Elizabeth Taylor was no snob. She truly felt all humans had the same value in society. She preferred to befriend cooks, housekeepers and secretaries rather than their bosses. My husband, Ron Berkeley, had been her makeup man since their youth, working on Giant and Raintree County together. He was a close friend, as was her hairdresser Agnes Flanagan who had also worked for Marilyn Monroe. Elizabeth hated snobs as much as she hated cheap producers.
By the time I joined the entourage full time in 1966, Elizabeth was locked up in hotel rooms and had no longer any sense of the real world, especially finance. Once she handed me a hundred dollar bill to buy a bikini on the beach in Rome and sweetly asked if it would be enough. The price of a good swimsuit then was $10, and from a beach vendor it was half that. She could have been robbed blind by the entourage, but we all loved her and would never have done it. She never minded the vast hotel or dinner bills as long as everyone was happy.
Elizabeth’s favorite pastime was eating and drinking on the set in a private dining room or in the hotel suite. Special guests were brought in for lunch and dinner.
Everybody who was anybody on the planet wanted to meet her, so it was not unusual for luncheon guests to include: Valentino, Yul Brynner, Maria Callas, Princess Grace or Princess Margaret; heads of states like, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, or the Duke of this or that; jewelers like Gianni Bulgari; the musicians, Andre Previn and Tom Jones; the writers, Gore Vidal, Graham Greene and Kenneth Tynan. English actors who were in town would come over to take on Richard. Michael Caine, Richard Harris, Peter O’ Toole and Burton would make fun of each other’s Shakespearian accents as they ripped apart other actors. Elizabeth’s lunches were eating marathons often lasting three to four hours, especially in Italy where the chefs at the studio invented dishes to please her.
To Elizabeth, from what I saw, the things that mattered most were:
Being an Earth Mother to her loved ones
Sex
Food and drink
Helping the unfortunate (humans and animals)
How much money she was being paid to do a movie, and what jewelry was offered by the producer for the “end of the movie” gift
Her fame and beauty did not matter very much to her. She was never one to worry about herself as much as he worried about others. She really didn’t pursue the film career she might have had. Her financial interests were nil. She never counted her money or cared, wanting only to know that there was enough to pay each vast hotel bill for herself and the entourage; one of which amounted to a few hundred thousand for a multi-week stay (it would be $1 million today).
The reason she wanted the world’s top salary (she was the first actor to be paid $1 million for a movie) was that she loved to “mess” with producers. Having been given a hard time early in her career by Louis B. Mayer (who owned every actor at MGM), she never looked back once she was freed from his clutches. She was always an activist.
When Ron did the makeup that won an Oscar for 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, his boss at MGM, Bill Tuttle, got the award because his name, not Ron’s, was on the screen. In early
Hollywood, only the head of each department in the studio got screen credit. The actual person who did the work never got the credit. When Ron mentioned this to Elizabeth, she screamed, “not fair!” and, ever the activist, she got the Academy rules changed. Ron was the first actual makeup man to get credit for a film he did. Ever since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the individual makeup and fashion designers get the credit, not just Bill Tuttle or Edith Head. Thanks to our dearest Elizabeth.
Vicky Tiel began designing clothes 40 years ago in Paris and still owns a boutique there. See Vicky and her NEW Collection on HSN and online. Her couture is available at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, and her perfumes are carried in Perfumania. Her memoir, “It’s All About the Dress: What I Learned in 40 Years About Men, Women, Sex, and Fashion” was published by St. Martin’s Press in August 2011.
A look at Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor's complicated friendship after Taylor's betrayal
JENNY DEPPER, AOL.COM
Dec 29th 2016 11:21AM
Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor were two of the biggest screen stars in Hollywood's Golden Era.
Naturally, the two became close friends as they rose up the ranks of Tinseltown — but their friendship dismantled following a devastating affair.
The actresses first met as classmates in the early 1950s when they were both studying at MGM.
"I went to MGM when I was around 17, and Liz was there too, but she was already a star," Debbie told People in 2015. "We went to school together on the lot, when she was in between films. I was just a beginner, and she and I were not in any manner alike, but we got along very well because I was in awe of going to school with Elizabeth Taylor. And if anyone said they weren't, then they were lying. Or blind."
Taylor had already established herself as a huge icon, with starring roles in "Little Women," "Cynthia" and "Father of the Bride" under her belt. Reynolds also made her way to the spotlight when she starred in "Singin' In the Rain."
From there, the two were near equals in star power and became famous power couples once they both married. Reynolds married singer Eddie Fisher in 1955 and Taylor married Mike Todd in 1957. Reynolds served as matron of honor to Taylor and Fisher was Todd's best man.
