Bio - 199 - Elizabeth Taylor: There Is Nothing Like a Dame Read online

  EVERYBODY

  (INCLUDING ELIZABETH TAYLOR)

  HAD A POINT OF VIEW ABOUT

  ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  “She is one of the most misunderstood and underestimated people of our time.”

  —Truman Capote

  “Nobody on earth is better company than Elizabeth Taylor, more lively, more fun, and more of a three-ring circus. When I began seeing her, she was fifty-five and better than ever. The year was 1986. She had divorced Senator John Warner and shed all that weight that John Belushi lampooned on Saturday Night Live. For Elizabeth, looking great was the best revenge.”

  — George Hamilton in Don’t Mind If I Do

  “She was a femme fatale. I was an homme fatale. We made a fatal combination. She told me she wanted to marry me, but she was still a struggling actress at the time. I told her she couldn’t afford me.”

  — Porfirio Rubirosa to Elsa Maxwell

  “Let’s face it: My life seems to lack dignity.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “Elizabeth was a committed wife — at least for the first week.”

  — Lana Turner

  “Elizabeth’s favorite pastime was celebrity gossip. Her definition of celebrity included royalty, world leaders, writers, artists, and musicians, and the occasional Greek billionaire. She needed gossip as fuel to shock at dinner parties. She had to know who was sleeping with whom, who was great in bed, and who was not, and who was well hung. The gay secretaries were especially good at collecting that necessary information, especially Richard Hanley, whose years at MGM had made him a sexpert on the entire film industry.”

  — Vicky Tiel, It’s All About the Dress

  “I lied about being a virgin on my wedding night. Actually, my first sexual experience was giving John Derek a blow-job when I’d just learned to walk, which is only a slight exaggeration. I was very, very young at the time, and he was a child molester.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor at a dinner party in Gstaad in 1968

  “Elizabeth should have acquired more jewelry and fewer husbands. But who am I to cast ‘stones,’ dah-link?”

  — Zsa Zsa Gabor

  “That Krupp diamond is far too vulgar to wear in public.”

  — Princess Margaret

  “After Elizabeth and I smelled each other out, we became two fast friends. Bitches in heat recognize each other.”

  —Laurence Harvey

  “My troubles all started because I have a woman’s body and a child’s emotions.

  —Elizabeth Taylor

  “I was torn in my loyalties between two goddesses—Bessie May and Pussy.”

  —Monty Clift, using his nicknames for Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe

  “I called Elizabeth Taylor and told her that Monty Clift was being held a prisoner in his apartment in New York. He got involved with this dangerous hustler. He’s bringing in guys who want to fuck Monty and charging them a hundred dollars a lay. You’ve got to come and rescue him.”

  — Truman Capote in Key West

  “What is this, a memory test?”

  — Elizabeth Taylor, responding to the justice of the peace at her wedding to Larry Fortensky when he asked her the names of her former husbands.

  “You know, an actress can learn to hate Elizabeth Taylor.”

  — Patricia Neal

  “I often fucked actors who liked to fuck each other—Peter Lawford, Monty Clift (well, I tried at least), Rock Hudson, James Dean, Paul Newman. Or, actors who other actors wanted to fuck—namely George Hamilton, Robert Wagner...do we have all night?”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “No raise. Now get out. You’re such a whore.”

  — MGM’s casting director Benny Thau to Elizabeth Taylor after denying her request for a pay raise

  “Burt Lancaster raped me that night back in April of 1961 after we’d won our joint Oscars for Butterfield 8 and Elmer Gantry. Well, it wasn’t rape exactly, but a gal can pretend, can’t she?”

  — Elizabeth Taylor in 1975

  “Elizabeth Taylor got to sample my noble tool when we made Reflections in a Golden Eye together. Burton found out and was seriously pissed off, probably because I didn’t fuck the sod himself.”

