It was any stage actor’s worst nightmare: Elizabeth had forgotten her next line. Maureen had just said her line and now it was Elizabeth’s turn to say hers. But she had no idea what it was.
The two were on stage playing sisters-in-law in Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes at the Eisenhower Theater at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. as part of a series of out-of-town previews. Elizabeth could tell from the look in Maureen’s eyes that Maureen knew she didn’t know her line. Come on, Liz, she seemed to encourage her. You can do it. Do her. Do “Regina.”
Playing Regina Hubbard Giddens in The Little Foxes marked Elizabeth’s stage debut and she’d had to work so hard at memorizing all those lines. Regina has the most out of anyone else in the play. There is hardly a moment when she isn’t on the stage. It had been a shocking revelation for Elizabeth even though of course she had known all this before rehearsals began. She knew intellectually that she wouldn’t be able to yell “Cut!” and do the scene over again. But here, right in the meat of it, it was so much worse than she could have imagined.
Early on in rehearsals, Elizabeth had found it helpful to use a hook from the line of the character who had the line before hers to trigger her own line. And that had mostly worked. But it didn’t work if she couldn’t hear the line that came before hers which is exactly what had happened tonight. Someone had coughed loudly during Maureen’s last line and Elizabeth had missed the tail-end of it completely. So there she was, arrested in a turn-of-the-century living room set, shoveled into a hot beaded garnet gown, looking at Maureen with absolutely nothing to say.
There are ways out of this, Elizabeth thought. She smiled at Maureen in that sly way she had crafted for Regina. She crossed downstage right and busied herself with the crystal decanter at the bar cart. She tipped a little of the liquid into her goblet (unsweetened weak tea that was passing for brandy) and then threw it back.
Elizabeth had suggested to the director that they do a “drunk rehearsal” one day to see what would happen, much to the younger cast members’ enthusiasm.
“Elizabeth, we don’t have enough insurance on you to cover anything like falling off the stage in a stupor,” the director had said.
This was fair. She had a documented history of walking off sets, demanding extra fees, trashing her dressing rooms, calling in sick, refusing to work for the first two days of her menstruation. It wasn’t easy being her and sometimes that job necessitated a day off. But this play was on its way to Broadway and she was a newcomer there. She didn’t want to do any of that stuff anymore. It wouldn’t be respectful, and she wanted their respect.
Regina Hubbard Giddens was one of the great female roles of American theater, a steely no-nonsense Southern bitch who was rich and lethal. For years, Lillian Hellman had not allowed anyone to play her. That is, until Elizabeth’s team proposed it as a vehicle for her Broadway debut. They convinced Lillian by telling her how much money the show would make. Anything Elizabeth was attached to made money, even if it was a total piece of shit like BUtterfield 8.
Elizabeth was a United States Senator’s wife now. And the President and First Lady were in the audience tonight. She was playing the leading lady in a classic play. It was 1981. This was a new decade and Elizabeth would reflect that.
Maureen looked at her in that way she had of so thoroughly inhabiting Birdie, Regina’s sister-in-law. But also in an extra new way. Like a person trying to communicate to you that you have food on your chin.
At first, Elizabeth had been annoyed that they were casting Maureen Stapleton. “I said that I wanted to be surrounded by good actors but that not that good,” she’d said to the producer.
“Maureen is very generous on the stage. She’s as good as you’ve heard, but she doesn’t overpower. And, Liz, Regina dominates The Little Foxes.”
“I don’t need to dominate anyone. I’m happy to sit back and learn from others. I’ve always been a student,” Elizabeth said. When she met Maureen, she was instantly attracted to her warmth and humor. Maureen had a mouth on her too and it made Elizabeth love her even more. During previews, Elizabeth asked her all sorts of questions. She wanted to know how to act on stage.
“You have to always be in the moment, ya know? If you don’t believe that you are that person on the stage, the audience won’t believe it either,” Maureen said. “They’ll know right away and you’ll never get them back.”
“But all that applause when I come on the stage and I haven’t even delivered a single line yet. They’re clapping because I’m ‘Elizabeth Taylor.’ Not for anything I’ve even done yet. It’s ridiculous.”
“You know why they’re clapping before you’ve even said a damn word,” Maureen said.
“There’s nothing I can do about that,” Elizabeth said.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re thinking too much about the audience, Liz. They’re not even really there. I mean, who cares?” Maureen said. “You need to find the parts of Regina that fit into the parts of Elizabeth. You need to smash the two of you together. You don’t have to be either one or the other. You can be both. A little of her and a little of you. You’ve done it before.”
She had. She’d taken her third husband’s death so hard that she channeled the grief into the rest of her performance in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. They had been halfway finished with filming at the time of his plane crash and she had yet to tape some of her biggest emotional scenes. It was her strongest work.
“I did a scene with Marilyn Monroe at the Studio once. Anna Christie,” Maureen said. “I played Marthy—of course. I’ve been playing older women since I was nineteen. Marilyn was spellbinding as Anna. You couldn’t take your eyes off her. Not unlike you, Liz.”