The four were reportedly inseparable and were even neighbors. But everything changed when Todd was killed in a plane crash. Taylor was reportedly supposed to join him on the small plane, ironically named "Lucky Liz," but she didn't because she had a cold. They were only married for one year.
Fisher reportedly decided to console Taylor, but things turned romantic pretty quickly and he cheated on his wife, Reynolds.
"I was the last to find out about the affair," Debbie told The Daily Mail in 2010. "There had been hints in the papers and I had noticed that when I turned up at functions or parties on my own my friends were whispering. Although I didn't want to find out the truth, I had to face up to it. Even so, it was a great shock to find them together. It left me shattered."
At the time, Reynolds and Fisher had two children, Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher. Reynolds felt that her good friend Liz had betrayed her. "We were friends for years and years, but we had a lapse of time when she took Eddie to live with her because she liked him, too," the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" star said. "She liked him well enough to take him without an invitation!"
Carrie later wrote about her father's embarrassing situation in her 2001 memoir, "Wishful Drinking." "Naturally, my father flew to Elizabeth's side, gradually making his way slowly to her front. He first dried her eyes with his handkerchief, then he consoled her with flowers, and he ultimately consoled her with his penis," the actress quipped. "Now this made marriage to my mother awkward, so he was gone within the week."
Reynolds was considered America's Sweetheart and she quickly had Eddie move out, but was reluctant at first given the fact that she had small children.
"I was a virgin when I married Eddie, but Elizabeth had been married three times. I was devastated because I had two children," Reynolds told The Daily Mail. "I was very religious so I didn't believe in divorce, but they laid guilt on me that I was keeping them and true love apart. So, I finally let Eddie off the hook. I told him to go."
Reynolds went on to raise her children alone and without Eddie's support. She later recalled that he never even paid her to help with her children's upbringing. Eddie married Taylor and they were together from 1959-1964 until she left him for her "Cleopatra" co-star, Richard Burton.
Reynolds went on to marry millionaire businessman Harry Karl, who struggled with gambling. He reportedly gambled away nearly all of her fortune.
Reynolds and Taylor didn't speak for over 7 years until a chance-meeting when they were both boarding the Queen Elizabeth ship to London in 1966.
"I looked up and I saw tons of luggage going by me and birdcages and dog cages and nurses and I realized Elizabeth was on the same ship as me," Debbie told PopEater years later.
The two decided to bury the hatchet and have dinner together with their now-husbands. "The four of us ended up having dinner and it was wonderful. She'd moved along in her life and so had I. If your husband's going to leave you for anyone, it might as well be Elizabeth Taylor. She was beautiful, smart, and a very sexual woman and I was very different—not exactly a sex kitten. I told [Eddie] she'd throw him out eventually and that's exactly what happened. But he wasn't the brightest of men."
Fisher and Reynolds never had a friendship after their divorce. Fisher famously trash-talked her in his memoirs before his death and said that his ex's entire "life was an act" and she "should have won an Academy Award for playing the wronged woman."
Reynolds wasn't too pleased with her ex either, and instead chose to salvage her relationship only with Elizabeth. The women went on to star in "These Old Broads" alongside Joan Collins and Shirley MacLaine. The film was written by Carrie.
Reynolds had a chance to also say her final goodbye to her longtime friend before she died in 2011. She told People, "She expressed how scary it was. We talked about that for a while, that it's really hell getting older. We were complaining to each other about that. Like two girls would."
Debbie Reynolds, perhaps, died of a broken heart on Wednesday, following the sudden death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher. Reynolds was planning her daughter's funeral, when she reportedly had a stroke and passed away. Her final commentary was that she "wanted to be with Carrie."
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Screen siren Marilyn Monroe was so jealous of rival Elizabeth Taylor she ordered naked pool photoshoot to try to eclipse her fame
She was a star in her own right and one of the most famous women in the world.
But in 1960 Marilyn Monroe was deeply jealous of Elizabeth Taylor and posed nude in a bid to become more popular than her.
The actress hoped to generate as much publicity as her rival’s public relationship with Richard Burton by baring all.
Rivals: Marilyn Monroe was desperate to eclipse the popularity of Elizabeth Taylor so decided to commission a nude photo shoot
But in a newly released interview she also realised how futile it was and told a photographer: ‘It’s still about nudity. Is that all I’m good for?’
The startling disclosures add yet another layer to one of the most enduring legends Hollywood has ever seen - and a fresh insight into the woman she really was.
They come from her conversations with photographer Larry Schiller between 1960 until her death in 1962 at the age of just 36.
