“Every minute this broad spends out of bed is a waste of time.”
—ET’s third husband, Mike Todd
“I once asked Elizabeth Taylor how she felt about being tagged ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ She answered, ‘Oh, that’s just silly. I see better-looking women every day just walking down the street.’” —photographer Tom Gates
“It’s true. She has no idea how beautiful she is. . . . Shortly after she was born the doctor gave us a good scare. The doctor told us she had a mutation. Well, that sounded just awful—a mutation. But he explained that her eyes had double rows of eyelashes.”
—Sara Taylor
“Elizabeth was not a born beauty. At birth she was enveloped in a down of soft brown hair . . . residual hypertrichosis. Fortunately the down covering her whole body faded or fell away with time, and her dramatic black and white coloring emerged.”
—MGM hairdresser Sydney Guilaroff
“Most beautiful? Maybe. Sexiest? Very possibly.”
—actor George C. Scott
“(She) was the funniest-looking baby I had ever seen! Her hair was long and black. Her ears were covered with thick black fuzz and inlaid into the sides of her head . . . and her tiny face was so tightly closed it looked as if it would never unfold.”
—from a 1954 McCall’s magazine article by Sara Taylor
“You look at a photo of the Taylor children, and Howard, a blond, was more beautiful than Elizabeth. His mum said he looked like a Botticelli angel. But Sara didn’t push him into show business. She saved all her efforts for Elizabeth.” —friend Peter Lawford
“She preferred Elizabeth to me or my dad. She was our mother’s favorite. I didn’t mind. Our mother had her involved in singing and dancing lessons by age two. . . . When she was little I nicknamed her Lizzie the Lizard, and she’s disliked being called Liz ever since. Both our grandmothers were named Elizabeth.” —Howard Taylor
“Elizabeth’s middle name, Rosemond, was her father’s mother’s maiden or birth name . . . a beautiful name, don’t you think? When I played her older sister in National Velvet I would sometimes stare at Elizabeth. She was already beautiful, yet different in appearance from anyone else. Ages later we were together in an all-star Agatha Christie adaptation [The Mirror Crack’d]. I played the amateur sleuth Miss Marple, so hair and makeup aged me beyond what I looked. Elizabeth had become somewhat hefty but she was still very striking. . . . It was like rekindling an old friendship.” —Angela Lansbury
“When Elizabeth Taylor became fat it was like a desecration. Most great beauties cling to their looks to a great or an even greater degree. But long before old age, to throw them away, to literally devour them out of existence . . . it was sad and shocking.”
—Oscar-winning French actress Simone Signoret
“When you’ve been a child star and then you become a young woman there is a delayed reaction. You’re used to being seen and treated as a child. At most a precocious adolescent. So when your figure finally begins causing attention from boys, it might take a while to notice it. Or to be sure it’s you . . . and to become secure about your looks. I know.”—Peggy Ann Garner (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
“Elizabeth was already pretty. She was never a tomboy, even though she loved riding horses. What changed was . . . well, her figure. She came out . . . and I gave her her first screen kiss. It was a big publicity deal at the time.”
—Jimmy Lydon, her romantic interest in Cynthia (1947)
“Insiders half expected a secret sexual liaison between Giant costars Rock Hudson and James Dean. For various reasons, it didn’t happen. Hudson disliked Dean’s rudeness and competitiveness . . . and his sullen temperament. Dean thought Rock was a handsome no-talent and may have resented how well-endowed Hudson was, since rumor had it that James Dean wasn’t exactly a big star. Elizabeth was happy to flirt with both men, each vying for her platonic attention against the other man. . . . Had Rock and Jimmy had an affair, you can surmise she’d have felt rather left out.” —ET’s secretary Dick Hanley
“James Dean was ambitious but not intent on a cover-up marriage. Like Rock Hudson, he’d probably have stayed contractually single until forced to marry, to squelch the true rumors. . . . Elizabeth Taylor had a crush on him. Years later, she said, ‘He and I . . . “twinkled.” We had a . . . well, a little “twinkle” for each other.’”
—Richard Barr, stage producer of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
“Elizabeth kept playing daughters in film after film, so there was this look-but-don’t-touch status she retained. It wasn’t until she played young marrieds or not-quite-yet-marrieds that she was marketed as a budding sex symbol. MGM was a more prudish studio than most.”
—casting director turned producer Renée Valente
“Metro sensed what a valuable asset they had in a grown-up Liz Taylor. When she divorced ‘Nicky’ Hilton it was a scandal merely because divorce itself was a scandal then. The awful truth, the why, wasn’t known. . . . Metro would have preferred Liz to stay single after the divorce, but when she remarried they were relieved it wasn’t some young Romeo, let alone one with a famous surname.” —columnist Mike Connolly
“MGM was glad to put Michael Wilding under contract when Elizabeth Taylor took him as her new husband. He was classy and well-mannered . . . he could be depended upon. They knew he was giving up a starring career in England for his new young wife. . . . He never did reach stardom in Hollywood, and when he left almost nobody noticed.”
