SAINT ELIZABETH
ON 27 FEBRUARY 1992, ELIZABETH CELEBRATED HER 60th birthday at Disneyland. The guest of honour should have been Michael Jackson, but he was said to be suffering from depression in the wake of a recent disastrous tour of South Africa, cut short because he had been lambasted by the press for holding his nose each time he had been introduced to someone important, suggesting they smelled. The National Enquirer further upset him by putting forward another reason for his strange behaviour: ‘He was picking his nose because he was bothered by the effects of repeated plastic surgery.’
Amongst the 650 guests instructed to wear identity badges were Tom Selleck, Shirley MacLaine and Dionne Warwick. All were presented with goodie bags containing an Elizabeth Taylor sweatshirt and a flacon of White Diamonds. Everyone made a fuss of her, but she persistently reminded them how much she was missing Michael Jackson. She told Liz Smith, ‘Michael said to me, “I can’t bear to see anyone. They’re all going to laugh at me and everyone is going to start asking questions. I just want to crawl into a hole and die!” But I’m thinking about him all the time, and this birthday is for the child in me.’ Of her new-found happiness with Larry Fortensky, People magazine reported her as saying, ‘His main concern is that I’m a star, and he thinks he’s a nonentity. But I’m not a star any more. For the first time in my life, I’m a housewife, and I’m enjoying it immensely.’
The ‘housewife’ later described her typical day: undergoing two hours of massage and beauty treatment each morning, arranging her daily mini-truckload delivery of flowers, conducting business meetings and fielding telephone calls, enjoying home-prepared meals (though not cooked by her), and spending whatever time was left in front of the television with Larry, watching her favourite sitcoms soaps. She subsequently found the time to appear in a quartet of these (High Society, The Nanny, Murphy Brown, Can’t Hurry Love), her on-screen characters promoting her latest fragrance, Black Pearls.
Whilst she had been in London the previous November, Elizabeth had heard rumours that the rock group Queen’s front man Freddie Mercury was dying of AIDS. After a little investigating on her part, she discovered that the rumours were true. And so began a repetition of the poisonous tabloid journalism that had preceded Rock Hudson’s death, except that in Freddie’s case he survived for just one day following his press statement that he had the disease. So far as is known, Elizabeth never met the flamboyant singer, but she had heard much about him from Rock Hudson.
In 1980, Rock and Freddie had met in The Glory Holes (aka South of Market Club), the notorious Los Angeles gay establishment brought to the ‘uneducated’ world’s attention in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. The Glory Holes (subsequently shut down by the Public Health Department) consisted of several bars and a number of plywood booths, each with several holes through which customers could insert their penises in anticipation of gratification from the other side. But if the recipient had no idea who was pleasuring him, the hundreds of men assembled on the balcony that overlooked the booths were able to observe and applaud every movement. Rock and Freddie had both been offered membership of The Glory Holes: both had declined.
For some reason speculating that she would be the only one capable of getting the safe-sex message across to a 72,000-strong audience of mostly under-30s, the promoters asked Elizabeth to participate in the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness, which took place at Wembley Stadium on 20 April 1992. The line-up included the three surviving members of Queen, but most of the supporting acts were second-rate. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to sing,’ Elizabeth joked, but truthfully she could have done better than most of those who appeared! Even Annie Lennox, David Bowie and Liza Minnelli put in execrable performances – only George Michael and Elton John were any good, the latter so moving Elizabeth that she later presented him with a silver-and-red-rhinestones AIDS brooch.
A shock item on the bill had to be Guns N’ Roses, a group that Freddie Mercury and anyone sensibly and genuinely connected with the gay community and AIDS awareness positively loathed. In 1988, one of their songs had contained the deeply unpleasant line ‘immigrants and faggots spread disease’, said to have been aimed at Freddie himself. The group were booed throughout their set, and some of their fans heckled Elizabeth whilst she was on stage. ‘I’ll get off in a minute,’ she shouted back, earning a huge cheer from the crowd. ‘I have something to say!’