“How was she ‘spellbinding’?”
“She fought against ‘Marilyn’ but she never dropped her altogether. She used who she was to make Anna more complete. No one had ever clapped at the Studio after a scene. It simply wasn’t done. Except for that one time after our scene. People were falling over themselves clapping for us. I’m not too proud to admit that I liked it.”
“Regina is kind of this scorched earth, no holds barred Southern bitch. I have always excelled at playing those,” Elizabeth said.
“You have. But don’t forget why you’ve excelled at playing them. Because you believed they were real.”
Elizabeth heard another cough in the audience. She looked up and out at them. Just like Maureen told her not to do. But she was in a reverie. She smiled, and held her hand up to her mouth as if Regina had finally confirmed a position inside her head, a furious internal debate now resolved.
Maureen came downstage to pour herself a drink from the same decanter. She whispered the key word from Elizabeth’s line to her. And that was all Elizabeth needed.
One of the stagehands was holding a tall glass of vodka that he handed to Maureen the second the cast left the stage after the curtain call. Elizabeth had seen her get those drinks night after night at the end of each show, gulping them down like she was dying of thirst.
“One of the stagehands told me about some place called Pier 9. It’s a gay club with drag shows. Come with me?” asked Maureen.
“I love gay bars. I just ditched the Reagans—let’s go!” Elizabeth said. “I need a drink.”
“Well, you’re just in luck. Because we’re going where drinks were invented,” Maureen said, downing the rest of her vodka.
Elizabeth and Maureen got into a cab and headed to Southwest D.C.
“You saved me today on that stage. That line I dropped. I blanked out. It was like I had no past, I had no present. There was nothing but that one moment and the moment was terrifying.”
“You saved yourself. You’re new to the stage. It happens to everyone at some point.” Maureen took Elizabeth’s hand. “You’re really good in this play, Liz. I mean that truly. Isn’t it funny that I’m the one playing the old money character? Old frumpy Irish Catholic Maureen. I’ve always done well playing Jews, Italians, and Irish. Dusty old Southern money, that’s something new.”
“You drink too much,” Liz said. “Why?”
“Why not?” said Maureen. “You marry too much. Why?” she asked.
“Touché.”
“I was so drunk one time, I almost drank a candle.” Maureen laughed to herself and looked out the window of the cab. “My father fondled me once in a movie theater. That probably has a little something to do with it. Why I drink. But the real answer is simple—I love being drunk. I’d give it all up if I could just be the most beautiful one in the room for one night.”
“Let me tell you something about beauty: It’s superficial and no one applauds it,” Elizabeth said. “By its very nature, it is only skin-deep. You think anyone cared about my acting when I blew up like a whale and had to have costumes completely re-fitted? No, they did not. All they could talk about was my weight gain and how much I didn’t look like my old self, as if my actual self had ever changed. And how dare they,” Elizabeth said. “It’s all bunk, Maureen. It’s a cameo in a curiosity shop. Beauty is a relic—talent, real talent, like the kind you have—that’s forever. Not beauty. Never beauty.”
“The only people who can say that are beautiful people,” Maureen said.
“I’m so fat now, no one would even believe it’s really me,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh, they will so. You’re more recognizable than the Queen of England.”
The cab dropped them off in an industrial, run-down part of the city. The only life around them was coming from the black brick building where Elizabeth could feel a strong beat emanating from the second level.
“Follow me, kid,” Maureen said, weaving as she led Elizabeth.
They walked up the stairs and entered a small, grimy anteroom where a very skinny man with pale skin and long black hair tied in a ponytail took their admission fee.
“Nice Liz Taylor drag, honey. Very believable,” said the man.
“See, I told you,” Maureen said to Elizabeth. “C’mon, let’s go get some drinks.”
A small stage was surrounded by a half-circle of chairs and small tables. Elizabeth looked out at the crowd on the dance floor. “Call on Me” by Patrice Rushen had come on and the lights started to spin in a kaleidoscope, bathing dancers in splices of red, green, blue, and yellow. “Look out there. Everyone here is really just dancing alone.”
“I know,” Maureen said. Elizabeth straightened out her dress, a green sparkly shirt-dress that comfortably hid her recent weight gain.
“Let’s sit in the back,” Elizabeth said.
“No one even knows who I am, Liz. Besides, women are invisible in joints like this. And it’s dark as Hades in here anyway.”
Maureen placed her handbag at a three-seater and went off to the bar. “I’ll go get us some drinky-poos,” she said.
Elizabeth looked around at the little cliques of men roaming around in packs. There was often a very confident one flanked by his second and third, very obviously, supporting players. But there were also these loners who floated amidst the packs like satellites. Sometimes it was the most handsome ones who were alone.
