Elizabeth

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Elizabeth

  for fear that she would be totally engulfed by waves of sorrow, as she had been when Mike Todd died. However, when she started remembering Richard, she was surprised to find that she actually felt . . . good. “And right now, talking to you,” she said, “I only remember the good times. It’s as if all of the bad memories died with Richard, leaving only the good ones.”

  No doubt, Elizabeth’s grief over Richard’s sudden death was eased somewhat by the knowledge that they had finally set things straight with one another. Earlier, in the spring of 1984 when she and Victor Luna were on a vacation in London, they had met with Richard and Sally Burton at a London pub. The energy between Elizabeth and Richard was different, somehow not as charged as it had always been in the past. “You look wonderful, luv,” he said to her. She told him about her experiences at the Betty Ford Center and, as she later recalled, said that she wished the two of them could have had such therapy back in the sixties when they were married to one another and living their lives in a style that was totally out of control. Richard had to smile. “Ah, but then we wouldn’t be who we are now, then, would we?” he mused. Somehow, the conversation turned to Elizabeth’s relationship with Victor Luna. Victor mentioned that he hoped Elizabeth would soon settle down with him in Guadalajara where they would lead, as he put it, “a nice, simple life with wholesome, Catholic values.” He also mentioned that he wasn’t very approving of Elizabeth’s jet-setting lifestyle, and sincerely looked forward to the time when such excessive living would be behind her. At that, Richard and Elizabeth shared a secret look as if to say, “This poor man doesn’t have a clue, does he?”

  For the rest of their time together that day, Richard had seemed happy, excited about a few projects on the horizon. Though he was still drinking, he didn’t seem as weak and sickly as he had when he was onstage with Elizabeth in Private Lives. He looked fit and well. He had mellowed and it became him. Maybe the marriage to Sally had been the best thing that could have happened to him, Elizabeth posited. She wasn’t sure what to think, actually, Coming to Terms

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  to hear her tell it. She would never really move on, though. She knew that much. She would say that she didn’t wish to do so, anyway. She wanted to love Richard Burton, she just didn’t want to feel so much pain about it. “Something was different the last time I saw him,” she would later observe. “And I don’t think I imagined it, given what would happen in a few months. I just knew that my sweet Richard was going to be okay. I knew it in my heart.”

  After they saw each other in London, she and Richard stayed in touch, communicating many times a month by telephone. Sally, who felt she had good reason to be suspicious, would later say that Elizabeth was “having another go” at winning Richard back, “making phone calls,” she said, “making suggestions that they should work together.” Nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, Elizabeth just wanted to stay connected to Richard and see if, as per her ongoing therapy, it was possible to integrate him into her world in a way that would not be disruptive to either of their lives.

  Now he was suddenly gone and Elizabeth had to make a decision about whether she should go to the memorial service in Wales. She asked Graham what she should do, but he didn’t feel comfortable encouraging her to go, as much as he knew she wanted to be there for Richard. He later noted that Sally “resented the enduring love of the woman who gave Richard his happiest years, Elizabeth.” At the time, though, he was more discreet.

  “I would want to encourage you,” he told Elizabeth, “but I’m afraid we would have a riot on our hands.” He was referring to the crowds who would come to see the grieving Elizabeth, but he also might have been speaking of a final square-off between Elizabeth and Sally.

  “Well, then it has to be Sally’s decision,” Elizabeth finally decided. When she called Richard’s widow, it was clear that Sally really didn’t want her in Wales. She said that she feared her presence would cause a circuslike atmosphere at the service, and she wanted Richard to be remembered with more dignity on that day. Perhaps, then, Elizabeth said, she could go to the funeral, which 386

