Furious Love (27 page)

The Burtons enjoyed Brando's playfulness, and Richard especially enjoyed Brando's eclectic knowledge (Native American history, the biology of electric eels). They would have good-natured arguments about what was the easiest language to learn—Richard insisted that it was English, while Marlon insisted that Spanish was unquestionably easier. Most of these dorm-room jaw sessions took place over vodkas before and after dinner, Marlon wondering how many “misguided people” would be waiting for him outside his hotel room. Brando actually felt sorry for his fans. He felt they were wasting their lives. Elizabeth was far less gloomy about the whole thing. She saw her fans as a part of her job; she didn't live for their approval—hardly!—but she didn't pity them either. It could be worse, she told them. “We could be the Beatles.”

Burton wrote in his diary that he didn't find Brando boring or pretentious, qualities that Richard loathed, and that he often fretted he had been guilty of himself. That's one reason for the drink, the stories, all those anecdotes that flooded out of him, because he felt he had to be “interesting.” Some people, like their lawyer, Aaron Frosch, always felt badly around Richard, no matter how much Elizabeth tried reassuring them (“Richard likes you, he thinks you're absolutely brilliant.”). Frosch worried that Richard was bored with his company.
“What do you have to do to be friends with him,” Frosch asked Dick Hanley, “memorize poetry?”

John Huston himself was trying to make a comeback after directing a string of flops, including
The Bible
, which Richard and Elizabeth had first seen together in Rome (Richard saying that his favorite part was “Creation”). Huston was an important director to Burton. It was in
The Night of the Iguana
that Richard began to take film acting with the same kind of seriousness as Elizabeth. And it was in Puerto Vallarta, a place Huston loved as well, that Richard and Elizabeth had felt relaxed, comfortable enough to completely indulge their sexual desire for each other. It had been a powerful combination, acting under Huston's direction and spending nights with Elizabeth. Richard thought that sex with Elizabeth had brought him even greater strength as an actor, and he had marveled that he could be that enthralled by one woman over such a long period of time. For someone who prided himself on moving on, acquiring “another notch on his gun belt,” in Elizabeth's words, this was seemingly the last notch. It surprised him and delighted her. He admitted to Huston (himself a notorious womanizer) that Elizabeth was the only woman he thought he could kill someone over, out of jealousy. Her body still excited him, and when she was ill, he counted the days before they could be together again.

So, both Burtons associated Huston with Mexico and their passion for each other. And Huston repaid the compliment by praising Elizabeth's theatrical gifts, describing her in his memoir as a “supremely fine actress.” Always impressed with physical courage, Huston marveled at Elizabeth's horsemanship. In spite of nearly constant back pain, she rode a white stallion in the film, and rode it well.

Over the next decade, the Burtons would earn approximately $88 million (about $616 million today), and spend three-fourths of it on furs, diamonds, paintings, designer clothes, travel, food, liquor, a yacht, and a jet. The production company they'd formed to produce
The Taming of the Shrew
, named Taybur (for Taylor-Burton), became the holding company for their wealth, though
Shrew
would be the first and last film they produced. When the Burtons contemplated taking a three-month hiatus from making films, the movie industry shuddered, because, as one observer noticed, “nearly half of the U.S. film industry's income…came from pictures starring one or both of them.” The year 1967 alone would see the release of three Burton-Taylor films:
The Taming of the Shrew
,
Doctor Faustus
, and
The Comedians
—and, for Elizabeth, the release of
Reflections in a Golden Eye
. “They say we generate more business activity than one of the smaller African nations,” Burton admitted, shaking his head in wonder.

They invested $50,000 in the Vicky Tiel Boutique in Paris, bought a ten-passenger, twin-engine de Havilland jet for $1 million (named
Elizabeth
) and paintings by Utrillo, Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir, Rouault, Pissarro, Degas, Augustus John, and Rembrandt (Elizabeth very much her father's daughter in her eye for ever-appreciating works of art). They bought a fleet of Rolls-Royces and invested in real estate: 685 acres on Tenerife in the Canary Islands (where they grew bananas), 10 acres of land in County Wicklow, Ireland (where they bred horses), in addition to Casa Kimberly in Mexico, with its spectacular view of the Banderas Bay, replete with pre-Columbian art given to them by the Mexican government (for putting Puerto Vallarta on the map as a tourist destination). And, of course, they held on to their three homes—his in Céligny and Hampshire, and hers in Gstaad.