In his memoir Marilyn And Me, he says the two met when Monroe hatched a plan to force Hollywood giants Fox Studios to take her more seriously so they would ‘start paying me as much attention as they are paying to Elizabeth Taylor’.
Deeply jealous: Marilyn Monroe wanted to generate more publicity than her screen rival Elizabeth Taylor
Ladies in red: While Marilyn did eventually strip off, Elizabeth kept her clothes on
At the time Taylor was earning $1million a film for epics like Cleopatra. Monroe was getting paid a mere $100,000 for Something’s Got To Give, from which she was sacked.
Monroe posed for a set of photographs in which she entered a swimming pool with a bathing suit - and came out naked.
Monroe told Schiller: ‘Larry, if I do come out of the pool with nothing on, I want your guarantee that when your pictures appear on the covers of magazines Elizabeth Taylor is not anywhere in the same issue.’
When Hugh Hefner agreed to pay $25,000 for one nude picture Monroe told Schiller that it was worth every penny.
She said with a laugh: ‘There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.’
Desperate: While Marilyn earnt less than £61,000 for a film, Elizabeth Taylor commanded fees of up six times that for Cleopatra
The conversations between the two, which appear in this month’s issue of Vanity Fair, also give an insight into how insecure Monroe was.
She told Schiller that she wore her public persona as a ‘veil’ over her real identity.
She once told him: ‘It’s still about nudity. Is that all I’m good for?
‘I’d like to show that I can get publicity without using my ass or getting fired from a picture. I haven’t made up my mind yet.’
Over the previous two years the pair had spoken at length and in 1960 she admitted was wracked by insecurity.
'I could tell you all about rejection,' Marilyn said to Schiller. 'Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.'
'But look at you now,' he said.
'Exactly,' she replied. 'Look at me now.'
Popular: Elizabeth Taylor had just married Richard Burton in 1960 and was more loved by the public than ever before
Confused, Schiller protested, 'You’re a star! Your face is on magazine covers all over the world! Everyone knows Marilyn Monroe!'
'Let me ask you... how many Academy Award nominations do I have?'
'I don’t know,' he said.
'I do,' she said. 'None.'
Marilyn even confided her deepest fears, that she would end up like her mother who had been a mental patient for much of her life.
She also told him that she ‘always wanted a baby’ but ‘having a child, that’s my biggest fear’.
She said: ‘I want a child and I fear a child. Whenever it came close, my body said no and I lost the baby.’
Since her death Monroe’s life has been the subject of endless speculation, not least her rumoured affair with former U.S. President John F Kennedy.
Her former stylist George Masters recently claimed that she spent her last night alive in Frank Sinatra’s lodge in Nevada with the head of the American Mafia.
Although she never won an Oscar, Monroe did win a Golden Globe for her performance in the 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot, another Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA nomination.
She was married and divorced three times and died childless.
Life with Elizabeth
Vicky Tiel’s swinging shifts, slashed hems, and outré jumpsuits helped define the Zeitgeist of 1960s jet-set Europe. All the while, she and her husband, Ron, an MGM makeup artist, kept glittering company with aristocrats, tycoons, world leaders, and movie stars. In her forthcoming memoir, It’s All About the Dress, Tiel recalls life in the freewheeling entourage of the decade’s most glamorous globe-trotting couple: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Little did I know at 16, when I cut my hair for my junior prom into the Elizabeth Taylor “artichoke,” the hairstyle she made famous at the 1961 Oscars, that at the age of 21 I would be hanging out with Elizabeth as a girlfriend in Paris. Or even better yet, that she would want to dress young like me and wear my clothes.
How to describe Elizabeth Taylor? She was not a movie star; she was the entire galaxy of stars in one package. That was the energy she emitted when she walked into a room. People froze. When they spoke to her, they stuttered. The only other person I’ve met who ever came close was Elvis. Ron, who did Marilyn Monroe’s makeup in her later years, said Marilyn was just the opposite: Toward the end of her life when Marilyn came around, people ran. She was so desperately unhappy that her gloom was contagious.
Elizabeth’s eyes were not the clear blue of Paul Newman’s or Cameron Diaz’s but dark navy blue, like the deep sea, with an indigo light that most people call violet. They were very large, and she could use them as the actress she was: just open them up and glare. Since her blackened eyebrows were a good two inches above her eyes, the glare was so intense it went right through you and the gaze could shock you silly. I saw many a nervous producer go faint when he told Elizabeth she had taken too long for lunch, and she snapped open her eyes and said, “I what?!”
