How to Be a Movie Star (59 page)

"She had such a power about her that night," said Dennis Christopher. "By the time we opened on Broadway—and I'm really a theater snob, so I don't say this lightly—she was brilliant, indelible, on fire."

She knew she'd done well. The applause after the final curtain went on and on. Backstage Chen Sam was a bundle of ecstatic energy. "So many flowers, nowhere to walk," she said. "Oh, well, press on!" So they did, out onto the street, where hundreds lined the sidewalks waiting for a glimpse, cheering and whistling. Striding into Sardi's, Elizabeth broke into tears when the waiting crowd jumped to its feet, shouting "Bravo!" Floating from table to table in her diamonds and pearls, she was a vision in white, her breasts nearly falling out of her low-cut white Halston gown. So many people were there from so many parts of her life. Her daughter Maria, now a striking beauty of twenty. Warhol, of course, and Liza and Halston and Bill Blass. Swifty Lazar sat with Lee Radziwill. Joan Fontaine reminded reporters that Elizabeth had gotten her start in her picture
Jane Eyre.
And Rock Hudson, to whom Elizabeth made a beeline. As Bick and Leslie Benedict embraced, the crowd cheered again.

Not everyone would be as kind to her as Frank Rich. Elizabeth's new—and in some ways feminist—interpretation of Regina didn't sit well with all the critics, and Broadway elitists nodded in agreement when John Simon of
New York
magazine pronounced Miss Taylor "not yet ready for the legitimate theatre." But who cared? The public adored her and the play. This was their "Liz," in all her sensual lust for life. They had come to see a movie star, the kind that people said didn't exist anymore. Already the media was calling Elizabeth the "greatest" or the "last."
The Little Foxes
would be one of the biggest hits on Broadway that season. Elizabeth received Tony and Drama Desk nominations. Taking the show on the road, she made all the money that she needed to keep the yachts fitted and the diamonds polished. And at every stop, the standing ovations would've gone on all night if she had let them.

The cheers that went up for her weren't only in recognition for her thoroughly enjoyable performance as Regina. The public was applauding all the rest of it as well: for winning the Grand National disguised as a boy, for cradling Montgomery Clift in her arms, for her fairy-tale wedding to Nicky Hilton, for the trips around the world with Mike Todd, for being so alive as Maggie the Cat, for fighting off death without ever mussing her hair, for all the magazine covers, for the late-night strolls on the Via Veneto, for donning Martha's gray wig, for the Cartier diamond and the Peregrine pearl, for the yachts and the furs, for Switzerland and Sardinia, for Portofino and Puerto Vallarta.

She'd divorce Warner in due time. There would be one more husband after that, and one more play, with Burton no less, and more movies and television appearances. There would be rehab, twice. There would be her trailblazing, courageous work on behalf of those with AIDS. There would be perfume businesses and jewelry lines. And every one of those endeavors, wrapped in ermine and decorated with diamonds, would be defined by Elizabeth's unparalleled fame. It would be with a movie star's poise and sense of self that she would address Congressional committees, knowing exactly how to move into the room, how to turn her shoulder for emphasis, how to lift her eyes to the camera. She'd learned those lessons at MGM long ago, and she had learned them well. It would be with a movie star's allure that she sold her perfumes, and with a movie star's passion that she spoke of her recovery from addictions. It would be with a movie star's presence that she would continue to draw the cameras, even from a wheelchair. Elizabeth did indeed know how to milk every gasp and every thrill.

The night of her Broadway triumph, as the cheers and the whistles for her echoed up into the rafters, if anyone in the audience had wondered how she had done it, how Elizabeth Taylor had so transfixed the world, all they would have had to do was look inside one of the
Playbill
s that were scattered across the floor. There was just one word underneath her photo, one word that described and explained everything.