In her five-minute speech, delivered entirely off the cuff, Elizabeth urged the world to practise safe sex and not share syringes. She concluded:
We are here to celebrate the life of Freddie Mercury, an extraordinary rock star who rushed across our cultural landscape like a comet shooting across the sky. We are also here to tell the whole world that he, like others we have lost to AIDS, died before his time. The bright light of his talent still exhilarates us, even now that his life has been cruelly extinguished. It needn’t have happened – it shouldn’t have happened. Please, let’s not let it happen again . . . There’s 70,000 people in this stadium. Look at yourselves. Look at how many you are. In two short weeks, there will be as many new infections as there are people here tonight. Please don’t let it happen to you. You are the future of our world. You are the best and brightest. You are the shining light that will illuminate a better world tomorrow . . . Protect yourselves, love yourselves, respect yourselves, because until you do I won’t give in, and I won’t give up, because the world needs you to live! You see, we really love you. We really care!
Rock Hudson’s death had only been the beginning. The Freddie Mercury tribute concert was another turning point in Elizabeth’s life. Henceforth, she would be much less interested in loving one particular man than she would these thousands of unseen, maligned men – and women – around the world. She had become Saint Elizabeth.
There was drama on 6 May – the day Marlene Dietrich died – when a number of extremely cutting anti-Elizabeth notes were found pinned to Marlene’s bedroom wall, including one which read, ‘You have done enough harm to great men like Burton, Todd and Wilding. Why don’t you swallow your fucking diamonds and shut up!’ This was the politest thing Marlene had written about her – during a visit to her avenue Montaigne apartment, my wife Jeanne and I had roared with laughter over some of the others, particularly one which had read, ‘Elizabeth Taylor has two cunts – one of them is called Richard Burton.’
On the same day, Elizabeth’s adopted daughter, Maria Burton Carson, delivered a stillborn baby boy in New York. Only days before, Elizabeth – 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles – had organised a $20,000 pre-natal shower for Maria at a New York hotel. Later, she would auction the baby’s designer wardrobe for orphaned children. Maria, she claimed, had intended to name her son Richard, in honour of his late grandfather.
Early in 1993, Elizabeth was presented with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her outstanding charity work. Then, on 11 March, in a ceremony hosted by Carol Burnett at the Beverly Hills Hilton, she became only the fourth woman to receive the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award – the others had been Lillian Gish, Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman and Bette Davis. As Peggy Lee sang ‘Fever’, the ‘who’s who’ in Hollywood were treated to a potpourri of newsreel clips: Elizabeth’s various marriages, the scenes of hysteria that had greeted her appearances around the world, the fan proudly sporting the ‘Liz’s Weddings’ T-shirt. Then Elizabeth, wearing black and less jewels than usual, made her way through the auditorium towards her table, smiling radiantly, shaking hands, but kissing only the by-now-ever-present Michael Jackson. Extracts were shown from her films, including a rare clip of her singing with Alfalfa in There’s One Born Every Minute. James Dean and Montgomery Clift were greeted with warm applause. There were congratulatory speeches from Angela Lansbury, Dennis Hopper and her friend Roddy McDowall, who told her, ‘It has been wonderful over the years watching you matriculate as a human being, as an actress and as a major contributor to the welfare of mankind.’ And unlike some of its predecessors, Elizabeth’s acceptance speech was unscripted and delivered from the heart:
When I first heard about the award, I went into a state of shock. I guess it’s a long time since I’ve thought of myself as an actress. I, along with the critics, have never taken myself very seriously – my craft, yes, but as an actress, no. But I wasn’t all that bad, was I? You’ve made me realise how much I really do miss it. But my life is full and good. It has taken so many diverse twists and turns, and I have grown into what I do . . .
At this point, Elizabeth paused and gazed at the sea of celebrity faces – a good many of those present genuinely cared about what was coming next, but there were more than a few there who could not have cared less, in particular a minority of closeted stars (including one performer whom she had turned her back on in the wings) who often attempted to camouflage their homosexuality with homophobic comments:
I am filled with pride – proud that I am part of this community, proud of you as a community, helping as many others, especially in the world of AIDS. We have come a long way in the last decade, and I know you are willing to go the whole mile and do whatever it takes.