Yes, life with Elizabeth was an amazing time. Ron and I lived with her and Richard for the good part of 10 years and rented apartments nearby for another 10. Elizabeth invented the entourage. At times there were 12 of us all flying around together. Richard Hanley, Elizabeth’s secretary, had been secretary to Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, and traveled with his partner, John Lee. Jim Benton, Burton’s secretary, and George Davis, Benton’s partner, were frequent fliers. There was Agnes Flanagan, Marilyn Monroe’s hairdresser; then Claudye Bozzacchi, Elizabeth’s hairdresser; Gianni Bozzacchi, Claudye’s husband, who became Elizabeth’s personal photographer; Gaston Sanz, the bodyguard and driver; as well as Bob Wilson, Richard’s dresser from Broadway. There were four kids and 4 to 10 dogs, depending on who had had puppies. There were no cats.
For a while there was Sarah, a nurse, to whom Elizabeth gave a sable coat in a moment of feeling sorry for her having given up her personal life to fly around the world for a year carrying Elizabeth’s pill bag. It was the 60s and Doctor Feelgoods gave her wake-up pills for jet lag, go-to-sleep pills, pain pills, act-outraged pills (for intense parts), and pills to sleep off hangovers to be mixed with Bull Marys. We all got to share the pills, too.
Generally, we were companions to gossip and play Scrabble or do crossword puzzles with to fill up the hours between scenes in the dressing rooms and the long nights in strange hotels. Elizabeth’s favorite pastime was celebrity gossip. Her definition of celebrity included royalty, world leaders, writers, artists and musicians, and the occasional Greek billionaire. Elizabeth needed gossip as fuel to shock at dinner parties. She had to know who was sleeping with whom, who was great in bed and who was not, and who was well hung. The gay secretaries were especially good at collecting that necessary information, and Richard Hanley’s years at MGM made him a sexpert on the entire film industry. Richard Burton did not partake in the gossip; his nose was always in a book if he wasn’t writing in his diary. Occasionally he would chuckle, especially if the stories concerned English royalty.
I was able to add bits about models and musicians, and I had to keep up with the latest about her two favorite male actors, the twin sexpots Marlon Brando (who I assume slept with Elizabeth, Marilyn, and everyone else) and Warren Beatty (who tried), both of whom she demanded as her leading men if Richard did not suit the part. Elizabeth wanted people around, and she got them. Stars of the 30s, 40s, and 50s were “studio owned” and lucky to get their favorite hairdresser for a film. Elizabeth spent her entire life as a celebrity. At 16 she was already the most photographed movie star in the world. The knowledge of how the old system worked, plus her wild, independent nature, allowed her to envision a new way to live as a celebrity. She would find all her favorite people in each category—hair, makeup, etc.—and travel the world with them in tow, and whenever she could, she’d have the producer of the film pay for it all.
Did she like being holed up in enormous hotel suites with all her favorite food and wine and her favorite people being flown in from all over the world to be at her beck and call? She loved it! The children were in their suites when out of school; one day we got a phone call from Richard Hanley because Ron’s son, Craig, who was 13 and on vacation at the Dorchester in London, was ordering a dozen oysters from room service for breakfast each morning with his eggs and mimosas. Often Elizabeth’s brother, Howard, and his family stayed in the suites, too, and there was the occasional Jenkins, Burton’s Welsh family, or a best friend flown in to spice up conversation. Dinner would be room service, everyone ordering what they pleased, eating on tray tables, lying on couches or beds. Rarely was there a formal sit-down except for holidays, birthdays, or funerals.
Photographers have been around since the camera was invented, but it wasn’t until 1959 that Federico Fellini coined the name Paparazzo for a photographer in La Dolce Vita. Soon after, in the 60s, groups of photographers stalking celebs became known as paparazzi. Elizabeth had her own paparazzi that shadowed her everywhere she went. The major pest was Ron Galella. Once, Richard had him arrested hiding in a tree in Puerto Vallarta. There were never fewer than 4 photographers or more than 20 every day. The paparazzi started in the middle 50s with Mike Todd’s death and Elizabeth’s Debbie-Eddie breakup. I think she was relieved when Jackie Kennedy came along and they could share the spotlight and Ron Galella.
At night, however, when Elizabeth went out to make an appearance, it was always in a major gown and Richard in a tux. She went the whole nine yards—diamond tiara, necklace, three bracelets, five diamond rings with major stones, sables, couture gowns, and killer makeup. Going out was a performance and would be recorded in every paper. In those days there were only a few movie magazines. It was Elizabeth and Jackie Kennedy who aroused the public’s interest in off-screen celebrity lifestyles. Fashion trends would be launched from the way they tied their Hermès scarves. Grace Kelly was also a target of paparazzi, but her husband ruled Monaco and he wanted Grace to become low key after their marriage, so she was not bothered as much.