She thought about her friend Rock and how he would venture into these bars and clubs to cruise for younger guys. It wasn’t fair that he had to live his life like that, lurking in the shadows to find a little companionship. Rock told her that he had aged so much that sometimes he didn’t get recognized anymore. What was so bad about that? Elizabeth would love to disappear for a day.
When they were filming Giant, she had noticed how combative Rock got with Jimmy Dean who really was a handful back then. She told Rock that they should just “fuck it out.”
“I know he’s your type,” she had told him.
“He’s crazy. He’s taking over this whole picture. You sleep with crazy and you don’t know what you’re gonna take home with you,” Rock said.
“I got you whiskey straight up,” Maureen said, carrying along a tall vodka in a highball for herself.
“Aww, you remembered from Boston,” Elizabeth said.
“Of course, I did. I’ll remember someone’s drink before my own birthday.”
The lights dimmed and a skinny man with Dumbo-sized ears and a lime-green tank top took to the microphone at the lip of the small stage.
“I know most of you are here for a performer who really needs no introduction. But for the uninitiated, I would like you to put your filthy little hands together for our resident drag goddess. She puts the green in the corn, the petrified in the forest, and if you tickle her pussy, she’ll sing ‘I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy’ for you. I give you—the one, the only—Better Davis!”
“Oh my God, how fun!” Maureen said as a man dressed in really quite believable Bette Davis drag flounced onto the stage with a lit cigarette accompanied on either side by two shirtless hunks in sequined runner’s shorts.
“Stop clapping for me, you fat fags!” barked Better Davis. The audience was howling. “I mean, okay. Well, do. Do clap. Clap now. Louder, bitches!”
“Oh, she’s divine!” Elizabeth said.
“You know I had dinner with J.C. the other night.” Better Davis paused for effect. “No, no, not Jesus Christ. That other needy bitch, Joan Crawford.”
The audience laughed again.
“Would you believe that she asked me to set up a play date with her daughter Christina and my daughter B.D.?”
“No! What did you say?” screamed a fat man from the front row who Elizabeth figured for a plant.
“I told her that B.D. really hated Christina but that Christina could come over only if Joan could list—from memory—the 5,000 men she’s fucked. And then the 500 animals too. Neeeiiiigh!” Better Davis said into the microphone. “No, but seriously, Joan Crawford would fuck a doorknob if you asked her to.”
“Did any of you know that Joan made her stage debut right here in Washington, D.C.? Oh yes, she sure did. She played a maid in Our American Cousin right across town at Ford’s Theater ... in 1865,” Better Davis fanned out her dress and did a curtsy accompanied by a comic rap on a drum backstage.
Maureen whispered to Elizabeth. “I met Joan years ago in New York when she came backstage after a performance of The Rose Tattoo and she couldn’t have been nicer. I don’t believe anything in that book her daughter wrote.”
“The gays love this shtick. It doesn’t even matter. They love to turn us all into bitches and cunts,” Elizabeth said.
Maureen snickered. “Too late—I’m already both!”
“Everyone say hello to my friend Robin over there in the light booth,” said Better Davis. A heavyset blonde woman waved to the audience. “You know, Robin is such a fucking slut, the crabs jump off her.”
“Oh, he’s really funny. That’s my kind of people right up there,” Maureen said. “Look at him, Liz. He knows exactly who he is. And exactly who he isn’t. And no one doubts a single thing he’s saying. Bette Davis herself would be proud.”
“I have to use the ladies’ room,” Elizabeth said, standing up.
“There is no ladies’ room in a gay bar, Liz,” said Maureen.
“And who do we have here?” Better Davis said, motioning toward Elizabeth, who was already standing and now standing out. Robin turned the spotlight on her. “I know I’m a hundred years old and have been fucked enough times to have cum dribbling out of my eyeballs, but I swear to God that’s Elizabeth Taylor.”
“It is!” Maureen yelled, throwing her head back to laugh.
“Irina I Can’t Believe It!” Better Davis screamed, losing a hint of Bette.
A true fan, Elizabeth thought kindly.
“Oh, I’d really be so honored if you would join me up here, Miss Taylor. Could you? Would you?”
Elizabeth made her way up to the stage as the fervor of the audience—an audience almost too stunned to comprehend that it was really her—started to grow. She felt that flush again. The applause. The Elizabeth on the outside and the one on the inside, stepping out together under the spotlight.
“Let’s do it together, Miss Taylor,” the drag queen, Better Davis, said, as she took Elizabeth’s hand and gallantly led her to the spot next to her. “Let’s do our line. You know the one.”
“But I have to pee,” Elizabeth whispered to the drag queen.
“Drop your undies and just do it right here. We could probably sell it!” Better Davis said.
Some melodramatic music came on, the kind of music that might have played over the opening credits in one of Rock’s Douglas Sirk films. Better Davis put her hand on her hip and summoned her best Rosa Moline from Beyond the Forest, dashing around the stage. So Elizabeth followed suit, swinging into full Martha mode, mimicking her entrance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Then they both said the same line together, the one she would never have to try to remember.
“What a dump!”
***