—columnist James Bacon
“Joan Crawford’s old studio [MGM] was hoping her new musical [Torch Song] would be a big hit. It was her very first movie in color, she still kept a great figure, and her leading man was Englishman Michael Wilding, better known domestically as Elizabeth Taylor’s second husband. It was his big Tinseltown break. . . . Crawford played a rude, self-obsessed star—it wasn’t what her fans wanted to see or believe. The movie bombed big-time.” —Joan Crawford biographer Bob Thomas
“Elizabeth Taylor stopped by the Torch Song set to visit her new husband, who was playing a blind pianist. . . . The male crew was happy to see Liz. Miss Crawford was not. She asked the studio to henceforth ban all visitors. . . . Joan Crawford was Old Hollywood—follow the rules, be a star twenty-four hours a day. Liz was New Hollywood—do your own thing, before anyone called it doing your own thing. The two women disliked each other. Understatement.” —columnist Lee Graham
“On June 21 [1952] Elizabeth announced she was pregnant. . . . Metro added two hours to her usual day’s work, hoping to get her next film, The Girl Who Had Everything, in the can before her pregnancy began to show. . . . On August 1, 1952, after completing The Girl, Metro placed her on suspension because of her pregnancy instead of wishing her well and expressing their appreciation to her for the prosperity she’d brought to the studio ever since childhood.” —ET biographer Ellis Amburn
“When Elizabeth had two sons by Wilding her image shifted. She was now a mother. Not what the studio wanted; they wouldn’t have had her playing mothers for years to come. But Elizabeth was adamant. She’d always wanted children. To her that was more important than the studio or her contract.” —MGM producer Joe Pasternak
“Elizabeth increasingly enjoyed being a mother. I think she decreasingly enjoyed being the wife of a quiet, nice older man. She made that amazing, for its time, public statement that they’d ended up more like brother and sister. Moving on to Mike Todd changed her image. By the time he died and she’d had another child, a daughter, and Elizabeth was latching on to Eddie Fisher, people forgot she’d ever been a mother.”
—MGM star Esther Williams
“Monty Clift spent most of his time in New York. Elizabeth was usually working in Hollywood. When he came west to do a Hitchcock picture, Monty reunited with Elizabeth. He was at her home often, sometimes bringing along Rock Hudson. Elizabeth was very happy that Monty adored Michael [Wilding]. That was like a seal of approval for her.” —Monty intimate Jack Larson
“I’ve read that Clift hated his homosexuality. Untrue. He hated that public knowledge of it might so easily end his career. Elizabeth confirms this . . . she’s appalled by people who can’t distinguish homophobia from homosexuality. She cites Oscar Levant [pianist-actor-wit], who when an ignorant interviewer asked if Oscar was an ‘unhappy Jew’ answered, ‘No. But I’m not too happy about anti-Semitism.’”
—bisexual poet-composer Rod McKuen
“Seems after the marriage to Hilton ended Elizabeth stopped taking her mother’s counsel on matters matrimonial. She made her own decisions, and started choosing her own movie scripts. Sara was not happy . . . but eventually it has to happen, doesn’t it?”
—columnist Dorothy Manners
“I’m friends with a closeted movie star who told me how protective Elizabeth is about Montgomery Clift. Like the time someone said he’d turned down Sunset Boulevard because of his older-woman lover Libby Holman, and the inevitable comparisons between his character with the character Norma Desmond. Liz chimed right in and said the two had been close friends and Holman was not Monty’s lover. Whether or not that was partly out of jealousy, she was negating that irresistible urge most people and the news media have to de-gay someone by pretending they were lovers with an opposite-sex friend or associate.” —J. Russell King, deputy editor of, ironically, the New York Times
“It’s been theorized that Clift would eventually have come out of the closet. Other than optimism, I don’t know what that’s based on. I don’t know Elizabeth Taylor’s opinion, but I doubt he would have. Rock Hudson never did; he only admitted to AIDS, which was then equated with being gay, though now we know three-quarters of PWA [People With AIDS] are heterosexual. Taylor did say Monty lamented that gay actors, in all their roles and with movies’ constant invisibilizing of gay people, were always working ‘in the service of heterosexuality.’ So at least he had a raised social consciousness.”
—actor Ron Vawter (Philadelphia)
“Miss Taylor had a crush on Montgomery Clift. Whether she was in love with him I don’t know. I think everyone’s heard that he was the unrequited love of her life. She evidently accepted the reality and, being a good friend, tried to introduce Monty to nice men who weren’t necessarily showbiz types.”
—Anne Revere, Clift’s mother in A Place in the Sun (due to suddenly being blacklisted during the political witch hunts, most of Revere’s scenes were cut from the movie)
“On the day of that horrific accident, Liz had to persuade Monty to come over to her and Michael’s place that night. Monty was rather tired but Liz tempted him by telling him that another guest would be a hip young priest. And in passing, that somebody thought the priest was gay. Driving back home, Monty was alone. His pal Kevin McCarthy was in the car behind him, but Monty didn’t have the priest with him. If he had, everybody would have known about it, because of the accident. Still, as Oscar Wilde once said, nothing looks so innocent as an indiscretion. Back then, people would have thought, oh, a priest, there couldn’t be anything between them.” —ET’s publicist John Springer
“During the whole time of the scandal about Eddie and Debbie, I don’t think I once read that Elizabeth Taylor was the mother of three children. Instead, she was always the siren who lured Fisher away from his apple-pie marriage. Show business is seldom about reality . . . like they say, half the people in Hollywood are dying to be discovered, while the other half are afraid they will be.”