  — Marlon Brando to Carlo Fiore

  “Drugs have become a crutch. I wouldn’t take them just when I was in pain. I needed oblivion, escape...I was hooked on Percodan and of course, I could drink everybody under the table. I had a hollow leg. My capacity to consume was terrifying. I didn’t even realize I was an alcoholic.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “I guess in time all of us fucked her. I know Sammy did. So did Frank. So did Peter, a long time ago. Joey Bishop was the only one who didn’t join the rat race.”

  — Dean Martin about Elizabeth Taylor

  “What did you expect me to do — sleep alone?”

  — Elizabeth Taylor to Hedda Hopper

  “The trouble with Elizabeth Taylor is that she always envied my sex appeal. She just didn’t have it, and I did.”

  — Marilyn Monroe to Clark Gable

  “I have written a sequel to The Wizard of Oz about a 60-year-old Dorothy returning to Oz and I’m talking to Elizabeth Taylor about starring in it. She told me she wants to play the role, and she would be perfect for it.”

  — Rod Steiger, 1998

  “Yes, it’s true. On that infamous night I recited the Gettyburg Address at the Lincoln Memorial wearing nothing but a mink coat. Ask Halston. He was the designer who dressed me.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “In this Age of Vulgarity, marked by such minor matters as war and poverty, it gets harder every day to scale the heights of true vulgarity. But given some loose millions, it can be done — and, worse, admired.”

  — The New York Times on the Taylor/Burton roadshow

  “I know I’m vulgar, but would you have me any other way?”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “Does it matter what Maureen Stapleton weighs? Why the hell does it matter what I weigh? It’s nobody’s damn business what I weigh, but talking about it seems to be a national pastime. And that pisses me off!”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “I visited her in London in the hospital when she had that trachotomy. She had what looked like a silver dollar in her throat. I couldn’t figure out what held it in place, and it surprised me she wasn’t bleeding or oozing. A few nights later, I went out with Eddie Fisher. The next afternoon, Elizabeth told me that Eddie thought I was trying to make a pass at him. At that moment, she played a trick on me and yanked at the plug in her throat, spurting out champagne — I’d brought her a magnum of Don Perignon — all over the hospital room. I thought I was going to pass out.”

  — Truman Capote

  “After I married Mike Todd, he invited Eddie Fisher into our bedroom and pulled the sheet off me, exposing my nude body to Eddie. I think he really wanted a ménage à trois. There are those who say we had one.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “She had the face of an angel and the morals of a truck driver. We’d make love three, four, five times a day. We’d make love in the swimming pool, on Mexican beaches, under waterfalls, in the back seat of a limousine on the way home from a party. There was nothing more erotic than a moonlit beach and Elizabeth Taylor.”

  — Eddie Fisher

  “Did I seduce Mike Todd’s son and Peter Lawford’s son? I wouldn’t put it past me.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “I think Elizabeth is having an affair with Sammy Davis, Jr., but she dismisses the notion, joking that ‘just
over five foot tall’Sammy couldn’t reach that high.”

  — Richard Burton

  “Do you want to know some people I screwed that most people don’t know about? Ardeshir Zahedi, the Iranian ambassador to the United States. Would you believe that Swedish boxer, Ingemar Johansson? Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn, John and Bobby (guess who?), Prince Aly Khan.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor, overheard by the author in 1961, in a bar in Portofino

  “If you leave me I shall have to kill myself. I love you. There is no life without you.”

  — Richard Burton during his second divorce proceedings from Elizabeth Taylor.

  “I hung up the phone after Mike Todd told me he was in love with Elizabeth Taylor. I had been...taken. When I wasn’t looking, I was delivered the knockout punch. I felt jilted. I should have seen it coming. He fell in love too fast. Like that phone call from Moscow to Marlene Dietrich when she was still big news. Like that circus act when he got Marilyn Monroe to ride the pink elephant at Madison Square Garden. And now Elizabeth Taylor beckoning with her little pinkie.”

