Elizabeth

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Two days later, Elizabeth checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She had, of course, spent a great deal of time in hospitals—in this one, in particular—with serious illnesses, but this time there was something different about the experience. As a consequence of her time at the Betty Ford Center, her work on behalf of AIDS research, and, no doubt, of nothing more than just living long enough to learn certain lessons about life and love, she now had an inner life that had been missing in her younger days. She was able to find peace through prayer. “I pray to God all the All Woman

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  time,” she said. “We have a conversational relationship and those conversations calm my fears.”

  As she faced her own mortality, she couldn’t help but think about those she’d loved and lost over the years. Mike Todd and Richard Burton, of course, came to mind. She realized that she’d taken so much of her life for granted. It’s not that she didn’t have a ball doing it. She certainly did. But at the age of sixty-five, she now wished to cling close to her children, all of whom were with her at the hospital, and to her many grandchildren—and her friends. She thought a great deal about her father during this time, as if attempting to put the pieces of her life together one last time, trying to make sense of it . . . and of him, and her complex relationship to him. She also missed her mother, she would often say, especially in these days before the brain surgery. However, she knew that she was imbued with Sara’s indomitable spirit, just as she’d always been. Anyone who had known both women could see that Sara Taylor lived on in her daughter. “And I have lived,” she said at the time. “If the knife slips while I’m on that operating table tomorrow and I never wake up in this world again, I’ll die knowing I’ve had an extraordinary life. It’s been filled with love. I’ve loved my husbands and they’ve loved me. And I’ve learned and grown because of the love we shared—

  though I do wish I’d had more patience, more of the wisdom that comes with age.”

  Of course, Elizabeth pulled through the delicate surgery. Could anyone have imagined otherwise? She was completely bald after having had her head shaved for the operation, but she didn’t care. In fact, she liked it—and even posed for a picture for Life magazine. It was refreshing, in a sense, as if she had finally been stripped of all the unnecessary cosmetics of her life, most of which had been spent in show business trying to look her best for her public. So after the surgery, she was bald . . . and so what? It felt good, liberating, even. She had a seven-inch incision extending across the back of her head. “I look like an ax-murderer’s victim,” she joked. Since about 1982, she’d been accused of hav-454 Elizabeth

  ing had a face-lift. Now it was finally clear to everyone who cared to look, she said, that she had no telltale scars of any kind of cosmetic surgery!* Elizabeth really had faced the beast of her own mortality, once again . . . and had survived it . . . once again. “I’m never going to count her out,” Liz Smith told Cathy Griffin. “If she should ever die, I might not believe it. I’d have to be convinced by her being dead for several years, she’s just that resilient.”

  It wouldn’t be over for her, though. Indeed, there would be more battles to wage.

  On February 27, 1998, on her sixty-ninth birthday, she took a fall while preparing for dinner with her son Christopher and his family. Though it seems impossible to imagine that her frail body could withstand more punishment, she broke her back in the fall—“a severe compression fracture of my first lumbar vertebra,”

  she explained. She would be in a back brace for two months. The rest of 1998 would be hell for her. She had worked so hard all of her life—making fifty-five movies and nine television films, not to mention her theater work (“and I should have gotten a medal just for Private Lives,” she said)—and had been present to care for so many people, such as Michael Jackson, that her friends and family felt it grossly unfair that she should have to suffer so much as she grew older. Her celebrity, her wealth, her . . . life . . . had certainly not made her exempt from the pain of advancing age, not

  * Anyone who knows Elizabeth would know that she’d never have allowed a person who wasn’t a trusted friend close enough for such inspection. Deny it she will, but people in her inner circle insist she’s had more than the admitted

  “tiny chin tuck.” They say she’s had a face-lift and then several “fine-tunings.”

  However, many stars fib about such things; Elizabeth is certainly not the first to do it. More power to her if she can pull it off. (Michael Jackson says he’s only had two such surgeries!) When she turned sixty, Elizabeth had Roddy McDowall photograph her the way he did when she was thirty-four, with a pink towel wrapped around her head and no makeup. Big mistake. When the photos are compared side by side, it’s easy to see how each feature has been altered.