  Elizabeth

  was to be in Céligny. No, Sally said. That also would not be a good idea. It was clear that Sally did not want Elizabeth to be a part of any of Richard’s services. Elizabeth was heartsick but, still, she understood. In the end she was determined to abide by Sally’s wishes. Of course, Sally had only been in Richard’s life for about two years, Elizabeth for almost twenty-five. It was difficult for Elizabeth to allow her to make these important decisions, especially when she realized that Sally was going to have Richard buried in Switzerland. Elizabeth could not begin to count all of the times Richard had told her that he wished to be buried in his hometown of Pontrhydyfen, Wales. “It’s a good thing I’m not drinking, that’s all I can say,” Elizabeth told one friend, trying to stay optimistic. At the last moment, Sally called to tell her she’d had a change of heart. Yes, she said, of all people, Elizabeth should be present at the memorial service. However, by that time there was no way Elizabeth could have gotten to Wales in time. Whether Sally was merely trying to be gracious or whether she actually wanted Elizabeth at the service is something only she would know. However, Elizabeth was determined not to think the worst of her. She knew that she was grieving deeply and perhaps not thinking in a completely rational way. “Richard would want me to hold my tongue, just this once,” she told Graham. “So, for him, I will do that. Later,” she said with a wicked smile, “we shall really talk.” (Years later, Sally would say that she truly did regret telling Elizabeth not to attend the service, “and I wish now that I hadn’t done that.”) On August 19, about a week after the Welsh memorial service at the Bethel Chapel, Elizabeth embarked on a pilgrimage to Pontrhydyfen. Graham Jenkins picked her up at Swansea airport in a Rolls-Royce. As she stepped out of her private jet, a crowd of about a hundred greeted her with cheers. She looked radiant, dressed in pink and wearing the Krupp diamond, the best of all of the jewels Richard had given her. However, it wasn’t a time for good cheer. She’d come to visit Richard’s family, after already having visited his grave in Céligny the previous weekend. While she ate dinner that night at the modest home of Burton’s sister, Hilda Coming to Terms

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  Owen, and her husband, Dai, a crowd of mourners stood outside their front door singing old Welsh songs like “We’ll Keep a Welcome in the Hillside.” Over a roast beef dinner, Elizabeth told the Jenkinses about her experience when she went to the gravesite, a comedy of errors she knew Richard would have enjoyed. As it happened, when she showed up at the graveyard in Switzerland, Elizabeth and her daughter Liza—who had just married eight days before Richard’s death, to artist Hap Tivey, and had attended Richard’s funeral—were greeted by a rowdy group of paparazzi. They reasoned that she would eventually show up at the gravesite, and they got their wish when she finally appeared before them, and with blonde hair to boot. She was at a loss as to what to do, she said. Should she storm off in a huff? “Oh, how they would love that picture and be happy to send it everywhere: Elizabeth in a rage at Richard’s grave,” she said. Or should she just allow them to follow her to the grave? “But it seemed so wrong,”

  she observed, “that I couldn’t be alone with Richard in those moments. It wasn’t fair.” At a loss, she roamed the graveyard, as if she was looking for but couldn’t find the gravesite. “But guess what?”

  she said, “I really couldn’t find it!” There were two small cemeteries in Céligny, with 250 yards between them, and Elizabeth had gone to the wrong one! No doubt the photographers could have told her as much, but they clearly wanted to document the gaffe without interfering with the story. When Elizabeth and Liza finally figured it out, they walked with great purpose right out the front gates as if they’d always intended to take a stroll through that very cemetery and had just finished their little walk. “Can you believe it?” Elizabeth laughed. “And those bastards didn’t say a word to me that I was
in the wrong place!”

  Elizabeth returned to her hotel sensing that wherever Richard was, he was probably howling with laughter at her and Liza’s inept gravesite visit. She could almost hear his voice saying, “Well at least you had a fifty percent chance of getting it right, didn’t you, luv?”

