TWO

MOVE OVER,
SHIRLEY TEMPLE

PRECISELY HOW ELIZABETH CAME TO BE GIVEN THIRD lead in National Velvet (1944) has been swallowed by Hollywood folklore. Sara Taylor claimed that it was on account of her daughter’s rave reviews for Lassie Come Home, but there had been none. MGM talent scout Lucille Ryman Carroll claimed in an interview with People magazine in November 1987 that Elizabeth had stormed into her office and announced, ‘You’re wasting your time auditioning anyone else. I’m going to be playing Velvet Brown!’ One finds it hard to imagine her getting away with such audacity. A third, more plausible, explanation appeared in several movie magazines: Carroll and the producer, Pandro S. Berman, had taken Elizabeth’s riding skills into consideration and concluded that it would be easier to offer her the part, rather than train someone else. Luckily, they made a good choice, though the back injury she sustained falling off her horse during rehearsals would plague her for the rest of her life because it was not properly tended to at the time.

Based on the novel by Enid Bagnold, the script for National Velvet had been commissioned by Paramount for 30-year-old Katharine Hepburn back in 1935, but it was, not surprisingly, rejected by her (Velvet Brown is only 12 years old) and subsequently sold to MGM, who had kept it on ice since. The story is far-fetched, though the film itself provided an entertaining touch of whimsy for post-war audiences eager to embrace a world hopefully cleansed of oppression. It is marred only by the occasional ‘British’ accents of some of the leads: Anne Revere is not too bad and Mickey Rooney kept his American accent, because he was in the middle of his Andy Hardy period and MGM did not want his fans to be confused, but the Bronx twang of child star Jackie ‘Butch’ Jenkins is dreadful.

The unprecedented success of National Velvet led to Louis B. Mayer upping Elizabeth’s salary to $200 a week – and, bizarrely for a man whose stinginess was legendary, this was not her only reward. Mayer brought in an interior designer who fashioned her a National Velvet bedroom, complete with the most expensive riding equipment money could buy and a wooden horse. Naturally, this came in handy for photo shoots. And, finally, Mayer paid her an unprecedented $15,000 bonus, adding to the speculation that, as had happened with Judy Garland after The Wizard of Oz (1939), this acknowledged connoisseur of underaged girls might have had an ulterior motive.

Mayer was certainly acting with shrewdness, because one of the terms for her receiving the bonus was that her current contract would be extended by another year, binding her to him for what was anticipated would be the remainder of her childhood before puberty set in. As for Elizabeth, she had a condition of her own before permitting Sara to sign on the dotted line: she wanted to keep the horse King, with whom she had bonded on the picture. Mayer acquiesced, and photographs of her being presented with the horse – no longer of use to the studio because he was lame – flooded the press.

In October 1943, to counteract one journalist’s comment that the horse was far too big for Elizabeth, a statement was issued to the Hollywood Reporter, purporting to have come from her:

He would never hurt me. You don’t have to worry about King when you get on his back – you just leave everything to him, and I think that he likes to know that I leave it to him, that he’s the boss, and I trust him.

These would almost certainly have been Sara’s words, but they presented an interesting analogy with the way in which Elizabeth regarded the men in her life in years to come. Similarly, cynics would draw comparisons between the way she related to the loss of her animals – the speed with which each ‘irreplaceable’ furry creature was replaced – and the way in which she got over her break-ups with her small army of husbands and lovers.

This love of four-legged creatures would be further documented in a Life magazine feature of February 1945 – who could resist a cute little girl cuddling up to one of her many pets, at that time a kitten, three dogs and a chipmunk? The chipmunk, the first in a series all baptised Nibbles, became a minor celebrity: first, with a cameo appearance in Courage of Lassie (1946); then when a New York publisher brought out Nibbles and Me, a 77-page tome recounting the story of Elizabeth’s friendship with the little fellow(s). Her name appeared on the title page, although it is unlikely that she contributed to it other than to pose sweetly with her cherished pet. The book was essentially a gimmick cooked up by Sara and MGM’s publicity department to promote the child star and her latest movies – location shots from Courage of Lassie and National Velvet were included.

Nibbles and Me was serialised in Photoplay, and much was made of the fact that Elizabeth had it drilled into her by her mother that tears were useless when one of the chipmunks died. Sara explained that death did not exist so long as the departed loved one was retained in the memory, according to the edicts of Christian Science. Elizabeth would recall her mother’s words many times over the years – only to go to pieces each time she lost someone dear, frequently, it has to be said, for the benefit of the media.