Despite their vast real estate holdings, they continued to live mostly in hotels, booking entire floors to house their entourage and their children. When they ordered room service, they often ordered it from another country: in Rome, it was chili flown in from Chasen's in Los Angeles; in Paris, pork sausages flown in from Fortnum & Mason in London.

And then there was the entourage they supported. One of them, Emlyn Williams's son Brook, estimated that Burton was supporting forty-two people at one time, including his brothers and sisters, whose
houses and cars he bought and whose retirement pensions he funded. And they kept bodyguards on the payroll for each of their five children—Michael, Christopher, Liza, Maria, and, ever more frequently, nine-year-old Kate Burton, who began spending more time with her father and Elizabeth. Jessica, whom Richard rarely saw, was still institutionalized. Richard paid for that, too. But Richard and Elizabeth loved having Kate around. Now that Sybil was remarried and the mother of a son, Kate was allowed to spend more time in the Burtons' fantastical menagerie.

“Kate came to stay with us from London, with Ifor and Gwen as guardians,” Burton wrote in his diary on September 27, 1966. “She looked bonny and long-legged and freckled and slightly pigeon-toed. She is so far physically so like us that she takes my breath away. There's no sign of Syb in her at all…” Richard was pleased to see how Kate took to Elizabeth. (“[S]he is loving and quite clearly loves E., and E. her.”) When both Kate and Elizabeth came down with the flu, they spent the day recovering in bed together, gossiping and taking each other's temperatures. Richard carried Kate to her bed when she fell asleep, “because cunningly, she thought, perhaps, that she could sleep the whole night with E…. but I was firm and took her away.”

As their entourage grew, Elizabeth and especially Richard became increasingly isolated from their old friends. Just to get past security, guests would often have to wear badges before being ushered into the Burtons' presence on movie sets. The Burtons often sat, isolated in their luxurious hotel suite, wondering why they never heard from anyone. Robert Hardy had watched this happen, as it became increasingly impossible for him to see his old friend from their Oxford days.

John Gielgud recalled that the Burtons never carried any money, like the royal family, so they relied upon members of their entourage to take care of everything. He remembered having lunch with Richard in a New York City restaurant during the run of
Hamlet
. Gielgud was pleased to see that Richard had apparently slipped out of the clutch of his handlers and assistants, but when it came time to pay
the bill, Burton waved his hand and said, “Oh don't worry. They'll pay.” Gielgud looked around and realized that all the neighboring tables were taken by the Burton entourage, like extras on a set, waiting to be summoned.

By the end of 1966, despite their tremendous wealth, the Burtons' expenses were so high that at times they found themselves short of funds. Besides their constant travel and gift-giving, Burton was sending big annual Christmas checks to his many brothers and sisters. That's one reason they agreed to appear in MGM's screen version of
The Comedians
, Graham Greene's jaded political drama set in François “Papa Doc” Duvalier's Haiti: they needed the money. For the first time, Richard's salary ($750,000) eclipsed Elizabeth's ($500,000), and, also for the first time, Richard Burton was given top billing over Elizabeth Taylor. Peter Glenville, the film's producer and director, had not especially wanted Elizabeth to play Richard's love interest in the movie—the ambassador's wife, Martha Pineda—but Burton insisted. She reportedly accepted the role just to accompany Richard to Africa. “I'm just a broad, but Richard is a great actor,” she told Glenville, and that's why she'd asked for only half of her usual salary.

Expectations were high for the film, which combined an important political cause, a top-flight cast and crew, and a renowned writer. Burton, who was in awe of writers, greatly admired Graham Greene, who was adapting
The Comedians
for the screen even before the book was published. The Burtons also admired Glenville, who had so ably directed Burton in
Becket
, and their fellow cast members, especially Sir Alec Guinness, who played the bogus commando Major Jones. They were also fond of Peter Ustinov (Burton thought Ustinov one of the best conversationalists he'd ever met), appearing as the ambassador in the film. The cast was rounded out by silent-screen actress Lillian Gish, veteran comedic actor Paul Ford, and some of the most notable black actors of the day, including James Earl Jones, Roscoe Lee Browne, Raymond St. Jacques, and a young
Cicely Tyson in her second film appearance. (The year before, Tyson had debuted in
A Man Called Adam
with the Burtons' good friend Sammy Davis Jr.)