—film historian Doug McClelland
“Elizabeth helped save Monty’s life after the accident. She scooped out the broken teeth that were plugging his throat and would have choked him. . . . When the press arrived, ready to photograph his bloodied, mangled face, she screamed that if they took one photo of Monty she would never let them photograph her again. Privately, Clift didn’t see what Liz saw in Eddie Fisher, but he didn’t reprimand her, and though Liz disliked Monty befriending Marilyn Monroe when they were in The Misfits, she didn’t scold him. They never criticized each other. It was a platonic but unconditional love.”
—actress Nancy Walker, a close friend of Clift
“Eddie was my first love—and my first divorce. Eddie’s best friend, producer Mike Todd, spent a lot of time with us while we were dating. Mike fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor. Eddie and I stood up for Mike and Elizabeth when they were married. When Mike was killed in a horrible plane crash I took care of their children while Eddie comforted Elizabeth. Then Eddie left our two small children and me for Elizabeth [in 1958].”
—Debbie Reynolds
“What turned Liz Taylor’s image so sexy wasn’t any one movie or her studio. It was her private life. Her mother was hoop-de-doo thrilled about the rich young men who came a-courting. You bet she made sure the columnists reported it! She wanted a prize catch for them—for Liz and herself by extension. She really shared her daughter’s fame, just outside the spotlight. There were rich guys, but when the Hilton boy came along—wealth and a famous family name—basically the mother decided this was the one.”
—producer David Lewis (Raintree County)
“He was a no-good bum, Nicky Hilton . . . living off his father’s achievement. A boozer . . . and whispers about heroin. It took less than a few months of marriage for him to start his physical abuse. Elizabeth was devastated. So was her mother. At first she wanted to save the marriage, but she couldn’t have her daughter black and blue. She did love her . . . so she grudgingly agreed to the divorce.” —MGM alumnus Ann Miller
“Even before Hopper chose to make it public, rumors about Michael Wilding must have reached Elizabeth’s ears. On the other hand, why would she have fled a bisexual fiancé if he was nice and comforting? Her mother had married a nice gay man.”
—MGM star June Allyson
“The marriage to Michael Wilding was made on the rebound. As a reaction against handsome, young, brash and American, violent Conrad Nicholas Hilton Jr. Wilding was older, he was English, polite, soft-spoken. . . . Hedda Hopper warned Liz in print not to marry him because he also liked men. Specifically, Stewart Granger. . . . Ironically, Hopper always shielded the homosexuality of her only son [William Hopper of Perry Mason].” —Ken Ferguson, editor of British Photoplay
“Some have said Elizabeth loved her father so much that she was seeking a father figure in Michael Wilding. I don’t think so. I think as she moved into her mid twenties she wanted more of a conventionally hot ’n heavy heterosexual relationship, and . . . along came Mike Todd.”
—hairdresser Zak Taylor (no relation)
“It took many years for Elizabeth to reveal that Nicky Hilton had not only beaten her but caused her to have a miscarriage. In those days if a man beat a woman, many people presumed she’d somehow caused it. She confessed, ‘I left him after having a baby kicked out of my stomach.’”—ET biographer C. David Heymann
“Elizabeth made no public comment [about Hilton’s death], and was far more grieved by the death of her secretary and trusted confidant Dick Hanley, who died in 1970 after having taken care of her like a father since the death of Mike Todd. She paid for a lavish funeral for Hanley and later held a wake at the Beverly Hills Hotel, sending a spectacular floral display with a card saying, ‘I will love you always—Elizabeth.’”
—ET biographer Ellis Amburn
“When she met Mike Todd the fireworks began. He was a man of the world, self-made and self-named [born Avrom Goldbogen], highly successful and highly sexed. He began showering Liz with jewelry and sex . . . he unlocked her repressed libido, and from then on she became the biggest sex symbol outside Marilyn Monroe.” —Truman Capote
“Nicholas ‘Nicky’ Hilton died at 42 in 1969 of cardiac arrest surrounded by his sizeable gun collection. Not long before, a shrink had stated his intention of committing Hilton to the Menninger clinic.” —columnist Shirley Eder
“It’s almost amusing in a parallel way. Marilyn was criticized for her sexuality on the screen. Elizabeth was criticized for her sexuality off the screen. Marilyn was often laughed at, often the butt of a joke. She was not perceived as a threat—except, in some quarters, to the nation’s morals. Elizabeth Taylor was taken much more seriously—and was perceived as a threat . . . a homewrecker. She got much more heat than Marilyn ever did. Some people disliked Marilyn but few hated her. In her publicity heyday, Elizabeth was quite widely hated.” —Raymond Burr (A Place in the Sun)
“For a while there it seemed like Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe were competing in a famous-husbands sweepstakes. But Marilyn stopped at three husbands—two were already pretty famous when she married them. The only very famous one Liz married was Eddie Fisher. All her others became more famous after she married them.”
—director Richard Brooks (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
“My sister [Joan Blondell] was a star who not only helped make Mike Todd well known, she also made him wealthy. Then he bankrupted her. He took her for some $3 million. . . . When they broke up, Joan said she felt lucky to have survived that marriage with just a broken arm and a nervous breakdown. . . . Todd was violent and a remorseless user.”
—actress Gloria Blondell
“He did hit Elizabeth. More than once. Everybody later admitted that. What kept them together was the great sex and the lavish lifestyle, even if much of it was financed by her. He was an addictive gambler. . . . Elizabeth wasn’t typically submissive, so she sort of enjoyed starting or helping start fights—and she particularly enjoyed making up after a fight.” —Gore Vidal
“I know she doesn’t like being alone, and if the company is male, so much the better. She’s an inveterate flirt. Elizabeth seems to enjoy drama in her life, even dangerous drama. Above all, I think she hates being bored or taken for granted.”
