And the Rest Is History (21 page)

Although he made a full physical recovery, Nancy never made a full psychological one. In the fashion of Caesar's wife, to avoid any further ides of March, she began to consult astrologer Joan Quigley to assist in planning the president's schedule. When word of this leaked, it brought her a storm of criticism along with ire over her out-of-control spending. Her inaugural gown cost $10,000, and other designer gowns earned her the name Queen Nancy. In an attempt to deflect the criticism, she donned a bag lady costume for a 1982 dinner and sang “Second Hand Clothes,” mimicking Streisand's “Second Hand Rose.” Her detractors referred to her as “Mrs. President” and claimed that she ruled the Oval Office with a Gucci-clad fist.

After departing the White House, the Reagans were looking forward to constant togetherness in their Bel Air home. Reagan expressed this when he said that Nancy was his respite at the end of the day and could make him feel lonely just by leaving the room. Tragically, the golden years were anything but. In 1994 Reagan took pen to gold-embossed stationery: “I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.... I only wish that there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience.” Nancy now had to heed her husband's words: “The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.” Nancy, who had centered her life on Ronald for the past forty years, became his fierce protector more than ever. At the same time she had to school herself for a life without her leading man.

In 2004, her gaze full of agony, Nancy said good-bye to her dear Ronnie, comforted in the belief that he had “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

24

1952

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor union was one of epic proportions, a two-decade odyssey as tumultuous as the twentieth century against which it was enacted. Their love affair called for the greatest roles the two larger-than-life actors had ever played and became a romance that shocked and mesmerized the world.

Richard Walter Jenkins's father was known as a “twelve-pints-a-day man” whose chief possessions were a shovel and a gift for words. When his wife died giving birth to their thirteenth child, Richard was sent to live with his sister. He started to smoke at age eight and began to drink regularly at age twelve. The stabilizing influence on him was his teacher, Philip H. Burton, who introduced him to theater ; his first role was in his school's production
The Apple Cart
. In tribute to his mentor, Richard adopted his surname.

When he was eighteen Richard left for London's stage; he also married Sybil Williams, an actress who was also the daughter of a Welsh coal miner. They had two daughters with Shakespearean names: Kate and Jessica. His 1960 production of
Camelot
proved to be the turning point of his life. His performance as the king impressed 20th Century Fox, which signed him for the film that would make him a star and where he would encounter the woman who would cast him in the role of a lifetime.

Richard's destiny, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, was born to American parents residing in England. When she was twelve, her ethereal beauty landed her the role that made her a star—Velvet Brown in MGM's
National Velvet
. In 1960 Taylor attained superstardom when she was chosen to play the Queen of the Nile, Cleopatra, for which she commanded the unprecedented salary of $1 million.

The first time Richard met Elizabeth was when she and her husband, Michael Wilding, were invited to a Sunday brunch at the home of Jean Simmons. Elizabeth, who was sitting by the pool reading a book, saw her hostess's houseguest quoting Dylan Thomas. She felt that he was full of himself. She later recalled of the Welsh womanizer, “Ohhh, boy—I'm not gonna become a notch on his belt.” She said she gave him “the cold fish eye.” Burton recalled the event in his diary: “A girl sitting on the other side of the pool lowered her book, took off her sunglasses and looked at me. She was lavish. She was a dark, unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much, and not only that, she was ignoring me. Her breasts were apocalyptic, they would topple empires.” It would be another nine years before their paths would cross once more.

Though Burton was still married to Sybil, his appetite for women was as insatiable as his alcoholic intake. Joan Collins told him she believed he would sleep with a snake if he had the chance, to which he replied, “Only if she were wearing a skirt, darling.” He romanced co-stars Claire Bloom, Jean Simmons, and Susan Strasberg and was often seen in the company of a woman dubbed “the Copacabana Cutie.” However, he always returned to Sybil, whom he considered his emotional rock, and their daughters.

Elizabeth's appetite for the opposite sex was as voracious as Burton's; however, she ended up wedding the men she bedded. Her relationship with her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher, had earned her the reputation of card-carrying home-wrecker when she lured him away from Debbie Reynolds.

In 1963, 20th Century Fox embarked on the epic film
Cleopatra
. When production continued in Rome, the replacement director was Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who had filmed the classic
All about Eve
, and the replacement for the doomed lover, Marc Antony, was Richard Burton. At first Burton dismissed his diva co-star as “Miss Tits”; she told her friends that Burton was a “duffer” who tried to flirt with her with the uninspired “Has anybody told you you're a very pretty girl?” Of this pickup line Taylor later recalled, “Oy gevalt, here's the great lover, the great wit, the great intellectual of Wales, and he comes out with a line like that.”

One morning, Burton, in his first big scene with Taylor, appeared on the set with a hangover. Elizabeth, never particularly maternal, immediately became so and felt an urge to not only mother, but smother him with attention. She gazed into his intense green eyes and, as she recalled: “And that was it—I was another notch.”