Thanking everyone in the film industry who had helped her to get where she was today – though, truthfully, the only ones who deserved such recognition were her mother and her fans – she concluded:
My mind goes especially to four magnificent men, who, had they lived, might have stood here and received this award: Monty, Rock, Jimmy and, of course, Richard. Oh, I was so lucky to have known them, to have learned so much from them, to have loved them. Thank you all for making me feel so special tonight. It’s a memory that I will have next to my heart for the rest of my life.
In July 1994, Elizabeth appeared on the big screen for the last time – as Fred Flintstone’s unfortunately named mother-in-law, Pearl Slaghoople, in The Flintstones. She was only on screen for seven minutes but managed to make a big impression in a new Hollywood era when special effects all too frequently overshadowed acting requirements – in this instance, the prehistoric ‘gadgets’ that had monopolised the Hanna–Barbera animated television series upon which the film was based.
Elizabeth plays the archetypal mother-in-law from hell. John Goodman later confessed that he had found it extremely difficult to walk up to Elizabeth Taylor and growl, ‘What’s that old fossil doing here?’ And in a party scene, the harridan becomes Elizabeth Taylor, turning up in furs and Burton jewels, and leading everyone into the conga.
The Flintstones was all good, clean fun, and many people expected more such roles to come Elizabeth’s way. Sadly, they did not, and once more she began focusing her energies on her personal problems, most of them self-inflicted. Her marriage was all but falling apart at the seams. This time around she had married a malleable, star-struck man who allowed himself to be pushed into the background, or so it seemed, for the privilege of being Elizabeth Taylor’s husband. Because of their age difference, she became even more possessive than usual, terrified that he might leave her, particularly as she grew older and more infirm.
At the end of August, allegedly under tremendous pressure to do so, Larry Fortensky accompanied Elizabeth on a ‘mercy dash’ to Singapore to rescue Michael Jackson, reported to have been on the verge of mental breakdown in the wake of allegations of drug abuse and, more seriously, child molestation. The news of the lawsuit filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court had caught up with the singer whilst he had been performing in Russia. The New York Times ran the exclusive that a 13-year-old boy had accused him of sexual abuse and had taken out a civil action. The boy’s family were now in the process of seeking a trial by jury and ‘unspecified monetary damages’ from Jackson, who, of course, was denying the charge. The newspaper further reported, on 15 September, that Jackson had also been previously investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department but that he had not yet been charged with any misdemeanour.
Jackson was virulently defended by his security consultant, Anthony Pelliciano, who contended that the alleged victim’s father had tried to extort $20 million from the singer. ‘The first demands were for money, and the latter demand is for money,’ the New York Times reported Pelliciano as having said. ‘The police are still conducting their investigation appropriately.’ Elizabeth lashed out like an angry lioness protecting her injured cub, although she had absolutely no idea what might or might not have actually transpired behind the walls of Jackson’s ultra-high-security Peter Pan’s palace. ‘This is the worst thing that could happen to a man like Michael, who loves children,’ she told a reporter from Newsweek, adding that she would do everything within her power to help him and saying that she fully understood why Jackson had allegedly turned to narcotics, because she too had once been hooked on prescription drugs.
Jackson avoided criminal charges in this instance by settling the civil suit filed by the boy’s father out of court for a reputed $15–20 million – enough in itself for many observers to assume that the accused must have had something to hide, otherwise he would have had no fear in seeing the matter through to its legal conclusion. And Elizabeth would go on supporting what, with equal cynicism, was often referred to as her latest pet project. Once his tour of the Far East was over, she persuaded Jackson to seek treatment and counselling at a London clinic. Later, she installed a private line at her home, similar to the helpline she had opened for AIDS victims in the wake of Rock Hudson’s final illness, except that this one was connected to one person only – the increasingly fragile man–child whose gratitude was expressed by the creation of an Elizabeth Taylor shrine: Jackson decorated the walls of his toy-filled bedroom with dozens of Andy Warhol prints of her and had the woodwork painted the exact shade of violet as her eyes. What Larry Fortensky had to say about this excessive fanaticism – if indeed he was permitted to express his opinions aloud without being cried down, particularly when Jackson claimed himself to be so happy now the charges had been dropped that he would ask Elizabeth to marry him should she divorce Fortensky one day – is not on record. One can only speculate wildly about what the press would have made of a Jackson-Taylor wedding should it ever have taken place! Jackson had already taken steps to look like Elizabeth, including plastic surgery, and the media would have afforded them absolutely no mercy.
