Furious Love (59 page)
Authors: Sam Kashner
“What to do about Elizabeth” had been the topic of discussion in Céligny and Wales after Richard's death, but Elizabeth had always known what to do. She returned to Los Angeles, determined to get on with her life. She broke off her halfhearted engagement to Victor Luna. She turned down all offers to talk publicly about Richard Burton. The press had already written what they'd wanted about “Liz and Dick.” After all, the Burtons had once made marriage seem glamorousâeven dangerous. Even Larry King, years later, couldn't get Elizabeth Taylor to talk about Richard Burton. Elizabeth told the talk show host, “Those are
my
memories.”
She would write two more books,
Elizabeth Takes Off (On Weight Gain
,
Weight Loss
,
Self-Image
,
and Self-Esteem
), and
Elizabeth Taylor
,
My Love Affair with Jewelry.
Burton had always wanted to write and publish books, but except for a handful of published articles and
two brief autobiographical works, no book was finished. He'd tried a novel, unfinished and unpublished, but it would turn out that the book he'd meant to writeâthe rich, deep, detailed story of his lifeâexisted in his hundreds of pages of diary entries, notes for a novel never finished, but complete and revealing in themselves.
Elizabeth had starred in one more feature film before Richard's death, an Agatha Christie mystery called
The Mirror Crack'd
, in 1980, appearing with a number of aging, former A-list Hollywood actors: Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, and her dear friend Rock Hudson. When Hudson died in 1985 from the mysterious illness that was plaguing gay men at the time, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, Elizabeth mourned the wasting away of her once strapping costar in
Giant.
She was devastated by his death, and by the fact that he had tried to hide the nature of his illness, just as he had always had to hide his homosexuality in an era and a profession that wouldn't allow him to be who he was. Furious about the way the Reagan administration and her own industry were ignoring the pandemic, Elizabeth was determined to confront the disease that so many were dying from. She became the public spokeswoman for AIDS research, raising millions of dollars to develop a cure and treatment, and to change the public attitude about the disease and toward homosexuality itself. By 1992, she had done more to raise awareness of AIDS than any other American. When people were afraid of being in the same room with AIDS patients, Elizabeth often visited them at a hospital in Los Angeles. During one such visit, she delighted the patients by climbing into bed with a man being treated for AIDS. She said to the astonished fellow, “It's the perfect relationship! I don't want to get married again, and you're probably not interested in me.” They cheered and applauded her for that. Richard would have been proud of her, and, in fact, she later said that her interest in AIDS research sprang in part from his hemophilia, and his shame over his early same-sex dalliances.
In 1988, after a relapse of prescription drug abuse, she returned to the Betty Ford Clinic. There she met a fellow patient, a tall,
good-looking construction worker and former trucker named Larry Fortensky. Reader, she married him.
After fourteen years without a feature film, Elizabeth would next appear in a cameo role in the comedy
The Flintstones
, as Pearl Slaghoople, Fred Flintstone's shrewish, bejeweled mother-in-law. She would do a number of movies for television, finally appearing in Tennessee Williams's
Sweet Bird of Youth
in 1989 and in
These Old Broads
in 2001, mostly as a favor to her old friend and former “rival,” Debbie Reynolds. She would discover that she really did have a head for business, launching two perfumesâPassion and White Diamondsâwhich would earn her more money than she had ever made in her film career. At $200 per ounce, Elizabeth Taylor's Passion was among the best-selling perfumes in America by the mid-1990s, making Elizabeth one of the richest women in the country.
Over the decades, many of her film performances have been reassessed, even those trapped in bad movies. The films of her European period bear a second lookâshe's genuinely moving in
Secret Ceremony
, for example, as the haunted mother of a drowned child. Her performances in her best filmsâ
A Place in the Sun
,
Giant
,
BUtterfield 8
,
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
,
Suddenly, Last Summer
,
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?â
are now seen as exemplars of great movie acting. Burton knew what he was talking about when he called her “the greatest film actress in the world.”
In 1998, there was one small coda to
Le Scandale
brought about by the death of Elizabeth's treasured friend, Roddy McDowall. The former child actor had known Elizabeth for fifty-six years, and had taken some of the most beautiful photographs of her. He had acted with Elizabeth in
Lassie Come Home
, he had acted with Richard in
Camelot,
and had been in Rome with Elizabeth and Richard in
Cleopatra
. As McDowall lay dying in his home in Studio City, California, sitting at his bedside were Elizabeth Taylor and Sybil Burton Christopher. He had been loyal to them both. Thirty-four
years after
Cleopatra
, the old rivalry between the women no longer mattered.