  “She and Roddy were crazy to do it,” said one observer. “I’ll bet he was the one suggested it, the little imp.”

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  that she ever expected that she would get any such break. “I’ve been in pain my entire life,” she told friends in the hospital after breaking her back. “I certainly knew what to expect of old age. No, it’s not easy, is it? However, it’s better than the alternative, isn’t it?” Then, with characteristic humor, she added, “Though I have to admit that there have been times, especially this week, when I think I might have welcomed that alternative.”

  Once home from the hospital, Elizabeth surrounded herself with her loved ones as well as a menagerie of rabbits, pheasants, peacocks, and, of course, her beloved Maltese, Sugar. (The dog died in 2005, leaving Elizabeth inconsolable.) By May 1998, she was feeling much better and even hosted a Memorial Day party for her family and many friends. She and Rod Steiger were still companions; he was an invaluable help to her during the dark days of 1997 and 1998, and would continue to be a close—and platonic—

  friend until his death in July 2002. Amazingly, in June 1998, she was wearing a back brace—she was still recovering from the back injury—but did not allow it to prevent her from socializing with friends, going out in public in the kind of long, flowing muumuus Halston had designed for her during the John Warner years—but this time wearing them to camouflage her brace, instead of her weight. “I haven’t felt this good in years,” she would say by the end of 1998. She was crushed, though, when her dear friend Roddy McDowall died at the end of the year, aged seventy, of lung cancer. Elizabeth and Sybil Burton, Richard’s first wife, visited Roddy shortly before his death. These two women hadn’t been in the same room since Elizabeth and Richard became involved in 1962. After a whirlwind three-week courtship, Sybil had gone on to a 1965 marriage with an actor and rock musician (from a group called the Wild Ones) named Jordan Christopher, twelve years her junior. Though the couple was estranged for much of their union, it actually did not end until his death in 1996. She owned Arthur, a successful discotheque, and then moved to Sag Harbor, on New York’s Long Island, and made a success of herself in community theater. Even though theirs was an uneasy alliance be-456 Elizabeth

  cause of their unpleasant history, Elizabeth and Sybil held hands as they sat with their dying friend. Their presence at Roddy’s deathbed served as a reminder that no matter the extent of past hurts, time does pass—Elizabeth was sixty-six and Sybil sixtyeight—and, somehow, works its promised magic: It heals. After Roddy’s death, Elizabeth hosted a private memorial service for him at her home. Though she would never be able to get over his loss, it did underscore for her the importance of living each day to its fullest.

  Of course, as sometimes happens when people feel they may lose a loved one, there were those in Elizabeth’s life who suddenly wished to cling to her. Larry Fortensky, for instance, told her that he now regretted the divorce and would be devastated had she died as a result of her recent travails. He suggested that they rekindle their relationship. She realized that his sudden proposal had to do with his fear of losing her from his life, not a romantic love for her. Also, would it be too cynical to think that m
aybe he just missed the Good Life? Certainly his world was a lot less extravagant now that she wasn’t in it as much. She said no, but encouraged him in their ongoing friendship. Even her former lover Victor Luna was back in touch to tell her that she had been the love of his life. “Well, of course I was,” she said with a laugh. The communication with Fortensky and Luna served to remind Elizabeth of something she’d almost forgotten during these darker years. “I’ve had the love of so many wonderful men,” she said privately. “Say what you will about them—and I have said a lot, myself—the men I have spent my life with have all been so lovely.”

  Then, with a cackle, she added, “Except for Eddie Fisher.”