—costar Susannah York (X, Y and Zee; Zee and Company in the UK)
“After one marriage to a drunken maniac and one to a nice but dull older man, Elizabeth was ready to be courted and taken to bed and taken care of. She liked the idea of a strong man taking care of her. Mike Todd was selfish but Elizabeth was infatuated. . . . She was also growing used to living in the public eye. . . . Mike was the first to recast Liz as a voluptuary, and she loved it.”
—costar Paul Newman (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)
“It was a pattern. Her first husband was aggressive, the second was passive. Third was aggressive, fourth was passive. The fifth was aggressive . . . you get the idea. Liz had a high opinion of herself, naturally, but it didn’t preclude allowing a man to occasionally dominate or even rough her up.” —costar James Coco (There Must Be a Pony)
“Who knows but that she would sooner or later have left Mike Todd except that she got pregnant and had a daughter and then he died in an airplane crash?”
—costar and friend Laurence Harvey
“The private plane he crashed in was The Lucky Liz, and she certainly was. Elizabeth usually accompanied Todd whenever possible. He always wanted her around, to show her off. But she was bedridden with bronchitis, taking time off from [shooting] Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. So he flew to New York to be honored by the Friars Club as Showman of the Year or some such title. Elizabeth then suffered a bad case of survivor’s guilt. But she did complete the picture, and she had everyone’s sympathy. For a while. . . .”
—Tennessee Williams
“So far as I know, Eddie Fisher is straight. But he was definitely Mike Todd’s boy. Call it Mike’s charisma or . . . I don’t know. Eddie was this big success in records and TV yet he jumped to do Mike’s bidding, including babysitting Elizabeth Taylor when Mike was away. Mike kept pushing them together, and Eddie kept tagging along with Mike or Mike and Liz. All the while he was married to Debbie Reynolds—the grapevine said it was a loveless marriage but it did produce two kids. Then Mike was killed and Eddie knew he’d have been assigned to comfort Liz. So . . . he comforted her.”—Dean Martin
“Not everyone is one thing or the other. Many showbiz denizens go both ways. Before it was ‘bisexual’ it was ‘double-gaited.’ I don’t doubt Eddie Fisher loved sex with women, if not women themselves. . . . Until Elizabeth Taylor, ‘broads’ were as disposable to Eddie as Kleenex. But Eddie’s happy subservience to Mike Todd goes unexplained. Even before Liz, when Todd was unknown to the public and Eddie was a star, Eddie was so willing and eager to be around Mike, to do whatever he wanted . . . his nickname was ‘Mike’s boy.’ Only because Eddie was such a success at the time, that nickname didn’t damage him.”
—Dick Haymes, another popular singer of the era
“Debbie Reynolds played the innocent wronged wife. She gave a press conference wearing her blonde pigtails and started wearing crucifixes. Eddie dumping her for bejeweled, glamorous Liz Taylor made Debbie into America’s sweetheart. It made Taylor America’s favorite target. She was vilified up and down . . . if her movies hadn’t been hits Hollywood would have dumped her in a second. I have it on good authority Eddie had been planning to divorce Debbie until she announced she was pregnant.”
—Tony Perkins
“I called Debbie and I told her bluntly, ‘I’m with Elizabeth in New York and we’re in love.’ Debbie surprised me with her response. She was very calm. She said, ‘We’ll talk about it when you get home.’ Talk about it! I’d just told her I was in love with another woman and she reacted as if I’d told her I’d be home a little late for dinner.”
—Eddie Fisher
“About a year before Elizabeth Taylor happened to him, or at him, Eddie spoke to Debbie about divorce and they sort of made a plan. But he did nothing about it, maybe due to inertia and being content having a celebrity wife or guilt over being an almost absentee father.” —publicist Dale Olson
“Mike is dead and I’m alive.”
—columnist Hedda Hopper, quoting ET out of context and fanning the flames of hatred against her
“You know how much I loved Mike. I loved him more than my life. But Mike is dead now and I’m alive and the one person who would want me to try and live and be happy is Mike.”
—what Elizabeth Taylor told Hedda Hopper about her relationship with Eddie Fisher
“Debbie enacted the jilted wife to perfection. She appeared in front of the press wearing a diaper pin in her blouse, to remind everyone she was a mother. Her public statement made out that she was shocked and surprised that I was in love with someone else, that we had an idyllic marriage. Never mind that we hadn’t had sex in ages or had worked out details of a divorce some time before. As I read her public statement I began to hate her.”
—Eddie Fisher
“The divorce made its three participants more famous than ever, and two of them richer. The one whose career languished was Fisher. He was beguiled, in love for the very first time. Foolishly, he neglected his career. He needn’t have. Taylor was more blamed and hated than he was.” —ET biographer Alexander Walker
“Elizabeth and Eddie were receiving in the neighborhood of seven thousand angry letters a week. The senders varied . . . disgusted housewives, Ku Klux Klan officials, religious leaders. They received voodoo dolls with pins stuck in their genitals. . . . And other reactions too gross or obscene to mention.” —columnist Mike Connolly
“Ratings for Fisher’s show, cheerily sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes, plummeted. Perversely, people were eager to see ‘that scarlet woman,’ Liz Taylor, seduce her way across the big screen. Her ratings, as it were, went up. Radio and TV were homey mediums. People didn’t want their families exposed to ‘immorality’ in the living room. Whereas the movies were away from home, so people could leave the children behind and go watch and be thrilled.” —film historian Douglas Whitney
“It was the most analyzed and reviled marriage since Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry two-time American divorcee Wallis Simpson and became just the Duke of Windsor.”