In the 1980s, Elizabeth had famously befriended another cultural icon, the strangely boyish Michael Jackson. She felt a kinship with him, as both had been denied true childhoods, yet at the same time had been able to indulge their childish whims well into adulthood. She appreciated his genius as a performer, especially as she knew how shy and insecure he was at heartânot unlike Richard. And, like Richard, Michael Jackson scorned his physical appearance. Elizabeth was touched when the troubled star told her that his favorite role of Elizabeth's had been Helen Burns, the little orphan in
Jane Eyre
whose long, beautiful hair is shorn by Brocklehurst, the sadistic head of the orphanage. “You know, of all of my films, that was Michael's favorite,” she reminisced.
She married Larry Fortensky in 1991 at Jackson's Neverland Ranch in California. But her marriage to Fortenskyâher eighth, if you count Richard twiceâlasted less than four years. She would later say, “After Richard, the men in my life were just there to hold the coat, to open the door. All the men after Richard were really just company.” Elizabeth always considered herself married to Burton and has never changed the stipulation in her will that she be buried beside him.
In 2007, Elizabeth made perhaps her last appearance in a play when she performed A. R. Gurney's
Love Letters
with James Earl Jones at Paramount Studios. It was a charity performance to raise funds for mobile AIDS units, and when she was wheeled onstage, as she now often relies on a wheelchair, she was met by a standing ovation. Liz Smith was there, and she was as impressed as the audience was by Taylor's moving performance in a play that chronicles a long, loving relationship through the exchange of letters. Liz Smith noticed that if the crowd cheered her on her entrance “for her history and courage,” by the end of the play, their standing ovation was for Elizabeth, the actress.
But then again, Elizabeth knew something about love letters. She received her last one in Bel Air. Richard had mailed it on August 2, 1984, so it arrived a few days after his death. It was waiting for Elizabeth when she returned from London, after attending Richard's memorial service there. It was his final letter to her, the one he had slipped away to write in his study at Céligny, surrounded by his books. It was a love letter to Elizabeth, and in it he told her what he wanted. Home was where Elizabeth was, and he wanted to come home.
She's kept that letter by her bedside ever since.
S
ally Hay Burton discovered these two poems among Richard Burton's papers after his death. The untitled poem is a nostalgic farewell to Wales, written in a style influenced by his friend and countryman Dylan Thomas. “Portrait of a Man Drowning” was apparently written in November of 1965, while Burton was filming the bleak, Cold-War era film,
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
. Neither poem has been published before now.
The mountain earth feels damp against my hand;
Around me sway a thousand sap-filled stalks
Of tender grass; The cows browse drowsily
Below me in the fields, and silly sheep
Bleat so pathetically. Dusk descends
And makes the cool earth cooler; lovers slow
In Sunday best drift past like ghosts of laughs
And murmurings; and some go up and some
Go down the mountain.
I see the gamblers hide behind some hedge or shade,
And play silently between dexterity
Of toil's blunt fingers shuffling dirty cards;
And panting greyhounds run a merry race around them
In the fading light.
There is no life stir now
There is no hub-bub of activity;
The rushing of the whispering waterfall
Breathes silence on the mad tormented valley.
The voices rise insidiously as is
The creeping dusk. “Abide with me,” they moan,
A hundred coal-fogged voices harmoniously
Goad up in an ecstasy of melancholy magic;
All is still.
And there were things that made me;
Grew around the core of my young soul,
But I have other worlds for whom to weep;
I shall return no more.
âR
ICHARD
B
URTON
“PORTRAIT OF A MAN DROWNING”
Who can he be
That man alone in the saloon bar's corner?
Who can he be
That man alone, solitary, musing.
Remembering
What can he be?
The shoulders hunched.
The face pocked, rived and valleyed
With a lifetime's small tragedies.
The slanting mirror on the wall
Emblemed in Coope and Alsop
Reflecting his receding hair,
His thick shoulders,
His silent simian hirsute hands.
What is, what was the weight that sloped
Those hunching shoulders?