  On January 28, 1999, Elizabeth received the truly shocking news that Larry Fortensky had either fallen or was pushed down a seven-foot staircase in his home in San Juan Capistrano, outside of Los Angeles. He had landed on his head. His blood alcohol level when he was found was through the roof at .265. Doctors operated on him and did the best they could, but the damage done to his body was so severe—a broken neck and back as well as se-All Woman 457

  vere head injuries—that his prognosis was grim: He might never walk or even move again. Elizabeth was, of course, shocked. She immediately telephoned Larry’s daughter, Julie, to comfort her. The two stayed in daily communication for the five weeks that Larry lay in a coma, dependent on breathing machines. He emerged from it in March, but would never be the same. It was a horrible accident and Elizabeth had a difficult time reconciling herself to it. True, it hadn’t worked out with Larry, but she did have wonderful memories of him. “You can’t be with someone eight years and have loved them and shared a life with them and have it disappear like turning off a faucet,” she told Barbara Walters. Rod Steiger, her constant companion during this time, helped her deal with the tragedy. She had seen so much in her life, and this latest event with Larry was one of the tougher ones.

  “I talk to him from time to time,” says Larry’s friend Brian Bellows. “ ‘Things didn’t turn out as I expected,’ he told me. ‘But, hell, whose does? You get through it, somehow. You live your life. I had an amazing experience with Elizabeth, and I’ll never forget it, or her. I still can’t believe I was married to her. I can’t believe she had me.’ ”

  Six months later, on August 18, 1999, Elizabeth took another fall in her bedroom and, unbelievably enough, broke her back—

  again! This time, the pain was almost more than she could bear. It took months for her to heal. Though constantly surrounded by friends and family at the hospital, and then at home, it was difficult for her to keep her spirits up, and understandably so. She had to go through the misery with just moderate use of drugs, lest she become addicted again. It was hell. But she was used to hell, wasn’t she? One had to wonder though why, at the age of sixtyseven, she couldn’t be granted some respite from her suffering.

  “Sometimes I get so angry at my body,” she said at about this time. “Not many people have a medical history like mine. Pneumonia [too many times to count]. Back, eye, knee, and foot surgery. Appendectomy, tonsillectomy [twice], cesarean section

  [three times], partial hysterectomy, adult measles, dysentery. Not 458

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  to mention two stays at the Betty Ford Center to beat my addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs. And now this—coming after a two-year stretch in which I had two hip replacements and a third operation to correct one that went wrong. I loathe physical therapy. I learned to walk as a baby. Why did I have to learn all over again—in my sixties?”

  By the end of the year, though, she was somehow making public appearances again—a little worse for the wear, much weaker in body but certainly not in spirit. When she attended Andrea Bocelli’s concert in Los Angeles in November, she was asked how she had survived the year. She responded in typical Elizabeth Taylor candor: “How the hell did I survive any year?” She then let loose with that self-mocking laugh of hers. “You just do it,” she said.

  “You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and God damn it, you just refuse to let it get to you. You fight. You cry. You curse. Then you go about the business of living. That’s how I’ve done it. There’s no other way.”

  Dame Elizabeth: Honor at Last

  A s a child star, Elizabeth Taylor had been naïve about the real world. She believed romance to be as it was portrayed in her early films—a fantasy of passion, melodrama, and conflict that would magically work itself out in the end, with everybody living happily ever after. However, it certainly wasn’t to be that way for her, as she well discovered by the age of eighteen. Her first marriage to Nicky was abusive, her second to Michael all wrong. Her third to Mike genuine, but in the end tragic. Her fourth to Eddie, a messy mistake. Her fifth and sixth to Richard? An emotional roller All Woman

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  coaster. Her seventh to John, a growing experience that set the stage for perhaps her greatest role, as an AIDS activist. Her eighth, to Larry, a final attempt to claim a simpler life, which ultimately just never felt like home. In her, the world found the perfect Hollywood ideal, a movie star like no other. From Cleopatra to Virginia Woolf, she breathed life into more than sixty-five characters. Some performances were simply watchable, others brilliant, but all eminently engaging simply because of her star power and charisma. She was always a star—from her first picture to her last, and one like no other before or after her. Heavy or thin, young or old, ailing or well, she suffered our condemnation and commanded our devotion in equal measure. Remember, even her onetime rival Debbie Reynolds had said of her at Oscar time,

  “Hell, even I voted for her.”