Elizabeth and Fortensky spent Christmas 1993 in Gstaad, and there were several visits to Richard Burton’s grave, which must have been unsettling for Fortensky, who appears to have been hanging on to his wife by the skin of his teeth. Whilst there, Elizabeth took a tumble on the ice, aggravating her old back and hip injuries. For three months, she suffered in silence, but in March 1994 she went into hospital for hip-replacement surgery. (This left her with one leg slightly shorter than the other, until a follow-up operation to replace the other hip.) Fortensky stood by her through a painful recuperation process, and she had barely recovered from this when Sara Taylor died at the Rancho Mirage complex, Palm Springs, on 11 September 1994, aged 98. Elizabeth had her interred next to Francis at the Westwood Memorial Park.
By then, Elizabeth and Larry Fortensky were said to be sleeping in separate rooms, and he was spending more and more time with his drinking pals. Sometimes, if Elizabeth was out of town, they would party all night long at her Bel Air home and leave the place looking a mess. The marriage, which many of her intimates declared should never have happened in the first place, took its first step towards ending in May 1995. Any number of reasons emerged about why Fortensky packed his bags and moved into the Beverly Hills Hotel: topping the list were his smoking (Elizabeth had stopped, taking her doctors’ advice, the previous year), his mood-swings and his excluding her from the drinking parties with his friends.
There were also rumours, albeit unsubstantiated, of a new man in Elizabeth’s life. Bernard Lafferty was the former butler of Lucky Strike tobacco heiress Doris Duke, who had died at Falcon’s Lair (Rudolph Valentino’s former mansion) in October 1993. Duke had named the cross-dressing, pony-tailed Irishman executor of her $1-billion estate, and this had caused concern amongst her relatives. Besides having a serious drink problem, Lafferty was semi-literate with learning difficulties and was therefore declared by them incapable of taking on such a huge responsibility. (Bernard and Doris, a biopic starring Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon, was released in 2007. The producers had deliberated over whether to include Elizabeth’s character whilst she was still alive, bearing in mind that she had taken legal action in the past to prevent herself being interpreted on the screen during her lifetime, and decided not to take the risk.)
The tabloids speculated about how Bernard Lafferty had managed to penetrate Elizabeth’s near impenetrable inner circle. Was he, they wanted to know, hoping to fleece her the way Doris Duke’s family believed he had wormed his way into their relative’s affections? Was Lafferty amorously interested in her, despite his homosexuality, and sufficiently so to wish to oust Larry Fortensky? Did he wish to run Elizabeth’s financial affairs the way he had his late employer’s? Elizabeth had almost certainly extended the hand of friendship because Lafferty had used his privileged position to persuade Doris Duke to donate $1 million to Elizabeth’s AIDS foundation, with the promise of more to come – and it is likely that Elizabeth had genuinely grown to like him and wanted him around. We shall probably never know for sure.
One suspects that the real reason for the failure of Elizabeth’s eighth marriage was boredom on Fortensky’s part – here was a young man in the prime of life compelled to stay home most of the time, and Elizabeth’s near manic demands never to be left alone, along with her failing health, had worn the both of them down. Fortensky emerged form the situation laughing all the way to the bank. His lawyers advised him to reject the $1.25-million settlement detailed in his prenuptial agreement, saying that a kiss-and-tell account of his relationship with Elizabeth Taylor would bring in many more times this amount – that is, if he planned to do the dirty on her. Though there is no evidence of this, Elizabeth must not have discounted the possibility and was taking no chances. If the press reports are to be believed, the final pay-off to ensure Fortensky’s silence was impressive, consisting of the original payment of $1.25 million plus an additional $2 million in stocks and shares, a $2-million beach house, $250,000 for ‘immediate expenses’, and an alimony-type payment of $600,000 a year for ten years – and two Harley-Davidsons that had taken his fancy!