—social sciences professor Dixie Rue
“Debbie continued grieving as publicly as possible. At times she told the columnists she didn’t blame me, she blamed Elizabeth for stealing me away. Or she blamed Sinatra and Dean Martin for corrupting me with their drinking and gambling. She said she would welcome me back, explaining how lucky I was ‘to be loved by two women.’ And she posed forlornly for various magazines, including one photo with the kids and a dog, captioned, ‘Can’t Daddy be with us all the time?’ Meanwhile, she continued to work. . . . Within a year her annual income had soared from less than $75,000 to almost $1 million.” —Eddie Fisher
“Eddie told me if he hadn’t met Elizabeth Taylor he would still and certainly have left Debbie Reynolds. His misfortune was not leaving her sooner, so that the nation believed he acted viciously and was destroying a happy marriage. It was the beginning of his end, while it was simply onward and upward for Liz.”
—columnist Jack O’Brian
“I do mind that it’s forgotten, but it is still a historical fact that I earned $1 million a year on TV before Elizabeth signed her million-dollar contract for Cleopatra. . . . That was in 1953 and ten times what President Eisenhower was earning. The most expensive cars were $3,000. Houses were $7,000.”—Eddie Fisher
“I must admit Elizabeth seemed to enjoy the drama that attended their affair—apart from the times when the press grew intrusive and the crowds grew large and ominous. Just to leave the house, she and Eddie had to lie flat in the backseat of a car I or another friend was driving.” —Roddy McDowall
“The only thing that marred our honeymoon was a phone call from Louella Parsons, who asked, ‘Did you know that your son just had a hernia operation in Palm Springs?’ When I told her I knew nothing about it she admitted, ‘Debbie called me to try to find you.’ Debbie had to call one of the most famous gossip columnists in the world to find me? How about reading any newspaper in America? How about calling my agent or my business manager or even my mother? Instead she called a newspaper columnist. And by the time she placed that call the operation was done and Todd was perfectly fine.”
—Eddie Fisher, whose son was named after Mike Todd
“The smear campaign against Taylor continued until her emotional and health problems resulted in a near-coma and her almost dying . . . when they had to perform the emergency tracheotomy in London. So America made peace with its biggest star. Until, on the set of Cleopatra in Rome, she enticed Richard Burton away from his wife and children. All over again, and more so, it was time to loathe Liz.”
—producer Daniel Melnick (That’s Entertainment!)
“I liked Liz Taylor until she kept jumping around from husband to husband. It’s good exercise, but is that dignified?” —Morey Amsterdam (The Dick Van Dyke Show)
“The thing that keeps Elizabeth Taylor from becoming a joke is her wealth and box office and her barely contained anger. And her dignity. I guess that’s really four things.”
—scriptwriter Marguerite Roberts, who during the McCarthy era refused to name names for MGM and was blacklisted, her credit removed from Ivanhoe, costarring ET
“I’ve heard Miss Taylor has breeding and good manners. But the two times I’ve come across her in the flesh, she rather scared me. She’s not someone you go up to and say, ‘Hi, I’m a fan,’ or even, ‘Hello, how are you?’ I guess you could say hello. I’m not sure what her response would be, and I wouldn’t want to gamble and find out.”
—stage set designer Ben Edwards
“I’ve seen at least one man get close to her and stare—because visually she’s mighty impressive—then become tongue-tied and go all goofy-smiling.”
—columnist Dorothy Kilgallen
“Anyone who is against me will look like a rat—unless I run off with Eddie Fisher.”
—presidential widow Jacqueline Kennedy, to a reporter
“She’s tiny, but she’s huge. I mean the impression . . . or impact. I wouldn’t dare approach and ask her for her autograph.” —actress Peggy Cass (Auntie Mame)
“When did she stop being a nice English girl and become a Hollywood tramp?”
—columnist Sheilah Graham to author Calder Willingham
“This country must be running out of eligible Christian gentlemen if she has to go marrying two Jewish men in a row.” —actor and political witch-hunter Ward Bond
“It was the marriage to Mike Todd that spoiled her. She was fairly normal before him—spoiled by her mother, sure. But Todd corrupted her . . . sex, jewelry, cleavage, greed, the high life. He made a big difference in her lifestyle.” —screenwriter Jay Presson Allen
“Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton perfectly encapsulate the decadence of Hollywood stardom. The most materialistic, show-offy, self-satisfied, acquisitive, camera-ready, attention-needy couple the silver screen has yet produced. . . . Hollywood corrupted them and they corrupt each other.” —novelist Henry Farrell
“Eddie Fisher changed her image for keeps. From the moment he left Debbie Reynolds for Liz, she became best known for marriages and more marriages. She became a serial semi-monogamist.” —actress June Haver (wife of Fred MacMurray)
“She has been gifted with beauty she didn’t earn . . . and has misused. She throws it at men and ensnares them. She ruins lives and marriages. She’s what used to be called a vamp . . . a destructive siren.”
—actor Adolphe Menjou
“And now she legitimizes her immoral affair with Richard Burton, divorced father of two, by marrying him. As if it was perfectly legitimate all along. Well, it wasn’t and it is not!”