That man alone, solitary musing. Thinking
Of what can he be.
Nothing?
Or does he live again the nightmare
Of all the same he suffered and made others to suffer,
The torn promise, the shattered word,
His red hand caught in the emotional till,
The things he had never done and never would do now,
Lost lovely things. The hopeless things long lost,
The hot blush of childhood lies,
Love and hate and fear and love again and hate
And the ultimate terrible ineluctable wrath of God.
Does he hear the silent howl of death?
Hunched, solitary, silent.
That man alone in the saloon bar's corner
That man alone, solitary, musing,
Who can he be?
I lift my eyes from the bitter pint.
I see that man in the mirror.
That man is me.
âR
ICHARD
B
URTON
, N
OVEMBER
5, 1965
PREFACE
“I am forever punished⦔: Undated letter from Richard Burton, B-T Archive.
“Since I was a little girl⦔: Elizabeth Taylor,
Elizabeth Takes Off
(New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1987), 83.
“the most vivid example⦔: Authors' interview with Liz Smith and Denis Ferrara.
“On the face of it⦔: Ibid.
“My blind eyes are desperately⦔: Undated letter from Burton, B-T Archive.
“Richard was magnificent⦔: Private letter to authors from Elizabeth Taylor.
CHAPTER 1:
LE SCANDALE
“I did not want to be another notch⦔: Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Meryman,
Elizabeth Taylor
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965), original manuscript.
“How did I know the woman⦔: Paul Ferris,
Richard Burton
(New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1981), 153.
“swank houseâ¦. It had been a hell of a year⦔ Burton notebooks, Melvin Bragg,
Rich
,
The Life of Richard Burton
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988), 89.
“the most astonishingly self-contained⦔: Graham Jenkins,
Richard Burton
,
My Brother
(New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 5.
“I was so totally chaperoned⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, 68.
“You and your studio⦔: Ibid., 16.
“When I met Nicky⦔: Elizabeth Taylor,
Elizabeth Taken Off
(New York: Berkley Books, 1987), 64
“Hey, Mac, get out of the way⦔: Lester David and Jhan Robbins,
Richard & Elizabeth
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1977), 85.
“Todd's living up to his legend⦔: S. J. Perelman,
Don't Tread on Me
(New York: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1987), 172.
“Go on, hit me⦔: Donald Spoto,
Elizabeth Taylor
(London: Time Warner Book Group, 1995), 126.
“She's as wistful⦔: Oscar Levant,
The Memoirs of an Amnesiac
(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1965), 282.
“She was a woman who loved⦔ Eddie Fisher,
Been There
,
Done That
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 1999), 152.
“Blood Thirsty Widow⦔: Elizabeth Taylor clipping file, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“Mike is dead and I'm alive!”: David and Robbins, 99.
“Anyone who is against me⦔: Eddie Fisher,
Eddie
:
My Life
,
My Loves
(New York: Harper & Row, 1981), photo insert.
“If Todd said steak medium rare⦔: David and Robbins, 98.
“I lost to a tracheotomy”: Spoto, 247
“Don't do it.”: Hume Cronyn, interviewed on DVD release of
Cleopatra.
“I can be an actress or a woman⦔ Joe Mankiewicz,
All About Eve.
“Why couldn't they let me⦔: David and Robbins, 68.
“small expenses”: Ruth Waterbury,
Richard Burton
,
His Intimate Story
(New York: Pyramid Books, 1965), 107.
“tried homosexuality⦔: Burton's BBC Interview with Michael Parkinson, November 23, 1974, BFI Archive; Bragg, 258.
“rather full of himself,” “cold fish eye”: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, 103.
“a movie star but a genuine⦔: Ibid.
“a boxing poet”: Emlyn Williams, interviewed in Tony Palmer's documentary,
Richard Burton
:
In from the Cold.
“there was a lot of hemming⦔: Ferris,
Richard Burton
, 151.
“Has anybody ever told you⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, 102.
“couldn't wait to go back⦔: Ibid.
“You're too fat”: Waterbury,
Richard Burton, His Intimate Story
(New York: Pyramid Books, 1965), 112.
“so bloody marvelous”: Ibid.
“He was kind of quivering⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, 103.
“Joe, what's going on here?” to “not
doing
anything”: Fisher, 205.
“who knows how much⦔: Fisher,
Been There
,
Done That
, 202â03.