By the time I joined the entourage full-time in 1966, Elizabeth no longer had any sense of the real world, especially of finances. Once she handed me a hundred-dollar bill to buy a bikini on the beach in Rome and sweetly asked if it would be enough. The price of a good swimsuit then was $10, and from a beach vendor half that. She could have been robbed blind by the entourage, but we all loved her and would never have done it. She never minded the vast hotel or dinner bills as long as everyone was happy.
Elizabeth’s favorite pastime was eating and drinking on the set in a private dining room or in the hotel suite. Special guests were brought in for lunch or dinner. Everybody who was anybody on the planet wanted to meet her, so it was not unusual for luncheon guests to include Valentino, Yul Brynner, Maria Callas, Princess Grace or Princess Margaret, heads of states like Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia or the duke of this or that, jewelers like Gianni Bulgari, the musicians André Previn and Tom Jones, or the writers Gore Vidal, Graham Greene, and Kenneth Tynan. English actors who were in town would come over to take on Richard. Michael Caine, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Burton would make fun of each other’s Shakespearian accents as they ripped apart other actors. Elizabeth’s lunches were eating marathons often lasting three to four hours, especially in Italy, where chefs at the studio invented dishes to please her.
To Elizabeth, from what I saw, the things that mattered most were:
Being Earth Mother to her loved ones
Sex
Food and drink
Helping the unfortunate (humans and animals)
How much money she was being paid to do a movie, and what jewelry was offered by the
producer for the “end of the movie” gift
Her fame and beauty did not matter very much to her. She was never one to worry about herself as much as she worried about others. She really didn’t pursue the film career she might have had. Her financial interests were nil. She never counted her money or cared, wanting only to know that there was enough to pay each vast hotel bill, one of which amounted to a few hundred thousand for a multi-week stay (it would be $1 million today).
The reason she wanted the world’s top salary (she was the first actor to be paid $1 million for a movie) was that she loved to “mess” with producers. Having been given a hard time early in her career as a child star by Louis B. Mayer (who owned every actor at MGM), she never looked back once she was free from his clutches. She was always an activist.
When Ron did the makeup that won an Oscar for 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, his boss at MGM, Bill Tuttle, got the award because his name, not Ron’s, was on the screen. In early Hollywood, only the head of each department in the studio got screen credit. The actual person who did the work never got credit. When Ron mentioned this to Elizabeth, she screamed, “Not fair!” and, ever the activist, she got the Academy rules changed. Ron was the first actual makeup man to get credit for a film he did. Ever since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the individual makeup and fashion designers get the credit, not just Bill Tuttle or Edith Head. Thanks to our dearest Elizabeth.
I know Elizabeth really loved Richard, in spite of the fact that they were total opposites. She loved the challenge of being married to an intellectual and a great actor and a big star. Their marriage was like taming a wild horse. Richard hated everything she loved, except food, drink, and sex. His idea of happiness was to be alone with a vodka tonic, reading a good book, or watching a rugby match. Every morning he would get up early and type in his diary. Sometimes he would copy what he wrote and give it to one of us. He addressed one beautiful poem to me, starting with the line, “Licky—Sticky—Vicky.”
He’d begin his day reading one of his five books—one in the car, one on the bedside table, one on the living-room table, one in the studio dressing room, and one in the loo. Each book stayed in its proper place. The reading material was always poetry, a biography, a mystery, a current novel, and a script. His taste ran from his favorite authors Dylan Thomas and Hemingway to the poets e. e. cummings and Keats (whom he was always quoting) to biographies of world leaders such as Winston Churchill to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. If Richard liked a living writer, he would summon him or her for a visit. Elizabeth had 20 pieces of tapestry luggage filled with clothes; Richard had no clothes but two trunks of books. Richard was a lifelong scholar. Elizabeth learned to enjoy mystery novels and became a fan of John D. MacDonald.
Unlike Elizabeth, who gave away everything and discarded lovers and husbands, Richard discarded nothing. He had an ugly green suit from his Oxford acting days. It must have been almost 10 years old, and he carried it around, along with an ugly green typewriter also from his old student days. He also had an ugly green Rolls, his first nice car. Richard liked everything basic and old and green, and hated change. I’m sure he would have kept his ex-wife, Sybil, too, had he been able, before the press got involved. Richard hated to see anything he loved go!