—Southern evangelist Horace Rufus
“She does not respect marriage. It’s a mere game to her, the culmination of each romantic indulgence. Now that she is become Mrs. Richard Burton the world smiles and oohs and ahs. Mark my words, there will be a divorce. Can you possibly believe otherwise?”
—Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty
“Richard Burton once listed his wife’s qualities for me . . . apart from those to do with beauty and sex he said she was shy, arrogant, witty, strong-willed, loyal, talented, impatient of phonies, tolerant of his excessive drinking, exciting to be around, terrible to be apart from, and that she still loved him.” —Ingrid Sischy, editor of Interview magazine
“If I had known that first night together how our love was going to help destroy my career and, for a time, my life, if I had known how much pain my love for Elizabeth was going to bring me, I still wouldn’t have hesitated. Whatever happened between us, it was worth it.” —Eddie Fisher
“Elizabeth Taylor’s one and only non-tempestuous, even-keeled marriage was the one to Michael Wilding. The irony is that although bisexual, he fathered her two sons—if that’s even ironical. We tend to think in stereotypes.” —British actress Martita Hunt
“Hedda Hopper was a fascist who lambasted President Kennedy for helping to end the witch hunts that targeted Hollywood after the Republicans took Congress in 1947. She was virulently anti-gay . . . tried to ‘out’ Cary Grant, but he was too big a star. After she warned Elizabeth Taylor in print not to marry Michael Wilding, he confessed to Elizabeth that his first wife had proposed to him. Elizabeth married him anyway.”
—ET’s Jane Eyre costar Peggy Ann Garner
“Though Richard Burton was the second grand passion of Elizabeth Taylor’s life, he was homoerotically inclined enough to have had sex with Laurence Olivier.”
—ET biographer Ellis Amburn
“What’s sort of sad is all the post-Burton men Elizabeth Taylor got engaged to . . . nearly married. Each gave her a flashy engagement ring. I think they were all straight, I know they were all rich—or she wouldn’t have given them the time of date. Being rich, they weren’t gold-diggers, but they were publicity-diggers. And Liz loved, she thrived on, the publicity surrounding her romances and engagements and the re-marriage speculation and then the broken engagements. No, it was sad, not just sort of.”
—Las Vegas costume designer Lloyd Lambert
“My opinion is only that, but Elizabeth shares it. I don’t believe Richard had an ongoing sexual relationship with Philip Burton. Burton kept Richard, financially and otherwise, but I think Richard was too in awe of him to become and remain lovers. We do believe Richard had a few affairs with actors, including Olivier and possibly my father [Emlyn Williams], who was bisexual in his youth.”
—friend Brook Williams, who had bit roles in several Richard Burton films
“Elizabeth told me that every single man she’s been married or engaged to or dated has been, overall, a positive experience. Except Eddie Fisher.”
—Dominick Dunne, producer of ET’s film Ash Wednesday
“Liz hit the roof when Fisher published Been There, Done That. It paints him as a clever and talented fool for love who’s had every woman in Hollywood. . . . At least he depicted Liz as the love of his life, that is, until his final wife, who’s rich and Chinese. He didn’t tell how he tried to blackmail Taylor over money when they were divorcing over Richard Burton. Fisher made several women unhappy with that book, not just telling lies but also telling the truth, like blow jobs from a famous redheaded actress who’s still alive and married now. That book killed any residual sympathy anyone in showbiz had for Fisher. But he doesn’t need them, not with a rich and contented non-show-business wife.”
—director Garry Marshall
“Elizabeth Taylor banned all mention of Eddie Fisher’s memoir, which she blasted as semi fiction. She had a brief laugh when a friend said there was enough baloney in it to open a deli.” —British talk show host David Frost
“Sturm has remarried Drang, and all is right with the world.”
—the Boston Globe, on the Taylor-Burton remarriage in 1975
“For their second wedding, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton went to Botswana, Africa, where they could be alone. Except for a hundred or so photographers and press. And the cheetah the remarried couple posed with. Of course Dick bought Liz a little commemorative gift: a one-million-dollar pink-diamond ring.”
—former agent Robert Hussong
“Some people outside London and Hollywood were genuinely shocked when Liz and Dick divorced in 1974. But even in London and Hollywood we were shocked when they remarried the following year. Half of us thought it was for publicity, half thought it was for love. Few of us thought it would last.” —British director Bryan Forbes
“Her first marriage to Burton ran about ten years. The second was ten months. Bets were on that if they re-remarried, it would last ten weeks. Or ten days.”
—comedian Rodney Dangerfield
“I was astounded when Elizabeth and Richard chose to do Noël Coward’s Private Lives. Elizabeth’s stage bow was in The Little Foxes, of which I did the screen version. It was a good and brave choice, and she did a fine job. But this! She and Richard had divorced. They had undertaken marriages to new people—marriages that were on the rocks—and now they were re-teaming. But that’s exactly what Private Lives is about! So really it became Public Lives. Or Private Lives on Exhibit. No wonder all the tickets sold!”
