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.
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