Once Elizabeth and Richard were married, and with her newly acquired intellectual confidence, she set out to mingle with the nobles of Europe. Once she was invited by Baron Guy de Rothschild and his wife to their country home, Château de Ferrières, for their yearly ball. Jacqueline de Ribes was to accompany them to the château. It was the late-60s fashion look: rusty browns, leather, fur trim, and riding boots were the craze with Yves Saint Laurent’s fall collection. Fur and suede layered over culotte skirts. Country chic.
Elizabeth dressed for the château in a pink-and-purple geometric-print Pucci minidress, Pucci print panty hose, and Pucci print boots to match, with giant diamond and emerald rings on each finger except her thumbs! Around her neck was her emerald drop.
“Elizabeth,” I said, “that doesn’t look like the French countryside.”
“Oh, I’ll liven things up,” she answered. “I’m going as a rich hippie!” She was a big hit. As Richard complained to me when they returned, all the Frenchmen formed a circle around her over cocktails like Scarlett O’Hara at the Twelve Oaks barbeque, when she arrived all Puccified.
Elizabeth was no snob. She truly felt all humans had the same value in society. She preferred to befriend cooks, housekeepers, and secretaries rather than their bosses. She hated snobs almost as much as she hated cheap producers.
Once, while she was in Rome, French Vogue sent a team to the De Laurentiis Studios to photograph Elizabeth wearing furs. She was to get a free fur for the shoot. The studio dressing room was very small and crowded and had lots of newspapers on the floor with yet-to-be-cleaned-up dog pee. Her dog just wasn’t used to going out, since he was usually cooped up with the entourage like the rest of us.
The self-important fashion editor and weary assistant waltzed in with a rack of 10 furs. They were horrified by the dog pee and the décor, and started to complain and act like prima donnas, everything Elizabeth hated. I could see her anger growing, and I knew she was going to play with them.
“Well, Miss Taylor,” the editor said, “perhaps we could visit another day, in a more convenient environment.”
“Oh, hell no,” she said. “This is how I live everywhere! Champagne and poop.”
“You understand,” he replied icily, “you were going to get one of these coats for free.”
Smiling graciously, she waved her hand to dismiss the fashion editor. “Oh, never mind, sugar!” she said. “I already have one of each of these furs. Thank you very much. Bye now!” (If she didn’t like someone, she wouldn’t want his gifts.)
Elizabeth loved losers as friends. The bigger the loser, the more she loved him. I think this softheartedness explained many of her marriages. She was a sucker for a sob story; she believed everyone. She once confided in me that her childhood was lonely: no friends, no boyfriends, no high-school proms. “I wasn’t allowed to date,” she said. “As a result, I had no real inner self-confidence.” I was astounded! The most beautiful woman in the world admitting her own insecurity.
Elizabeth’s warmth was contagious, and to know her was to love her. All my preconceived ideas of her being the untouchable movie star were forgotten. I had drawn her at 15 in art class as my favorite movie star. Now this down-to-Earth woman was my friend. Elizabeth’s generosity was her foremost quality, and it shined in her love for all her friends and extended family.
Elizabeth Taylor: 'It takes one day to die – another to be reborn'
In a deeply personal piece, Hollywood biographer Peter Evans, who knew Elizabeth Taylor for 50 years, pays tribute to the film legend who has died aged 79.
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Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor who has died at the age of 79Photo: CORBIS
It has been more than three decades since she made a memorable film – and nearly as long since she made even a good one – but no other movie actress in the second half of the 20th century sustained a hold on the public’s imagination longer or more assuredly than Elizabeth Taylor. Maybe Marilyn Monroe ran her a close second, but she had to die in her prime to do it.
“Dying young does give Marilyn an edge over most of us,” Elizabeth conceded when the subject of Hollywood immortals came up the last time we met in Los Angeles, where she died yesterday, aged 79.
“But I nearly died quite a few times. Nearly dying was my specialty. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
It was a throwaway line, but typical of Elizabeth Taylor: dark, perfectly timed, and full of mockery – of herself, and of the Hollywood star system, in which she had lived since she was 10 years old, the fledgling heroine of Lassie Come Home.
I first met Elizabeth Taylor in 1960 when she began filming Cleopatra in London – a production that was abandoned, and later moved to Rome, when she nearly died of pneumonia. Doctors had fought for 10 days to save her life. She carried a scar on her throat for the rest of her life where the surgeons had inserted a tube into her windpipe to keep her breathing.
Survival, she liked to say, was her middle name. “I’ve appeared in more theatres than Dame Nellie Melba on her farewell tour. Unfortunately, mine have all been operating theatres,” she once told me. She could always be funny about her ailments. In 30 years she had more than 37 operations, including the removal of a benign brain tumour, congestive heart failure, and hip joint replacements.