One syndicated column, whose contributor perhaps wisely opted to remain anonymous, labelled Elizabeth ‘a modern-day St Francis of Assisi’, having been alerted by Sara that her daughter was what would today be called a horse-whisperer. ‘She whinnies like a horse,’ observed the Los Angeles Times’s Louis Berg. ‘And she also chirps like a squirrel and makes bird noises.’ MGM attempted to capitalise on this by purchasing the screen rights to William Henry Hudson’s 1904 novel Green Mansions, offering her the central role of Rima. Accepting this would have been a terrible mistake. Though she genuinely possessed the innocent appeal required to play the timid forest girl who converses with the fauna and falls in love with a handsome stranger, she was already too voluptuous and, through no fault of her own, would have turned the part into a joke. Sara realised this. The project was shelved until 1954, when Vincente Minnelli tried to foist it upon the equally unsuitable Italian siren Pier Angeli. It was eventually filmed in 1959 when Mel Ferrer directed his then wife Audrey Hepburn in the definitive portrayal opposite Anthony Perkins.

To make up for Elizabeth losing out on Rima, and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with America’s latest pre-pubescent sensation, an ‘official’ biography was syndicated in columns across America in the hope of someone coming forward with a role as close to ‘real life’ as possible. In much the same way as Tasmanian scallywag Errol Flynn had been reinvented as an all-round sporting jock from Ireland, so Elizabeth became a wunderkind talent plucked from the London Blitz – one who had danced before the king of England and who had also been amazed to learn of her ability to communicate with animals. It was pure hogwash, of course, but peacetime readers lapped up ever syrupy sentence – although the hoped-for role never came.

As had happened with Joan Crawford and Judy Garland, Elizabeth was welcomed into Louis B. Mayer’s ‘family circle’ and invited to call him ‘Papa’. However, away from the studio with her real family, Elizabeth’s life was anything but convivial. Francis, who was involved with Gilbert Adrian – MGM’s chief costume designer since 1927 and in a lavender marriage with actress Janet Gaynor at that time – moved into a hotel, taking Howard with him, whilst Sara was sleeping with director Michael Curtiz, whom she had met on the set of Life with Father (1947), all in the interest of elevating her daughter’s position on the Tinsel Town ladder.

Sara is also known to have set her sights on Louis B. Mayer himself, no doubt unaware that she was a generation too old for his tastes. Her ardour dimmed, however, when she learned that Mayer had denounced her as ‘gutter-class’, though it was Elizabeth who committed the unpardonable sin of squaring up to the messiah. Barging into his office unannounced, she told him exactly what she thought of him, and before she slammed the door behind her, she yelled, ‘You and your studio can go to hell!’ Mayer did not fire her, but for the rest of his life, he and Elizabeth loathed one another: she never entered his office again and only spoke to him under duress.

Mayer, of course, knew the monetary value of his temperamental young star and, cashing in on the latest canine phenomenon, gave her a part in Courage of Lassie – a misnomer if ever there was one, for the ‘Lassie’ in question, still played by Pal, was called Bill! Like its predecessors, the film was shot in glorious Technicolor and showcased the famous collie’s talents as an Allied agent-combatant more capable of outsmarting the Nazis than its human counterparts, despite suffering from shellshock. Starring Frank Morgan and Tom Drake, it was a big success – but again not on account of Elizabeth’s contribution, which was minimal and overshadowed by her quadruped co-star, as it had been in the last Lassie vehicle.

Elizabeth was next whisked through a quartet of kitchen-sink dramas in an attempt to draw as much adolescent mileage out of her as possible – just in case her star burned itself out with the advent of adulthood, as had happened with other Hollywood child prodigies. Louis B. Mayer had delayed this in Judy Garland’s case by ordering her to plait her hair and strap down her budding breasts. Sara was having none of this and began pestering the studio to turn Elizabeth into a young woman at a time when she was still legally regarded as a child, well aware that this would bring protests from the moralists. By the age of 15, Elizabeth had had more than her share of on-screen kisses and a betrothal – whilst off the screen, Sara fiercely guarded her morals and refused to let her out of her sight for a single moment. If anyone walked up to Elizabeth and asked a question, the reply always came from Sara.

Elizabeth was promoted as the home-loving girl who respected her parents and who eschewed the bright lights in favour of helping Mama with her chores. Photographed in an apron and rubber gloves, she could be seen ‘labouring’ over the stove or hunched over the sink, contemplating the dirty pots. The fake scenarios, arguably the closest Elizabeth ever got to doing actual housework, took place on a film set but were swallowed by the fans, who also clipped snaps taken of her at ‘high-school parties’, convinced that she was just as normal as they were – save that that these too were staged on a back lot and the ‘students’ were young bit-part players and extras.