“At some point after⦔: Fisher,
Eddie: My Life
,
My Loves
, 205.
“the busboy,” Kitty Kelley,
Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1981), 199.
“I must don my armor once more⦔: Bragg, 145.
“Print itâ¦Would you two mind⦔: Waterbury, 115.
“I am Isisâ¦I am the Nile⦔: Joseph Mankiewicz,
Cleopatra.
“Mike Todd⦔: Kelley, 201.
“From that first instant⦔: Mankiewicz.
“To have waited so long⦔: Ibid.
“Elizabeth was not used to⦔: Jenkins, 123.
“Even if he hadn't destroyed⦔: Fisher,
Been There
,
Done That
, 205.
“I adore this man⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, 104.
“I lust after your smell⦔: Letter from Richard Burton, B-T Archive.
“Tell me the truth⦔: Fisher,
Been There
, 207.
“Elizabeth, who do you love?” anecdote: Ibid., 210.
“Eddie broke the cardinal rule⦔: Authors' interview with John Heyman.
“Ever since Richard and I⦔: Fisher,
Eddie: My Life
,
My Loves
, 211.
“What are you doing there?”: C. David Heymann,
Liz
:
An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor
(Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Stars, 1996), 249.
“Elizabeth and Burton are not just
playing⦔
: Spoto, 264.
“incredibly patient and well informed⦔: Walter Wanger and Joe Hyams,
My Life with Cleopatra
(New York: Bantam Books, 1963).
“It seemed like everybody who worked⦔: Taylor and Meryman,
Elizabeth Taylor
, original manuscript, Private Collection.
“We'd spend weekends there⦔: Ibid.
“I feel dreadful⦔ anecdote: Wanger, 128.
“We drank to the point of stupefaction”: Burton notebooks, Bragg, 365â66.
“I think Burton had finally⦔: Wanger, 217.
“I was a very sick girl”: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, original manuscript.
“Row Over Actor Ends Liz⦔:
Los Angeles Examiner
, Taylor clipping file, Academy.
“I knew it before she did”: Fisher,
Been There
, 219.
“LIZ, EDDY DENY SPLIT”: Ibid., 212.
“I was lost”: Spoto, 272.
“Eddie Fisher Dumped”: Fisher,
Been There
, 223.
“that marvelous voice”: Ibid., 217.
“Don't worry, Elizabeth⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, original manuscript.
CHAPTER 2: VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE
“I was damned helpless⦔: Sam Kashner, “A First-Class Affair,”
Vanity Fair
, July 2003, 148.
“Gstaad is a lonely place out of season”:
Ladies' Home Journal
, November 1965, 151.
“Warren, do you think Elizabeth Taylor⦔: Kashner.
“Tried again to get Elizabeth”: Wanger, 146.
“erotic vagrancy”: Kitty Kelley,
Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1981), 217â18.
“Miss Taylor and Mr. Burton⦔: Spoto, 273.
“sick of being chased”: Wanger, 143.
“It's lunatic. Bessie Mae”: Patricia Bosworth,
Montgomery Clift
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 370.
“In a few weeks”: Fisher,
Been There
, 217.
“Being pulled through that mob⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, original manuscript.
“Leez, Leez! Baci, baci!”: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, 112.
“After my last shot”: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, original manuscript.
“We tried to stay away⦔:
Ladies' Home Journal
, October 1973.
“making too many people”: Authors' conversation with Taylor.
“the most miserable day⦔: Elizabeth Taylor,
My Love Affair with Jewelry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 111.
“I was dying inside⦔: David, 35.
“Richard and I arrived⦔ anecdote:
Ladies' Home Journal
, October 1973.
Sybil Burton's attempted suicide and “severely retarded”: mentioned in several Taylor and Burton biographies, including Tyrone Steverson,
Richard Burton
,
A Bio-Bibliography
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992), 40.
“I loved Richard so much⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, original manuscript.
“Let Sophia stay in Rome!”: Kashner,
Vanity Fair.
“nice little shop” anecdote: Taylor,
Jewelry
, 56, 59, 63.
aware that Mankiewicz blamedâ¦: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
, original manuscript.
“arrogant hairâ¦Imagine having⦔: Ibid.
“it left him with⦔: Authors' interview with Robert Hardy, August 23, 2007.