With Larry Fortensky out of the picture, and with no more serious relationships, Elizabeth gradually sank deeper and deeper into reclusion, although each time she emerged from her self-inflicted cocoon it was with great panache, and she always provided a feast for the pre-informed media. In May 1996, she attended an AIDS benefit at the Cannes Film Festival, sponsored by Cher – another massive gay icon – who was forced to take a back seat as Elizabeth stole the show. Later in the week, Elizabeth caused controversy by walking out halfway through a gala premiere of an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma (1996), declaring it to be boring! The following year, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour ‘the size of a golf ball’, submitted to her most serous operation so far and insisted upon being photographed with a bald head to minimise the stigma of cancer. Her doctors advised her of the dangers of dying her hair when this grew back; for several years, she was a silver-blonde but no less beautiful than before, even in old age. Her slow recovery was aided by her friendship with Rod Steiger; the pair were seen in public but denied any romance.
In 1996, Elizabeth patched up her quarrel with Sybil Burton, whom she had not seen since they had crossed swords whilst shooting Cleopatra. The two met again at the bedside of Roddy McDowall, their mutual friend, now dying of cancer. It is said that Richard Burton’s name was never mentioned, though he was foremost in her thoughts on 16 May 2000 when Elizabeth flew to London to be made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Elizabeth was photographed outside Buckingham Palace with Julie Andrews, there to receive the same honour. The two sat next to each other in the ballroom whilst the band of the Grenadier Guards played a selection from Mary Poppins (1964) – which Elizabeth confessed she had never seen! Then, looking slightly dumpy but every inch the star in pale-blue slacks, a matching patterned lavender surcoat and just a few jewels, she told the queen, whilst receiving her medal, ‘I wish Richard could have been here with me today, ma’am!’
The honour was commemorated by the BBC’s celebration of her life England’s Other Elizabeth, for which she agreed to tell her own story and bare her soul in front of the cameras. There were, however, certain conditions. During the 60-minute documentary, narrated by Nigel Hawthorne, she would speak only of the men in her life whom she could recall with genuine fondness: Mike Todd, Richard Burton, Monty, Jimmy and Rock. Similarly, only those who truly respected her were asked to participate: Shirley MacLaine, Angela Lansbury, Rod Steiger and her AmFAR co-founder, Dr Mathilde Krim. These friends applauded her emotional intelligence, keen survival instincts, bravery in the face of adversity – and unswerving loyalty to those close to her, particularly those amongst the gay community. Slightly tremulous and still a little on the plump side, Elizabeth nevertheless looked fabulous!
Of her first roles as a child star, Elizabeth said, ‘I had a great imagination, and I just slid into it. It was like a piece of cake!’ Of Monty, she said, ‘There was such energy to the man – what was coming out of his eyes, his body. It was, I suppose, like sitting next to an electric chair.’ Recalling Monty’s accident, even five decades on, still traumatised her. She recalled intimate moments with Jimmy Dean when he confided in her things that she said would stay locked in her heart for ever: ‘Wouldn’t you love to know?’ She wept whilst reliving Mike Todd’s death, cursed the studio for making her return to Butterfield 8 and dismissed the film as ‘a piece of shit’. Of Richard Burton, she claimed that he taught her how to be a better actress – but the other husbands did not get a mention.
Elizabeth closed her interview by sounding her own trumpet (and rightly so) about her work for AIDS victims, how she visited hospices anonymously and how, up to that point, she had helped raise over $180 million for her cause. ‘You can put your arms around them,’ she insisted, begging for tolerance, understanding and help. ‘You can kiss their face, you can ruffle their hair. You’re not gonna get it – you’re not gonna die. It doesn’t cost you one nickel to be of use!’ The documentary then ends with a 1981 out-take from General Hospital, in which Elizabeth fluffs her lines. ‘I’m sorry, folks,’ she quips, ‘I’m not used to acting!’
The biggest feud of Elizabeth’s career – a feud of over 40 years standing, brought about by her stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds – was ‘put to rights’ in 2001 when Debbie’s and Fisher’s actress daughter Carrie came up with the script for These Old Broads and co-produced the television movie. Portraying the cast members of Boy Crazy, a 1960s feel-good film that is enjoying a tremendous box-office revival, were Debbie, Shirley MacLaine and (replacing Julie Andrews) Joan Collins. And Fisher pulled a scoop by casting Elizabeth as their hard-as-nails Jewish manager!