She could be difficult when a leading man, a script or anything else displeased her; she provoked nervous breakdowns in hostesses whose dinners were spoiled by her habitual lateness; producers regularly counted the cost of the delays she caused.
But those who knew her well admired her courage. Her loyalty to old friends was staunch and often puzzling. She stuck by Michael Jackson at the height of his scandal, when it was considered unwise even to return his phone calls. She did the first big charity show for Aids when Aids was still a forbidden topic of conversation in polite circles.
Elizabeth was a great collector: of two Oscars (Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), innumerable global accolades (she treasured her DBE), and eight husbands (if you count Richard Burton twice).
It was her two marriages to the bibulous Welsh actor that most people remember, and which will always define her.
They first met on the set of Cleopatra in Rome in 1962. For her role as the fabled Egyptian queen, Elizabeth became the first actor ever to be paid $1 million for a film. For far less money, Burton played Mark Antony. Inevitably, this renowned, classic stage actor, and a womaniser of remarkable energy, would attempt to seduce her. She was, after all, “the most desirable woman in the world”.
“Richard came on the set and sort of sidled over to me and said: 'Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very pretty girl?’ ” she recalled of their first encounter. “I thought, 'Oy, gevalt’,” – she had been married to Mike Todd, the brash Jewish-America showman, whose religion and vernacular she had adopted – “the great lover, the great wit, the great Welsh intellectual, and he comes out with a corny line like that!”
But then she noticed that his hands were shaking, “as if he had Saturday-night palsy. He had the worst hangover I’d ever seen. He was obviously terrified of me. I just took pity on him. I realised he really was human. That was the beginning of our affair.”
From their first screen embrace, it was plain that she and Burton were more than just good friends. The director Joseph Mankiewicz, aware of the potential for scandal and trouble, cabled the studio: “I want to give you some facts you ought to know. Liz and Richard are not just playing lovers – they are lovers.”
Their affair broke up each other’s marriage – his to former Welsh actress Sybil Williams, mother of his two daughters, Kate, then aged 5, and Jessica, 3; Elizabeth’s to the crooner Eddie Fisher. The scandal almost bankrupted the studio 20th Century Fox – though it made Taylor and Burton the hottest couple in Hollywood. Each got $1 million for their next film, The VIPs, but Elizabeth, regarded as one of the smartest actors in Hollywood, collected a piece of the profits, too.
They were still going through the process of their divorces when I caught up with Elizabeth in Mexico, where Burton was making Night of the Iguana, based on the Tennessee Williams play. It was 1963. He was now the top-notch star he had always wanted to be.
Aged 31, with four marriages behind her – the first to hotel heir Nicky Hilton, followed by English actor Michael Wilding, then Mike Todd, and Eddie Fisher – she contemplated marriage to Burton with an equanimity that astonished me. Wasn’t she apprehensive?
“Richard knows me better than any man I’ve known,” she said. “I think he was born knowing me. I feel I’m in safe hands.”
Burton agreed with proprietorial pride. “I know her inside out, stewed and sober, in sickness and what passes for health in her hurt and troubled life.”
At dinner that evening, she told me: “A lot of mistakes I’ve made were because of the peculiar world I’ve lived in. I’ve been a movie actress since I was 10 years old, so of course I’ve been spoiled and pampered. The most difficult problem for any actress is trying to understand the difference between reality and make-believe.
“Richard has given me a sense of reality. I’m now, above and beyond anything else, a woman. That’s his gift to me. I used to have these marvellous spending sprees, but they were just compensations. Most women, when they are depressed or unhappy, go out and buy a new hat. I used to go out and buy up Dior’s, which is singularly immature and doesn’t compensate for a thing.”
Burton would encourage her to overcome this spasm of immaturity with a season of diamond buying – the Taj Mahal and Krupp gems, the Koh-i-noor, La Pelegrina Pearl – that would stun the world.
She married Burton in 1964, but it was a tempestuous relationship as well as an enriching one. Together they made 11 films – including the memorable Virginia Woolf, an admired production of The Taming of the Shrew, and some others best forgotten – and achieved a kind of corporate notoriety. They drank too much. Privately, and increasingly publicly, too, they were never less than competitive. Only Burton had the temerity to laugh at some of the foolish things she said. Only Elizabeth had the feistiness to ridicule his sexual braggadocio.
Once, after another furious row with her, Burton dropped by my London home and offered to buy it – for a love nest. Later, when they came to dinner, Elizabeth told him: “This place is too big for a love nest. It’d make a fine harem, though – but you’re not up to that any more, Buster.”