  — Evelyn Keyes in her memoir, Scarlett O’Hara’s Little Sister

  “In May of 2000, I was critically ill with pneumonia and had a near death experience. I was on the other side, like in a tunnel, and I was with Mike Todd. I held onto him and he said, ‘You have to go back now. You have things to do and I will be here.’ I wanted to stay with Mike. He was my one true love.”

  — Elizabeth Taylor

  “Elizabeth Taylor was the last of the great glamour stars. She was the longest running soap opera in history, and represented all the allure and tragedy that attracts people to Hollywood.”

  — British director Michael Winner

  “I’m old and I’m tired and I’ve represented everyone from that cunt Bette Davis to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Everyone wants to know my secrets. Okay, I’m dying and out of harm’s way now, so I’ll tell you a few — Burton said he liked to fuck Fisher’s ass better than he did Elizabeth’s. She screwed Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy. Tallulah Bankhead masturbated Elizabeth at the dinner table one night. Marilyn Monroe went down on her one night in Las Vegas. Elvis Presley fucked Elizabeth and wanted to do a movie with her. She had a three-way with Monty Clift and Marlon Brando. And I’m only just getting wound up.”

  — Talent Agent Robert Lantz

  “I get pissed off with all the talk of the great love story of my husband Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Yes, they were in love, but they divorced twice. That means their marriages didn’t work. I’m still very bitter about the torch Richard carried for that woman.”

  —Richard Burton’s widow, Sally Hay, in 2011

  “Richard Burton fucked me long before he did the honors with you.”

  — Noël Coward to Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Boom!

  “I knew she would be devastated, shattered by the death of Burton, but I didn’t expect her to become completely hysterical. I could not get her to stop crying. She was completely out of control. I realized how deeply tied she was to this man, how vital a role he played in her life. And I realized I could never have that special place in her heart she keeps for Burton. For me, the romance was over, and I told Elizabeth that.”

  — Victor Luna, Mexican Attorney

  “We have been fighting and have been fighting for over a year now over anything and everything. I dread it at night when she has had her shots of drugs and is only semi-articulate. When she moans and groans in agony, I simply become bored. What is more frightening is she has become bored with everything in life. I have always been a heavy drinker, but now I’m drinking twice as much. The upshoot will be that I’ll die of drink while she’ll go on blithely in her half-world.”

  — Richard Burton in his diary, 1969

  “Being with Elizabeth Taylor is like sticking an eggbeater in your brain. I loved her, and I think she loved me. But on the practical level, she was not the woman I needed in my life. With her, there was a great deal of maintenance. This is not a woman who gets up in the morning and fixes breakfast. By the time she comes downstairs for breakfast, it’s time for dinner. Her life is built completely around Elizabeth, and she needs a man to service her life 24/7.”

  — Robert Wagner

  “In our last chat, I told Elizabeth that getting old is really shit. She said, ‘It certainly is. It certainly is, Debbie. This is really tough. I’m really trying to hang in there.’”

  —Debbie Reynolds in 2011

  “She told me that there had never been a time in her life when she wasn’t famous.”

  — Barbara Walters

  “We just stopped communicating. Why was every guy she befriended gay?”

  — Larry Fortensky

  “‘Stay with me,’Elizabeth said. Curling up close, spoon fashion, I wrapped my arms around her and looked at the room I found myself in. A woman’s bedroom. So inviting. So frightening.”

  — Frank Langella, in his memoirs

  “She was a great broad.”

  — Whoopi Goldberg, commenting on the death of Elizabeth Taylor

  ELIZABETH

  TAYLOR

  THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME

  “There are guilty pleasures. Then there is the master of guilty pleasures, Darwin Porter. There is nothing like reading him for passing the hours. He is the Nietzsche of Naughtiness, the Goethe of Gossip, the Proust of Pop Culture. Porter knows all the nasty buzz anyone has ever heard whispered in dark bars, dim alleys, and confessional booths. And lovingly, precisely, and in as straightforward a manner as an oncoming train, his prose whacks you between the eyes with the greatest gossip since Kenneth Anger. Some would say better than Anger.”