In fact, it is not entirely clear that Elizabeth and Debbie actually met during filming: in their scenes together, when one is facing the camera, we see only the other’s back – rather like Marlene Dietrich’s scenes in her final film Just a Gigolo (1978) when she met none of her co-stars. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s obvious condoning of the Taylor-Fisher scandal being used as the butt of the film’s funniest jokes, considering the gravity of the situation at the time, suggests that she can only have agreed to bury the hatchet. Similarly, episodes in Joan Collins and Shirley MacLaine’s lives that they might have wanted obliterating from history are mercilessly resurrected by Carrie Fisher and her scriptwriting partner Elaine Pope, with hilarious effect. Virtually every scene contains an actress–character juxtaposition that is far from flattering.
The man responsible for getting the Boy Crazy gang back together again 40 years later is Wesley (Jonathan Silverman), the adopted son of Kate (MacLaine), who has not spoken to him in years. And to make Wesley’s job that much more difficult, the three women hate each other for running off with each others’ partners. Art mostly reflects real life as Kate tours flea-pit theatres, whilst Piper (Reynolds) sits on a golden throne in her Vegas casino, surrounded by cardboard cut-outs of herself in Singin’ in the Rain. Reynolds parodies herself even further by confessing that she had to fight her way back to the top after being swindled by her manager. Her second husband, Harry Karl, gambled away $8 million of her fortune prior to their 1973 divorce.
The final member of the trio is Addie (Collins), the ex-sitcom star who has been living as a recluse for ten years since the incarceration of her mobster lover. ‘I would rather get a barium enema on live TV than work with that tramp again,’ Kate says of Addie, and when Wesley fails to reunite the trio, he turns to their former mentor, Beryl (Taylor), whose CV reads, ‘Stays in bed all day, eating and talking on the phone, smoking pot and watching documentaries about dead people.’ Surrounded by Andy Warhol portraits of herself, Elizabeth also wears the Krupp Diamond.
The first composite scene between Beryl and Piper dredges up the Taylor-Fisher-Reynolds scandal. It is revealed that Beryl, feeling low after having her tonsils out, stole Piper’s husband during a week-long bender:
BERYL: It all happened so long ago, when we were so young.
PIPER: Just drop it, OK? I forgave you years ago, so let’s move on. Besides, everyone knows you’re a very sick woman, a card-carrying nymphomaniac . . .
BERYL: Nympho! Hah, you think any woman who had a normal, healthy sex life was a nym-pho-maniac?
PIPER: I enjoy sex. But you, if a man was on fire, you’d stamp him out and screw him!
BERYL: Piper, I did you a favour by taking away Freddie . . .
PIPER: A favour is doing something for someone that they’re unable to do for themselves. I was perfectly capable of losing Freddie all on my own!
Beryl manages to get the three co-stars back together for a one-off TV special, and the bitching resumes: ‘One more facelift and she’ll blow her nose through her forehead’; ‘Excuse me, Mrs Munster’; and ‘Look, it’s Queen Elizabeth and her mother, Ethel.’ The scriptwriters even get away with referring to Joan Collins as the ‘British Open’. Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher are combined in the character Tony the Meatpacker (so named for obvious reasons): he escapes from prison and gives Addie ‘multiples’ before expiring during Tantric sex – suffering from post-mortem priapism as the girls smuggle his body from her room, with Piper crooning ‘Arrivederci, Tony’, a direct reference to Fisher’s closing number during the time of the scandal! When rebuking Piper, Addie also borrows a line from Fisher’s autobiography, telling Piper, ‘You’re so frigid, you’ve never had an orgasm,’ before adding a line of her own: ‘Pretending to be that little goody two-shoes when you were just as big a whore as we were!’ The ensuing fight see the girls walking off the production, prompting Beryl to turn into Elizabeth Taylor as a means of getting her own way – faking an illness (a coronary) to get them back together again.
This was Elizabeth’s final celluloid appearance, and how lovely she looks, smiling radiantly, swathed in lavender furs, her violet eyes and diamonds sparkling as she coerces the audience into giving her girls a standing ovation by drawling, ‘Get off your asses for these old broads!’ There could have been no finer swansong for the queen of Hollywood!