  Very early the next morning, August 14, just as the sun was ris-388 Elizabeth

  ing, as Elizabeth told the Jenkinses, she and Liza found their way to the other cemetery—the right one. Of course, the photographers were present there too. This time, Elizabeth thought to arrange to have four bodyguards accompany her. As soon as they arrived, mother and daughter went directly to Richard’s grave, and as they stood before it, each bodyguard popped open a multicolored umbrella to shield the two women from the photographers’ lenses. As soon as Elizabeth knelt at the grave, she began to cry. She wept for a good fifteen minutes with Liza trying to comfort her. When it was time to go, the pair walked slowly out of the cemetery, Elizabeth leaning heavily on Liza’s arm. Elizabeth would describe her moments at Richard’s grave as unusually intimate. “I couldn’t help thinking that it was one of the few occasions ever that Richard and I were alone.” It was as though she had decided to view the event through a distorted lens, without the press hovering or the papparazzi capturing as much as they could of her misery. When it came to Richard, she craved moments that mattered—and that’s just how she would view her precious time with him at the end. Before returning to the States, Elizabeth walked the grounds of the chalet in Gstaad she and Richard had shared. “So many memories, some of them quite good,” she told the groundskeeper who worked there from 1980 to 1985. He was a kindly old man who, with his wife, took care of the property when Elizabeth was not there. He still lives in Gstaad today. He remembers Elizabeth’s time in Switzerland shortly after Burton’s death as bittersweet. She hadn’t fallen into one of her deep chasms of misery but, rather, seemed to be processing her loss. It was as if she was taking stock of just who she was now, without Richard Burton out there somewhere else on the planet. He had for so many years defined her. Now she would have to define herself.

  At one point, while the groundskeeper was trimming hedges, Elizabeth summoned him with urgency. “I need you,” she said, waving him over. She then led him to a storage room that was so dark a flashlight had to be located for them to enter it. Many years earlier, Elizabeth had returned to the chalet after Coming to Terms

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  being on location with a movie only to find that Richard had replaced a tremendous oriental carpet in the study with a bear rug, complete with head, teeth exposed in a ferocious manner. Elizabeth was horrified. After much shouting and acrimony, she had the “eyesore” replaced by the classic, understated oriental that had originally been there—which, of course, led to more shouting and acrimony. Elizabeth wiped away cobwebs in the dim cellar, leading the gardener to a corner of the musty room. She knelt down and slid a crate out from under the wine rack. Behind it, butcher paper, yellowed and aged, could be seen wrapped around a large object. Taylor ripped away a piece of the paper, revealing a set of fangs.

  “This was Mr. Burton’s,” she said. “It belongs in the study.” The two then carried the rug, once banned from the chalet, back inside—to the place it may have belonged all those years. Elizabeth supervised as the rug was placed, deciding just the best way for it to be laid. After it was down, she inspected it. Then, in a moment that surprised the groundskeeper, she burst out laughing.

  “Why, it’s awful,” she said, amused. “It’s simply grotesque.”

  “Shall I take it out?” asked the groundskeeper. She didn’t answer. Instead, she stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, studying the fur. “Well, it is awful,” she said with a mischievous smile. Then she sobered a bit. “But leave it be,” she decided. “Some awful things are perfect, just as they are.”

  Transition

  W hat had followed Elizabeth Taylor’s release from the Betty Ford Center was a metamorphosis—comparable to the transformation that occurs when a caterpillar emerges from a chrysalis and 390

  Elizabeth

  becomes an indescribably beautiful butterfly. A cliché, perhaps, but true nonetheless. It was the perpetually tanned George Hamilton who took charge of her makeover, escorting her to a number of industry functions for about a year or so. On one such occasion, she entered on Hamilton’s tuxedoed arm at a National Film Society awards dinner at the Sheraton Universal in Universal City, California, during which she presented a career achievement award to the longtime MGM hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff. She was in an all-white, off-the-shoulder designer gown with a full, floor-sweeping skirt—yards and yards and layer upon layer of gauzy, billowy tulle Jim Pinkston, a Hollywood journalist, editor, and historian, recalled, “I was but a few feet away from her, and my knees practically buckled when I saw her. I was unable to stifle an audible gasp, my mouth agape. When she heard it, she turned in my direction and flashed me a knowing smile that dazzled (me and everyone else!).”

  The months after Richard’s funeral were difficult for Elizabeth, though, as she tried to find her bearings not only in her life after Richard but also without alcohol and drugs. “Thank God I was clean and sober when he died,” she would later say. “If not, I wouldn’t be sitting here today. I would have totally destroyed myself out of grief.”