Guinness was apprehensive about seeing Burton again, because over the last few years he had made several calls on the Burtons, leaving unanswered messages at the Dorchester, and had even sent gifts that had been returned. Richard was surprised to hear that—he'd had no idea. Apparently, their entourage was doing more than just keeping their household safe and functioning; they were keeping the Burtons from their oldest friends.

During the filming of
The Comedians
, the Burtons added another person to their entourage: Gianni Bozzacchi, a photographer and retoucher still in his teens, whom Elizabeth hired to make sure all the photographs of her that went out into the world were as beautiful as humanly possible. “I used to be considered the number one retoucher in Italy,” Bozzacchi recalled, “and not only in Italy, because they used to send me stuff to retouch from the United States.” He learned his skills from his father, Bruno Bozzacchi, a famous restorer of priceless manuscripts and photographs in Italy at a kind of “hospital for books,” called Patologia del Libro. (Among other things, Gianni's father worked on such treasures as the letters of Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci.) But Gianni decided early on that he did not want to live his life in a darkroom. He now works primarily as a film producer and photographer. (“I don't have to retouch anymore,” he says, “because I know how to retouch with light.”)

Elizabeth had approval of any pictures published of her, so when the film company decamped to Africa, Glenville hired the famous photographer Pierluigi Praturlon, for whom Bozzacchi worked at the time, to fly to Dahomey with their portable lab. (Pierluigi was both Frank Sinatra's and Federico Fellini's favorite photographer.) “Richard was not that vain,” Bozzacchi recalled, and he didn't require the approval that Elizabeth insisted upon. After all, her face truly was her fortune, and she knew that she had to look beautiful from every angle.

Elizabeth was at first angry when Bozzacchi took candid photographs of her when the production company moved to Nice. She summoned him and said, “You're really good, Gianni, but you're an asshole to have taken these pictures without my consent.” But she liked the shots so much that she invited him to join their moveable feast and chronicle their adventures in photographs. She appreciated the fact that he could do so unobtrusively. “When I take pictures of people, I disappear,” Bozzacchi says. “They don't feel the camera. Even Elizabeth, and she's such an expert. For Elizabeth, it's important the dress is right, and the makeup is right, and that she looks wonderful. As a photographer, you are basically the curator of her image. And the relationship to the camera, you see—if the makeup doesn't work, the hair doesn't work, you see all that. You establish that relationship in communication, you don't even have to talk. And that is a special relationship.”

Bozzacchi, like Peter Medak before him on the set of
The V.I.P.s
, noticed that Elizabeth was even more beautiful in person than on camera. “That's what the world sees: the beauty, the dress, the makeup—but without makeup she glows! With makeup she doesn't. I photographed her without makeup—my God! There's a sensuality always present.” He was struck by the fact that her left and right profiles were equally symmetrical, and he later wrote about her, “If Botticelli were living today, he would be inspired by Elizabeth.”

The tall, curly-haired teenager didn't yet speak English. He felt young and ignorant, and he stayed away from Richard, who could be intimidating. Just seeing the good-looking youth hovering around Elizabeth, taking her pictures, made Richard jealous. “When you get injected into that world, it's a little bit scary. I'd do my work and that was it,” he recalled. But the Burtons treated him like family. He would stay with the couple as their friend and official photographer for seven years. In fact, he met his first wife through the Burtons. Claudye Ettori was working for Elizabeth as her hairdresser on the set of
The Comedians.
Richard would be the best man and Elizabeth the
matron of honor at Gianni and Claudye's June 1968 wedding, which was held at the country home of Alexandre de Paris, Elizabeth's exalted hairdresser (who also counted among his clients the Queen of England; Farah Diba Pahlavi, the wife of the Shah of Iran; and Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco). Because of the Burtons, at least a hundred photographers surrounded the estate, waiting to photograph the wedding party.