—Bette Davis
“Before and after marriage #2 to Richard Burton, Elizabeth was involved with Henry Wynberg. She met him because she was going around with, and possibly dating, Christopher Lawford [then age eighteen], son of Peter Lawford, who for some years was President Kennedy’s brother-in-law. Peter was rattled when an interviewer asked if his son was having an affair with Elizabeth Taylor. He denied it but immediately introduced her to a man in her own age bracket—a used-car salesman. To Peter’s delight, Liz and Henry got along famously.” —Hollywood hostess Jean Howard
“Poor Henry Wynberg . . . the most belittled man in Elizabeth’s life besides Eddie Fisher. His profession . . . and he’d been convicted and fined for setting back automobile odometers. But he did comfort Elizabeth during the time when she’d re-lost Richard and was having more health problems. Henry was Dutch-born and had a soft voice. He had a hairy chest he liked to show off. Elizabeth made sure their romance was well publicized and photographed . . . to show Richard and the world that she could do without Richard, even though she didn’t want to.”
—William F. Dufty, who ghostwrote about forty books, including Billie Holiday’s Lady Sings the Blues
“It was Henry Wynberg who planted the idea in Elizabeth’s head about creating her own perfume so she could make a fortune and not have to continue acting.”
—Natalie Wood
“You can’t keep clapping a couple of sticks of dynamite together without expecting them to blow up.” —Richard Burton, about himself and ET
“It was like a yo-yo. She’d reconcile with Richard, they’d quarrel, she’d go back to Henry. No big quarrels with Henry, but then Richard would show up, she’d return to Richard, then they’d bust up, then back to Henry. Henry made Richard jealous. . . . Henry was her cat’s paw. Perhaps he didn’t really mind. Years afterward, he spoke well of Liz.”
—columnist Lloyd Shearer
“When Elizabeth made the final break with Wynberg it was in front of Richard in Switzerland. She told him they were through, that she was back with Richard, they were going to re-marry, and she gifted Henry with $50,000 and a gold watch—as if she’d retired him.”
—press agent Beebe Kline
“Of course she was beside herself when Burton married the blonde [Susan Hunt in 1976]. He hardly waited three weeks after divorcing Elizabeth before remarrying. To some extent, Elizabeth was waiting for him to divorce . . . but he stayed married. It lasted till 1982 and the next year he married his female assistant, an Australian [Sally Hay]. They lasted until he died of a stroke a few years later. It was very rough on Elizabeth . . . it took a long time for it to become crystal clear that he wasn’t going to return to her.”
—costar Hermione Gingold (A Little Night Music)
“Suzy Hunt banished all of Richard’s entourage except Brook Williams. They were a boozy lot, and she wanted a sober husband, which is nearly always preferable.”
—actress Sian Phillips, ex-wife of alcoholic Peter O’Toole
“I think Suzy Hunt provided a very important gift to him. She made him able to leave Elizabeth.”
—Richard Burton’s daughter Kate Burton
“The 1980s was an odd decade for Liz Taylor in that she spent most of it unmarried. Not that she didn’t have male company.” —fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi
“Nineteen-eighty-four has proven a busy social year for Elizabeth Taylor. . . . She returned Victor Luna’s engagement ring, she dated Carl Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein fame [authors of All the President’s Men], and she announced her engagement to businessman Dennis Stein.” —writer Ingrid Sischy
“Elizabeth would have married Dennis Stein, a flashy Brooklynite who sold blue jeans and promoted himself. After they dated in 1984, Elizabeth accepted his twenty-carat sapphire engagement ring and began planning her wedding gown. She even took him to her Swiss chalet in Gstaad for the holidays. But by early ’85 it was over. The sole cause we know of is he talked to the press, praising her like a fan even though she’d warned him, ‘No interviews.’ But he talked . . . and she walked.” —columnist Richard Gully
“Elizabeth had relapses . . . she was no stranger to the Betty Ford Clinic where she met the Larry guy who operated an off-road dirt compactor, whatever that is. Anyway, he was dazzled by who she was and she beheld this young, pudgy blond, they flirted and talked and whatever, and maybe she saw it as a publicity opportunity and/or a possible romance and, realistically, probably her last chance at matrimony.” —publicist Andrea Jaffe
“Twice in her life Elizabeth proposed marriage to a man. First to Michael [Wilding], twenty years her senior. Second to her final husband [Larry Fortensky], who was twenty-one years her junior. . . . At Betty Ford people are told to not become involved until a year after they meet, but Elizabeth ignored the rule. . . . It was highly sexual, but she didn’t know the man. They married much too soon. It was more of a co-dependency between two ex-alcoholics than a stable marriage.” —star and ET friend Jean Simmons
“But why did she have to marry him? I appreciate what the construction workers do. And some are handsome, some I suppose make a good lover. But what could she and he have in common? Except their addiction and being in the same recovery program. What else?”
—Spanish movie star Sara Montiel
“It was a very gay wedding when Liz tied the knot [in 1991] with Larry Fortensky. Best man was Michael Jackson, whose fake date was Brooke Shields. Guests included Barry Diller with Diane von Furstenberg, Merv Griffin with Eva Gabor . . . hairdressers Sydney Guilaroff and Jose Eber without ‘dates’ . . . Roddy McDowall, Liz Smith, and the wedding gown was by Valentino.” —Entertainment Tonight writer Wayne Warga
“[Larry] beat me like crazy. He blackened my eyes, kicked me and pounded my head with his fists. And when he hit me, he didn’t hold back, even though I’m just 5'6" and weigh 132 pounds while he’s 6'2" and weighs over 200 pounds. . . . He drank and popped pills all day long. He smoked pot. He was drunk every day. And he’s a mean drunk.”