  Indeed, if ever there was an American princess, it would have to be the actress with the sapphire-blue eyes—pampered, beautiful . . . beloved, Elizabeth. Hers has been a life well lived with great and, often, maddening passion. She says she doesn’t regret much of it, but she also doesn’t speak of much of it, either. José

  Eber recalls, “A friend of mine who’s a manager in Hollywood called me and said, ‘Do you think that you can ask Elizabeth if she’d like to write another book, a real autobiography, her whole life with Burton, etc?’ . . . He said, ‘I can guarantee her $10 million for it.’ So I went to Elizabeth and told her. Ten million dollars. Without thinking about it for a second, she quickly responded, ‘Nope, not interested.’ ” Or, as Elizabeth so succinctly and firmly put it to Barbara Walters in 1987 when asked about her memories of Richard Burton: “They’re wonderful memories. They’re warm memories. And they’re my memories.”

  By the power of her personality, the drama of her life, and the example of her philanthropy, she has seduced us, charmed us, and inspired our admiration. Indeed, because we’ve been so transfixed for decades by her talent and her beauty, we sometimes lose sight of what she has truly done. After years of struggle, she rose above her own limitations, both emotional and physical, and mobilized 460

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  Hollywood to recognize a health crisis that had only previously been mentioned in hushed tones in the film industry. Her bravery and passion to that end proved to friends, family—indeed, the world—that Elizabeth Taylor had truly become an aware and compassionate member of society. No longer oblivious to the concerns of others, she had managed to merge the polite façade she and her mother had created in her youth with the purposeful woman she now was at her core. With no need to feign interest for the sake of appearances, she had landed in a comfortable place where genuine caring came easily to her. It was during this period of self-discovery that Elizabeth would learn that she was going to receive an honor even her mother couldn’t have expected. Now, at the age of sixty-eight, as if to top it all off, she would become a Dame, recognized by the British royal family, whom Sara Taylor had held in the highest regard.

  Elizabeth received the call in the winter of 2000 from Buckingham Palace: She and Julie Andrews were to be honored as Dame Commanders of the Order of the British Empire—the female equivalent of a knighthoo
d—in the millennium New Year Honors List. Both were born in Britain in the 1930s, though they’d spent their working lives mostly in the United States. The ceremony was set for Tuesday, May 16, 2000. When she called Michael Jackson with the news, he was thrilled for her and agreed to accompany her to England. He also helped to make what was already certain to be a grand occasion even more spectacular. He offered to foot the bill with diamond distributor De Beers, Sky Televison, and the British Film Institute, in order to make the event as memorable as possible for his good friend. “She has done so much,” Jackson said. “She changed the planet. That’s the truth. And it all started by changing herself.”

  Along with her twenty-four pieces of luggage, Elizabeth was accompanied to England by an entourage that included her four grown children and their partners, attorney, agent, hairdresser, makeup artist, and also her trusted assistant Tim Mendlesen. It was clear to everyone around her that this time in her life would All Woman

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  stand out as one of the most, if not the most, important. She made no secret of that fact, either. “It’s the most exciting—and I do not exaggerate—day in my life,” she told reporters. “I had no inkling. It was just like, ‘ Whaaaat? I can’t believe it. Me? Getting a Dameship?’ ”

  An exhibition of portraits of Elizabeth was scheduled at London’s National Portrait Gallery, and she would also be the guest of honor at a charity spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall to raise money for AIDS research. The British Film Institute also intended to honor her with a BFI Fellowship at a tribute dinner at the Dorchester Hotel. Another highlight of the planned series of events in her honor would be the National Film Theatre’s program of a dozen classic Elizabeth Taylor movies, including the epic Cleopatra. Every event on her itinerary was important to Elizabeth, and she would even go out of her way to be early for some of them—very unusual for her—making time to greet fans who had congregated with only the hope of perhaps catching a quick glimpse of a movie legend.