When it came time for the love scene between Antony and Cleopatra, Burton and Taylor were no longer playing a role. When Mankiewicz told them to cut after a passionate scene, his order went unheeded. The director recalled, “To be on the set was like being locked in a cage with two tigers.”

Fisher tried to get his wife to stop, but that was akin to telling Niagara not to fall. When it appeared Richard was not going to leave his wife, Taylor took an overdose of pills. Perhaps touched at this display of love, Burton proposed to Taylor with a Bulgari pendant, platinum set with an 18.61-karat emerald surrounded by diamonds, designed so it could be detached and worn as a brooch. The diamonds he lavished on Liz would become as legendary as their romance. He later said of his destiny, “I cannot see life without Elizabeth. She is my everything—my breath, my blood, my mind, and my imagination.”

Mankiewicz realized that although his earlier film had been all about Eve,
Cleopatra
was going to be all about Liz and Dick, as the international press, which was swarming the location, had dubbed them in tabloid shorthand. The fallout exceeded even the opulent production: The Vatican accused Taylor of “erotic vagrancy,” tabloids preempted John Glenn's orbit of Earth, and the cold war tensions heating up were back-burnered. The rapidly aging director joined the media circus when a paper stated that he was the one dating Taylor and was using Burton as a decoy. Mankiewicz called a press conference and said, “It's time for the real story to be told. I am in love with Richard Burton and he is in love with me—and we are using Elizabeth Taylor, with her consent, as our cover-up.” He ended by kissing Burton full on the mouth. Liz dubbed the period
“le scandale.”

During filming in Italy, six thousand extras had been hired to cheer Queen Cleopatra's entrance, a scene that Elizabeth felt might instead result in her impromptu stoning, a fear predicated on the Vatican's condemnation. Nevertheless, in the spirit of “the show must go on” and reassured by her co-star, she allowed herself to be hoisted atop the sphinx. Her fears were unfounded; the crowd instead burst into a wild chorus of “Leez! Leez!” During the screening of both the on-screen and off-screen epic, Darryl Zanuck remarked to Mankiewicz, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to its leading actors, “If any woman behaved toward me the way Cleopatra treated Antony, I would cut her balls off.”

The Burton-Taylor marriage took place on March 15, 1964, in Montreal. The only jewelry the bride wore was the Bulgari pendant. When they stopped over at a hotel in Boston, a hysterical crowd clawed at the newlyweds. Burton's coat was ripped and Taylor's ear was bloodied when someone tried to steal one of her earrings. The age of Liz and Dick had begun.

As a token of his affection for Valentine's Day 1969, Burton presented his wife with the 50-karat La Peregrina Pearl, which had once belonged to Mary I of England. To showcase the gem, Richard also acquired a portrait of Queen Mary wearing the pearl.

However, Richard's gifts were not just material in nature. A lifelong wordsmith, he wrote countless letters to his lady love. In one he stated, “Well, first of all, you must realize that I worship you. Second of all, at the expense of seeming repetitive, I love you. Thirdly, and here I go again with my enormous command of language, I can't live without you.”

Elizabeth also paid tribute: “Richard was magnificent in every sense of the word ... and in everything he ever did. He was magnificent on the stage, he was magnificent in film, he was magnificent at making love ... From those first moments in Rome we were always madly and powerfully in love. We had more time but not enough.”

Unfortunately, their volatile tempers led to numerous fallingsout. At hotels they rented suites above and below their own so other guests wouldn't overhear their brawling. After one huge alcohol-fueled fight, Richard swore her off until he saw her in his favorite blue nightie, after which the door was slammed and they engaged in what he called “lovely love.” In 1974, Taylor finally called off the marriage in a press release: “Maybe we loved each other too much.”

However, the two remarried the very next year. Burton said of his remarriage, which followed on the heels of their divorce, “I found her irresistible, and in the end I found myself on one knee—literally—proposing to her. I'd actually stopped drinking by then, so I should have been sober enough to know what I was doing, but I didn't. So after she accepted, I got drunk ... I knew it was over before it had begun.” The second ceremony was in Botswana, officiated over by a commissioner of the Tswana tribe who asked if they “understood the consequences of marriage.” Nevertheless, the couple each said, “I do.” Richard vowed to stop drinking, but he binged on their honeymoon. Their second attempt at holy matrimony lasted less than a year. Elizabeth said of their second failed nuptials, “I love Richard Burton with every fiber of my soul but we can't be together.”

The modern-day counterparts of Antony and Cleopatra, though divorced twice, always remained in touch and in each other's hearts. In 1984, in Switzerland, Richard died in his sleep of a brain hemorrhage. Upon hearing of his death, Elizabeth became so hysterical that her then-fiancé, Mexican lawyer Victor Luna, ended their engagement. When she returned to her Bel Air home after his memorial service, she found a last letter from Richard. In it he had written that he wanted to come home, and home was Elizabeth.