—Kelly Matzinger, Fortensky’s second wife (ET was his third)
“One time, Elizabeth took off her super-expensive diamond ring to wash her hands in the john at Hamburger Hamlet in Los Angeles. When she got home she realized she’d left it behind. Larry ranted and raved . . . she yelled back that it was her goddamn ring and she’d just call the restaurant and ask them to deliver it. Which they did.”
—columnist Arlene Walsh
“She accustomed Fortensky to a lavish lifestyle. The money Elizabeth gave him ruined him. He was disoriented and became greedy, angry, and suspicious. . . . He didn’t treat ordinary people well, including the servants. Elizabeth wondered if she’d done right, bringing him into her house. He wouldn’t adjust and did not belong. Yet she couldn’t end it too soon. She felt sorry for him but cringed at the upcoming public ridicule. If you ask me, the last two husbands made Eddie Fisher look viable.” —Roddy McDowall
“One day, she walked into the kitchen and happened upon Larry berating one of her female employees. He raised his hand to her. Would he have hit her? Elizabeth was alarmed enough by the possibility to immediately step between them. ‘Larry, I don’t know how you treat your construction crews, but you will not behave this way to my staff,’ she said angrily. ‘They are more than employees. They’re my family.’ Larry stormed off and shut himself up in his bedroom, where he slept for three days straight.”
—ET biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli
“In 1995 Liz told Larry he would have to go. He hated to give up, and took Liz to a marriage counselor. No use. When they separated, she gave the press the fiction that it was only a trial separation and she hoped they could get together again. . . . When Liz moved to divorce Larry she was flabbergasted that he was suing her for $5 million and trying to invalidate their prenuptial agreement. In the end, she settled about $1 million on him and publicly wished him well. In 1996 she was officially rid of him.”
—publicist Ronni Chasen
“At forty-seven, Larry Fortensky was still despairing over his divorce from Elizabeth, spending all day lolling around his condo in San Juan Capistrano, California, or drinking and starting brawls at the Swallow Inn. One friend felt that many people around town wanted to get rid of him. On January 28, 1999, he either fell or was pushed headfirst down a seven-foot circular staircase in his home, landing on his head and sustaining a broken bone in his neck, several splintered discs in his spine, and massive head injuries so serious he might never walk, talk, or move again. His alcohol level at the time was .265.” —ET biographer Ellis Amburn
“Elizabeth once confided, cold sober, that you can’t always fry the fish you want to fry. She meant about who all she married . . . said that several of the men she’d like to have married weren’t interested in women. She added, without any segue, that Richard Burton was the one worth quarreling with. She said he thought she drank too much and she knew that he did drink too much, but when love happens between two people you have to follow it through and not listen to what others think. All Richard’s Welsh and English friends had warned him not to ‘go Hollywood,’ to stick to the artistic path. But love intervened.”
—Truman Capote
“According to Monty, Richard confessed to Elizabeth after they were married that while climbing his way up the stage ladder in England he’d agreed to the advances of Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. Elizabeth wasn’t shocked. She replied that Hollywood had a casting couch too, only more blatant. What she did ask Richard was whether that was all in his past. . . . I wonder if she’d have minded more an infidelity with a woman or with a man?” —Montgomery Clift companion and former actor Jack Larson
“You wouldn’t think someone like Liz Taylor would ever have experienced the casting couch, and it’s very possible she didn’t. If she had, it would probably have been during that awkward period between child star and grown star. Those guys in Hollywood, they don’t care if a female’s underage. Gratification and status and box office—that’s everything they care about.” —Roseanne Barr
“When they met in 1984 and became chums, Michael Jackson was twenty-six and Elizabeth was fifty-two. What did they have in common besides being famous as kids? Here’s a big clue: Liz was worth about $75 million and Michael was worth about $300 million. She loved gifts and he loved, or needed, respectability and favorable publicity. Greed and need. Nuff said?”
—Ray Stricklyn, actor and friend of Tennessee Williams
“Successful as she is, Elizabeth still feels the need of a man to validate her. Someone to pay her attention and romance her, seemingly or actually . . . to make her feel and look desired. She isn’t as strong as the impression she gives, except physically. . . . Acting is almost a sideline for her. Her personal life comes first.”—actor and boyfriend Rod Steiger “Jackson paraded several actresses as girlfriends, who later admitted the truth, like Tatum O’Neal, Brooke Shields, etc. When Michael met Liz Taylor he even pretended it was a romantic thing with her! Who in their right mind would believe that? But in one of those books Liberace ‘authored’ he claimed his first sexual experience was with an older female named Miss Bea Haven. Fans, which is short for fanatics, often believe just what they want to believe, appearances and facts be damned.”
—screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
“Elizabeth says she knew she wanted to be a mother while she was a child in England. Later, she someday wanted to have a husband . . . she assumed one husband, total. Acting didn’t enter her head. It entered her mother’s head, for Elizabeth, after they left England. If not for World War II, today she’d probably be a good-looking grandmother living in the English countryside.”
—British writer Gavin Lambert
“Two gay men changed Elizabeth’s life. First was Victor Cazalet, a wealthy, unmarried Member of Parliament who for cover was in the Conservative Party. He and Francis were a discreet pair, but when [WWII] broke out Cazalet was instrumental in enabling Francis and Sara and their children to move to the United States. Second was Northern Irish actor Stephen Boyd—Cleopatra’s first Mark Anthony until the production was delayed, then moved to Rome. When it resumed, Boyd had left and was replaced by a Welsh actor named Richard Burton.”—ET’s secretary Roger Wall