cross with me.”

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  “I’m fine, luv,” he told her coolly. “Let’s just move on now, shall we?”

  Richard left the meeting without saying a word about his true feelings, rather than give Elizabeth the satisfaction of knowing how angry he was about the matter. Still, his attempts to leave the production had made it clear to Elizabeth that he didn’t have the emotional attachment to this project that she did. It was business for him . . . so she would make it business for her as well. And what better way to clarify that her personal life didn’t include him than to present her romantic interest in another man publicly? She certainly had not kept her relationship with Victor Luna a secret, but prior to Richard’s attempt to flee Private Lives, she rarely mentioned Victor’s name. Many crew members had even been unaware of his existence. Suddenly, though, Elizabeth’s backstage conversations began revolving around Luna and her growing infatuation with him. She even canceled a few performances, announcing that she and Victor had to go off somewhere to

  “recuperate” from another one of her illnesses. This infuriated Richard, who said, “This has proved it. I can never get together with that woman again.”

  When Elizabeth did show up, she was often late, which Burton found completely unacceptable. Of Elizabeth, Brooke Williams—

  Richard’s trusted friend—told his biographer Melvyn Bragg, “Her tardiness drove him crazy night after night. He would be there over an hour before—make up—chat—have a cup of tea. ‘Where is she, Brooke? Is she here yet?’ He would get tremendously agitated. She’d arrive, making up in the car, with a couple of minutes to spare—but then half of the audience was out on the streets waiting for her. So they had to be herded in. The curtain never went up on time—and this just drove him crazy.”

  On a few occasions during the run,
Elizabeth had her understudy step in to perform. Audiences were horrified. Much to Richard’s own horror, people would stand up during those performances and actually leave the theater. Without Elizabeth in Coming to Terms

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  the show, some felt it a waste of time. It was a humiliating experience for Richard, who was growing tired of his ex-wife’s “antics.”

  “Wait a second. She won’t let me out of my contract, yet she never shows up for work,” he fumed, exaggerating his point but, in his mind, still making a good one. “And she’s taking him with her. Enough is enough!”

  Richard summoned his friends Bob Wilson (his secretary), and Ron Berkeley (his hairdresser) to his suite. “Sit down, fellows. I have an announcement to make,” he said. “Sally and I are getting married.”

  Both men realized that Richard’s sudden decision to wed was made out of anger. “You’re only doing this to spite Elizabeth,” Ron said. “Don’t do it, Rich. Not right now.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Richard said angrily. “But I don’t care. I’m marrying Sally immediately. We’re going to Las Vegas to do it. So don’t try to stop me.” His mind was made up. If Elizabeth had tied him to the production and was now attempting to flaunt her romance in his face, he would have the last laugh. There would be a new Mrs. Richard Burton—and, despite her apparent wishes, it would not be Elizabeth Taylor.