That word was
STAR
.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the many people who spoke with me about this project, enlightening me about Elizabeth Taylor, movies, Hollywood, the media, and the enterprise of fame: Henry Baron, Joseph Bottoms, Gianni Bozzacchi, Michael Childers, Dennis Christopher, Dick Clayton, Mart Crowley, Elinor Donahue, Dominick Dunne, Clarence "Doc" Ericksen, Eddie Fisher, Anne Francis, Waris Hussein, Jack Larson, Shirley MacLaine, Tom Mankiewicz, Kevin McCarthy, Mark Miller, Hank Moonjean, Mike Nichols, Austin Pendleton, Gilberto Petrucci, James Prideaux, Martin Ransohoff, William Richert, Noel Taylor, Susan McCarthy Todd, and Susan-nah York. I am also grateful to those who spoke to me off the record, particularly two people who are very close to my subject. The background information they shared proved vital in understanding Elizabeth's story and the celebrity expedition that she navigated so well.

Interviews with subjects now deceased, conducted for previous projects, often proved germane as well. Among them: Alan Cahan, Frank D'Amico, Gavin Lambert, Elliott Morgan, John Schlesinger, Robert Shaw, Emily Torchia, and Miles White.

As always, the most telling information came from primary sources such as letters, journals, ledgers, production memos, and medical records. My deepest appreciation to those archivists who helped me unearth this material: Barbara Hall at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Ned Comstock at the University of Southern California Cinematic Arts Library; Sandra Joy Lee at the Warner Bros. Archives, USC; J. C. Johnson at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University; Randy Thompson at the National Archives and Records Administration, Pacific Region; Jan Levinson at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia; Nicolette A. Schneider, Syracuse University Library; Nancy Schwartz, Sonoma County Library; Debbie DeJonker-Berry, Provincetown Public Library, Massachusetts; and the largely anonymous but always helpful staff of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Colleagues and friends provided information, tips, leads, advice, photos, articles, and encouragement: Clark Bason, Jay Blotcher, Andrew Budgell (
www.dameelizabethtaylor.com
), Craig Chester, C. David Heymann, Peter Howe, Wayne Lawson, Vince Lodato, Patrick McGilligan, Gary Shaw, Sam Staggs, and Allan Trivette (
www.taylortribute.com
).

My assistants, Maggie Cadman in New York and Monica Trasandes in Los Angeles, were tireless and deserve a round of applause.

Thanks also to my parents, William and Carol Mann, for their ever-present support (and for all those items about Elizabeth clipped from the
Daily News
!).

Finally, my gratitude to my agent, Malaga Baldi, for her sense and foresight; to my astute copy editor, David Hough; to Michaela Sullivan, for her gorgeous cover design; to my editors, Andrea Schulz in New York, Walter Donohue in London, and especially George Hodgman, who conceived this idea with me and came up with the title, and who helped ensure that every page was the best it could be; and to my husband, Dr. Timothy Huber, always my first and best critic.

Notes

Abbreviations

AMPAS = Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

GSC = George Stevens Collection

HCSBU = C. David Heymann Collection, Stony Brook University

HHC = Hedda Hopper Collection JWC = Jack Warner Collection

LAT =
Los Angeles Times

NYPL = Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

NYT =
New York Times

USC = Performing Arts Archives, University of Southern California

Where not cited, quotes are taken from personal interviews with the author. On occasion, quotes from printed sources have had grammar adjusted and/ or ellipses discarded, but only if by doing so the original intent, meaning, or accuracy of the quote was not altered.

Prologue: How to Be a Movie Star

[>]
Getting into that shark cage: Private interviews, as well as the
Daily Mail,
August 24 and September 20, 2006.

[>]
"To be in that cage":
Interview,
February 2007.

[>]
 "At her best": Camille Paglia,
Sex, Art, and American Culture
(Vintage, 1997).

[>]
 "I started it": Interview on
Larry King Live,
May 30, 2006, CNN transcripts.

5 "questioning old values": O'Neil was quoted by Lester David and Jhan Robbins in
Richard and Elizabeth
(Ballantine Books, 1978).