I was astonished. Why had he told her about his plans to get a love nest? “It keeps her on her toes, luv,” he said.
In 1974, they divorced. But their addiction to each other remained unchanged. The following year they remarried. One year later they divorced for the final time.
“It takes one day to die – another to be reborn,” Elizabeth announced defiantly, but those who knew her well knew that Burton was still the love of her life. She wed twice more – to US senator John Warner, and to Larry Fortensky, a builder – but neither marriage lasted.
The happiest and most exhilarating years of her life, which began and ended with Richard Burton, were over.
Burton seemed to be speaking for both of them when he told me: “There is an emptiness in my life that only Elizabeth can make less empty. For 13 years we were together constantly, compulsively. How can you end such a wild and perfect relationship? You can’t. A love affair like ours is never ended – only temporarily abandoned.”
She was increasingly frail in her last years, and only seen in a wheelchair. “I never imagined there’d be such a price to pay for the fun we had,” she said the last time I saw her.
Last year, 25 years after his death, Dame Elizabeth Taylor was asked if she would marry Burton again if that were possible.
“In a heartbeat,” she said.
I’m told that she died with a picture of Burton by her bedside.
Peter Evans is working on 'Ava’, a personal memoir of Ava Gardner.
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Interview A never-before-seen 'Rolling Stone' chat with the Hollywood icon. Elizabeth Taylor on the set of 'Giant' in 1956. Frank Worth, Courtesy of Emage International/Getty Images By Jonathan Cott March 29, 2011 I n 1987, Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Jonathan Cott sat down with Elizabeth Taylor in her suite at New York's Hôtel Plaza Athénée, when the actress was 55. "There was no standing on ceremony, no pretense, no pulling punches," recalls Cott. "She was so forthright, witty and fearless." The previously unpublished interview is presented here for the first time. You started making films in Hollywood during the 1940s. How has the movie business changed since then? It used to be a sin to be considered a Hollywood actor. Even worse to be a star — God forbid a superstar. Stage actors would accuse people of selling out when they'd go to Hollywood. Actually, I thin...
Marilyn Monroe - Interview The following interview appeared in Motion Picture magazine in January 1954. It comprises questions sent in by readers to Helen Hover, who then 'quizzed' Marilyn. Hope you enjoy it! Q: Is it true you dress for men? MM: Don't most women dress for men? Isn't it true that men and women have mutual appreciation of each other? Q: Why do you wear low cut gowns? MM: I haven't really noticed. Q: What do you do in your spare time? MM: When an actress is building her career in pictures, as I am, there is very little spare time. What little there is I spend in reading and studying. Q: In Niagara, were you clad only in a sheet when you were lying in bed, or were you wearing other clothes underneath? MM: I always wear clothes appropriate to the occasion. Q: What is your description of the ideal man? MM: Someone who is gentle and considerate - but I've never thought of one 'ideal man'. I doubt if there is such a person....
By DOUGLAS MARTIN MAY 13, 2013 Continue reading the main story Share This Page Share Tweet Email More Save Photo Kenneth Battelle with models in 1961, the year he won an award for helping make hair styling “a key element of current fashion.” Credit Carl T. Gossett Jr. and Robert Walker/The New York Times In 1961, Vogue magazine said that “almost every famous female head in the world has gone or will go” to Kenneth, the hairdresser who created Jacqueline Kennedy’s legendary bouffant and softened the golden locks of Marilyn Monroe. From the grandes dames of Manhattan society to first ladies (including Mrs. Kennedy and Rosalynn Carter) to foreign royalty to movie stars to a new generation of career women, Kenneth Battelle, who chose to be known by his first name only — and no “Mr. Kenneth,” please — was the coiffurist of choice. When he left his Manhattan lair in the 1960s, women around the country asked for his autograph. When Glamour mentioned his name o...
Elizabeth Taylor was no snob. She truly felt all humans had the same value in society. She preferred to befriend cooks, housekeepers and secretaries rather than their bosses. My husband, Ron Berkeley, had been her makeup man since their youth, working on Giant and Raintree County together. He was a close friend, as was her hairdresser Agnes Flanagan who had also worked for Marilyn Monroe. Elizabeth hated snobs as much as she hated cheap producers.
Her fame and beauty did not matter very much to her. She was never one to worry about herself as much as he worried about others. She really didn’t pursue the film career she might have had. Her financial interests were nil. She never counted her money or cared, wanting only to know that there was enough to pay each vast hotel bill for herself and the entourage; one of which amounted to a few hundred thousand for a multi-week stay (it would be $1 million today).
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