  —Alan W. Petrucelli

  The Entertainment Report

  Stage and Screen Examiner

  Examiner.com

  OTHER BOOKS BY DARWIN PORTER

  BIOGRAPHIES

  Marilyn at Rainbow’s End: Sex, Lies, Murder, and the Great Cover-up

  J. Edgar Hoover & Clyde Tolson--

  Investigating the Sexual Secrets of America’s Most Famous Men and Women

  Frank Sinatra, The Boudoir Singer. All the Gossip Unfit to Print

  The Kennedys, All the Gossip Unfit to Print

  Humphrey Bogart, the Making of a Legend

  Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel

  Steve McQueen, King of Cool, Tales of a Lurid Life

  Paul Newman, The Man Behind the Baby Blues

  Merv Griffin, A Life in the Closet

  Brando Unzipped

  The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart

  Katharine the Great: Hepburn, Secrets of a Lifetime Revealed

  Jacko, His Rise and Fall, The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson

  and, co-authored with Roy Moseley

  Damn You, Scarlett O’Hara, The Private Lives of Vivien Leigh & and Laurence Olivier

  COMING SOON:

  Inside Linda Lovelace’s Deep Throat: Degradation, Porno Chic, and the Rise of Feminism

  Those Glamorous Gabors, Bombshells from Budapest

  FILM CRITICISM

  50 Years of Queer Cinema--500 of the Best GLBTQ Films Ever Made (2010)

  Blood Moon’s Guide to Recent Gay & Lesbian Film

  Volumes One (2006) and Two (2007)

  Best Gay and Lesbian Films- The Glitter Awards, 2005

  NON -FICTION

  Hollywood Babylon-It’s Back!

  Hollywood Babylon Strikes Again!

  NOVELS

  Butterflies in Heat, Marika

  Venus (a roman à clef based on the life of Anaïs Nin)

  Razzle-Dazzle, Midnight in Savannah

  Rhinestone Country, Blood Moon, Hollywood’s Silent Closet

  TRAVEL GUIDES

  Many editions and many variations of The Frommer Guides to

  Europe, the Caribbean, California, Georgia and the Carolinas,

  Bermuda, and The Bahamas

  ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAM
E

  DARWIN PORTER

  ELIZABETH TAYLOR

  THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME

  by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince

  Copyright ©2012, Blood Moon Productions, Ltd.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  www.BloodMoonProductions.com

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-936003-31-0

  Cover designs by Richard Leeds (Bigwigdesign.com)

  Videography and Publicity Trailers by Piotr Kajstura

  Special thanks to Photofest in New York City

  Distributed in North America and Australia

  through National Book Network (www.NBNbooks.com)

  and in the UK through Turnaround (www.turnaround-uk.com)

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  DICK HANLEY

  &

  RODDY MCDOWALL

  AND TO A CAST OF THOUSANDS, FRIENDS AND FOES, WHO SHARED GOOD TIMES AND BAD TIMES WITH DAME ELIZABETH

  ENTERTAINMENT ABOUT HOW AMERICA INTERPRETS ITS CELEBRITIES

  The Films of Elizabeth Taylor

  A Lifetime of Achievement

  There’s One Born Every Minute, Universal, 1942, D: Harold Young, with “Alfalfa” Switzer, Peggy Morgan, Hugh Herbert.

  Lassie Come Home, MGM, 1943, D: Fred M. Wilcox, with Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Edmund Gwenn, Dame Mae Whitty, Elsa Lanchester, Pal (Lassie).

  Jane Eyre, 20th Century Fox, 1944, D: Robert Stevenson, with Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O’Brien, Peggy Ann Garner, Agnes Moorehead.