[>]
"the Madame Curie": Maureen Orth,
The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex
(Henry Holt, 2004).

[>]
by the reconciliation of contradictions: Richard Dyer,
Stars
(British Film Institute, 1979).

[>]
"the most beautiful": Sarris quoted by Patricia Bosworth in
Montgomery Clift: A Biography
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978).

[>]
the ordinary and the extraordinary: Adrienne McLean, "The Cinderella Princess and the Instrument of Evil" in Adrienne L. McLean and David A. Cook, eds.,
Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal
(Rutgers University Press, 2001).

[>]
"Who is this person?":
Cosmopolitan,
July 1973.

[>]
"that rarest of virtues": George Cukor to Elizabeth Taylor, July 24, 1973, George Cukor Collection, AMPAS.

[>]
"I try not to live a lie":
Look,,
May 7, 1963.

[>]
"movie queen with no ego": Memo from Gloria Steinem to Ray Stark, [nd] 1966, John Huston Collection, AMPAS.

[>]
"She is the good-bad girl":
McCall's,
September 1974.

[>]
"no deodorant like success":
Life,
December 18, 1964.

[>]
"The most ambitious of them all": David Thomson,
The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood
(Little, Brown, 2005).

[>]
"Taylor seems more to co-exist": Ethan Mordden,
Movie Star: A Look at the Women Who Made Hollywood
(St. Martin's Press, 1983).

[>]
"without an iota of braggadocio":
Vanity Fair,
March 2007.

[>]
"But what do I
do
with them?": The breakfast anecdote was told to me by Hank Moonjean, who was on the set.

1. When in Rome

[>]
in her own lively fashion: Interviews with Tom Mankiewicz and Gilberto Petrucci, as well as Eddie Fisher,
Eddie: My Life, My Loves
(Harper & Row, 1981); and Elizabeth Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir
(Harper & Row, 1964); and various newspaper articles (NYPL, AMPAS).

[>]
"It is important": Paddy Chayefsky to Martin Goldblatt, December 13, 1960, Paddy Chayefsky papers, NYPL.

[>]
Her $1 million salary: LAT, December 29, 1961.

[>]
she was lost among them:
New York World-Telegram,
September 29, 1961.

[>]
The term
paparazzi:
Peter Howe,
Paparazzi
(Artisan, 2005); Diego Mormorio,
Tazio Secchiaroli: Greatest of the Paparazzi
(Harry N. Abrams, 1999); catalog for
A Flash of Art: Action Photography in Rome 1953—1973,
an exhibition organized in 2005 by Photology in association with the city of Rome; NYT, May 3, 1959; May 18, 1962.

18 "We discovered that by creating": Mormorio,
Tazio Secchiaroli.

[>]
"You'll see photographs":
Photoplay,
January 1962.

[>]
to bring her the dirt: Interview with Robert Shaw; also Hedda Hopper,
The Whole Truth and Nothing But
(Doubleday, 1963).

[>]
"Now a palazza in Rome": LAT, January 4, 1962.

[>]
Hedda was cheering Jack Warner: LAT, January 24, 1962.

[>]
"What's left for Liz": Hopper,
The Whole Truth and Nothing But.

[>]
two Virginia baked hams: LAT, January 10, 1962, and an interview with Tom Mankiewicz.

[>]
"He was the most important nobody": HCSBU.

[>]
"on the Appian Way": Her address was confirmed by letters written to her and Eddie Fisher by Paddy Chayefsky on January 23 and February 27, 1962, located in the Chayefsky Collection, NYPL.

[>]
the incongruous name of Fred Oates:
Photoplay,
July 1962, and Taylor,
Elizabeth Taylor.

[>]
the lead in a play by Sartre: Paul Ferris,
Richard Burton: The Actor, the Lover, the Star
(Berkley Books, 1982).

[>]
"an irresistible force":
New York Journal-American,
March 12, 1962.