“She came from the valleys⦔: Ibid.
“One just hoped⦔: Ibid.
“show up for wardrobe fittings”: Kashner,
Vanity Fair
, 141.
“He was one haunted boy-o”: Ibid.
“The family wasn't happyâ¦married to both women.”: Ibid., 145.
“At her best, she was⦔: Interview with Hardy.
“the boozing was prodigious⦔: Bragg, 166.
“The drink was the problem”: Kashner,
Vanity Fair
, 145.
“I know nothing about⦔: Bragg, 167.
“Everybody was extremelyâ¦after lunchâlook out!”: Kashner, 149â150.
“Richard loses his temper”:
Ladies' Home Journal
, November 1965.
“I think the effect Burton had”: Fisher,
Eddie: My Life
, 215.
“Mike [Todd] was a bit of a madman,” Taylor,
Elizabeth Takes Off
, 71.
“my little Jewish tartâ¦it was foreplay to them”: Kashner, 150.
“You couldn't have been⦔: Ibid., 146.
“I was caught off-balance⦔: Ibid., 148.
“Burton and Taylor in their public adultery⦔: Bragg, 164.
“less an actress than a great⦔: David and Robbins, 143.
“The mountain of notoriety⦔ and subsequent reviews:
Cleopatra
clipping file, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“She was the reverse⦔: Spoto, 268.
“wisely tried to ride it⦔: Bragg, 151.
“These were larger-than-life⦔:
Life
, April 1963, 63.
“Has it been his name⦔ and subsequent dialogue: Mankiewicz screenplay,
Cleopatra
, DVD.
“who stood always in Caesar's footsteps⦔:
Life
, 63.
“a masculine façade⦔: Ibid.
“who talks incessantly⦔: Kenneth Tynan's interview with Richard Burton,
Playboy
, September 1963.
“The ultimate desertion?⦔: Mankiewicz,
Cleopatra
, DVD.
CHAPTER 3: A YEAR IN THE SUN
“My father would never say⦔: Joseph Roddy, “Visit with Richard Burton,”
LOOK
, January 28, 1964.
“Ever since I'd been ten⦔: Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor
book excerpt,
Ladies' Home Journal
, November 1965.
“The happiest days⦔: Ibid., 15.
“National Velvet was really me”: Kelley, 21.
“I will grow⦔: Ibid., 121.
“I worked harder⦔: Ibid.
“Oh, Elizabeth, darling⦔: Ibid., 23.
“I'm the son of a Welsh⦔: Kenneth Tynan, “
Playboy
Interview: Richard Burton,”
Playboy
, September 1963.
“Which one?”: John Cottrell and Fergus Cashin,
Richard Burton
,
Very Close Up
(Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 6.
“The seven boys born to Dic⦔: Ibid.
“remarkable. Each and every one⦔: Authors' interview with Robert Hardy.
“To have Dadi Ni's boys⦔: David and Robbins, 26.
“I did it, even though⦔: Ibid.
“bridge over the ford⦔: Jenkins, 17.
“It was our parents⦔: Jenkins, 18.
“by dribbling [two] eggs⦔: Waterbury,
Richard Burton
, 16.
“Dic was a real sweet⦔: Cottrell, 8.
“the drinking was tremendous⦔: Ibid., 10.
Burned in a mine fire anecdote, Hilda Owen interviewed in Tony Palmer's
In from the Cold.
“no ordinary woman⦔: Burton,
A Christmas Story
(London: Hoddard & Stoughton, 1964, 1989), 44.
“When my mother had died⦔: Ibid., 47.
“He was never smacked⦔: Jenkins, 21â22.
“quick to discover⦔: Ibid., 23.
“The chapel was our⦔: Ibid., 223.
“spoke the most perfect Welsh⦔: Hardy.
“a wild, breathy, passionate⦔: David, 27.
“The Welsh gift of language⦔: Cottrell, 11.
“the boy had spots”: Jenkins, 31.
“Not having to act⦔: Ibid., 38.
“he had the rough good looks⦔: Ibid., 38.
“However often the advantages⦔: Ibid., 41.
“Burton's tragedy⦔: Joseph Mankiewicz interviewed, Palmer's
In from the Cold.
“â¦a shrewd Welsh boy⦔: Kenneth Tynan,
Curtains
(New York: Athereum, 1961), 11â12.