  There were a couple of missteps, of course. She filmed a campy television movie called Malice in Wonderland in which she played legendary gossip columnist Louella Parsons. It was an odd, poorly scripted undertaking that chronicled the rivalry and exploits of Parsons and Hedda Hopper, portrayed by Jane Alexander. Though it wasn’t exactly a highlight in Elizabeth’s career, she did get paid a million dollars for about three weeks’ work, so it wasn’t a total waste. Later that year, she also appeared as a madam in a Civil War period piece for television, North and South. One day’s work for $100,000. It was a strange and somewhat melancholy experience for her fans to see Elizabeth now appearing in made-for-TV

  movies, such as the one she would make in a couple years’ time, There Must Be a Pony, from the James Kirkwood novel and costar-Coming to Terms 391

  ring Robert Wagner. Most of these films weren’t very good, and it seems ironic in retrospect that even in her older years Elizabeth would not have the strong sense of self required to make better career choices. In her defense, though, it’s also true that once an actress hits her fifties, good roles usually dry up anyway in Hollywood and her choices do become more limited. Elizabeth had long ago reconciled herself to the fact that her glory days on the silver screen were over. Hopefully her public would allow her an easy transition from that time in her life as well. Also in 1984, she began dating Dennis Stein, a wealthy New York businessman her own age. By the end of the year, she was engaged to him and wearing a twenty-carat sapphire ring he’d given her. He accompanied her to Gstaad for Christmas. However, by January 1985, Elizabeth realized that she was about to make a mistake in the case of Stein—and fortunately came to her senses. It’s safe to say that had it not been for her treatment at the Betty Ford Center, she might have had two more husbands added to the list of her spouses, Stein as well as Victor Luna. “Finally, I’m growing up,” she said. Then, with a laugh, she added, “I think I have figured out that I don’t have to marry every man I date.” In the next five years, she would be linked with many interesting men, such as the millionaire financier and the publisher of Forbes, Malcolm Forbes (a constant companion for a number of years), and actor George Hamilton (with whom in 1987 she would make a westerncomedy TV movie called Poker Alice). Both Forbes and Hamilton were dear friends; their fantastic and well-publicized exploits in the 1980s could fill an entire volume. In truth, though, no man would capture her heart—and a few with whom she were linked weren’t even interested in attempting to do so—until 1989, when she would meet the man who would become her eighth husband. Original television movies that offered her fans little and boyfriends that offered her even less had made Elizabeth feel much as she h
ad when she was in Virginia and married to John Warner—a bit lost. Her life lacked focus, a sense of purpose. She remembered how much she had enjoyed being on the campaign 392

  Elizabeth

  trail with him, though, in the early days of their relationship, before he began to take her for granted. It had opened her up to the idea of giving to others. She remembered the personal satisfaction that she felt just in giving, in doing something that didn’t involve her own career but yet mattered so much more. She didn’t want to lose this new aspect of her character, and it had been years since she’d satisfied it. The challenge, as she saw it, would be to find a cause to which she could lend her name and her celebrity, which would benefit from the fact that she was Elizabeth Taylor, star . . . and not just Elizabeth Taylor playing a role for which she was illsuited (such as a politician’s wife). Just as she was thinking about her life’s goals and what she might do with the rest of it, a terrible crisis facing the world gave her an opportunity to really give of herself. In the next decade, her image would undergo a tremendous transformation, as would her personality and priorities. She would find not only that her public would never again think of her in the same way, but, much more important, she would never again be the same woman.

  Part Seven

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  THE GLORY YEARS

  “I Will Not Be Ignored”

  I t seems almost impossible to imagine that in the early 1980s, many people didn’t know what AIDS was, or how it was contracted. AIDS—acquired immunodeficiency syndrome—was first reported in the United States in 1981. Actually, even before that time, gay men in the United States and Sweden—and heterosexuals in Tanzania and Haiti—had first begun showing signs of the disease. It was at first referred to as a “gay cancer” by a media grasping for a way to explain it to the masses. Everyone knew what cancer was, and the disease did seem to be striking, for the most part, homosexual men. Many gay men just assumed that they were probably infected and would die. The medical profession couldn’t explain why the virus seemed to lie dormant for years only to suddenly become active. In January 1985, the world wasn’t even clear as to what specific role HIV—human immunodeficiency virus—