Sara’s affair with Michael Curtiz paid off. Life with Father, in which Elizabeth worked as a loan-out to Warner Brothers, was an Irene Dunne–William Powell comedy set in 1880s New York. Elizabeth made a nuisance of herself, courtesy of Sara, by being frequently absent during shooting. It was the unwritten law of some studios in those days that A-list actresses were permitted to leave the set during their menstrual cycle, providing this had been squared with the on-set nurse, who was not averse to examining them to ensure they were telling the truth. So far as the astonishingly naive outside world was concerned, adolescents such as Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and Elizabeth were ‘late developers’ who did not yet have periods – the moguls’ way of convincing the public that they were not yet watching young women. Sara took Elizabeth home for the least little thing – a slight cough, aching feet, a pimple, a single sneeze – resulting in questions being asked by Warner Brothers’ insurers, who, stupidly believing that teenage girls only ‘fell sick’ once a month, wanted to know why she was having ‘periods’ at the rate of one a week.

In keeping with her fake studio biography, Elizabeth was not allowed to date and was not permitted to venture anywhere – not even the bathroom – unless chaperoned. Though they did not employ the actual word, the movie magazines reminded their readers that, despite the on-screen amours, Elizabeth was very much a virgin. Little girls who smiled a lot and posed for photographs with fluffy animals were not supposed to even know about sex, let alone indulge in it. Such was the naivety of cinemagoers. Therefore, when Elizabeth was observed to be developing breasts, MGM ‘extended’ her childhood by casting her in Cynthia (1947) with George Murphy and Mary Astor. Promoted as ‘a teenage Camille’, she played Cynthia Bishop, the consumptive, shy girl who cannot have the puppy she so desires because of her allergies – but whose overprotective parents do allow to go on her first date with a young marine, who escorts her to the end-of-term prom.

Elizabeth got on well with the famously feisty Mary Astor, but the feeling was not mutual. Astor found her scheming, even back then, and could not help comparing her with the much more amenable Judy Garland, with whom she had appeared in Meet Me in St Louis (1944). ‘Judy was warm and affectionate and exuberant,’ she wrote in her memoir, A Life on Film (Delacorte, 1971). ‘Elizabeth was cool and slightly superior . . . There was a look in those violet eyes that was somewhat calculating. It was as though she knew exactly what she wanted and was quite sure of getting it.’

To reassure the public that, like herself, Elizabeth’s character was not flighty, the young man who swept her off her feet in the film was James Lydon, her beau from Life with Father. As the gangly, inarticulate youth in the Henry Aldrich series, Lydon had been America’s favourite wartime teenager after Andy Hardy. Since then, he had matured into an inordinately handsome, hunky young man. Even so, where American audiences were concerned, Lydon was still the kind of boy no one would associate with leading a girl astray.

That Elizabeth was thinking about such matters was, however, evident on 13 July 1947 when she appeared on Louella Parsons’ radio show for a ‘modest’ fee of $3,000. Parsons was aware that the Taylors had separated and that Elizabeth had been the centre of attention at Roddy McDowall’s 18th birthday party the previous September – dancing with several older men. ‘Boys of my own age are so young,’ she told Louella. She also refused to acknowledge her parents’ split – Elizabeth claimed that her father was away from home on business and that Sara wanted to join him but that she was too busy chaperoning her back and forth to the studio. And, Louella wanted to know, what were her aspirations for the future? Elizabeth’s response was that two things were on her mind: becoming a great actress and ensnaring a husband. She did not add that she was not old enough to marry but did give the impression that any husband would do so long as he spirited her away from her overbearing mother.

The fact that Louella Parsons ‘overlooked’ the Taylors’ marital problems in her syndicated column perturbed MGM: whatever scandal or crisis Louella failed to pick up on, they knew, Hedda Hopper almost certainly would. Both hacks were therefore fed the story that Francis was away on business, discussing the opening of a new gallery with Howard Young. When Louis B. Mayer heard of the split, he decided to take no chances and opted to put an even greater distance between them – hoping to achieve the maxim ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’. Elizabeth had worked hard over the past year, Mayer told the press. She was beginning to make a name for herself, and, with no project on the immediate horizon, Mayer felt that she was entitled to a holiday. The studio would pick up the tab, naturally.

At the end of July, Elizabeth and Sara sailed for Southampton on the Queen Mary. They spent two months in London, shopping and revisiting old haunts, until a cable from Mayer summoned Elizabeth home for her first musical – co-starring with Jane Powell and Wallace Beery in A Date with Judy (1948). The film was produced by Joe Pasternak, the man responsible for reviving Marlene Dietrich’s career after she had been branded box-office poison. It was a great success, primarily on account of Brazilian bombshell Carmen Miranda’s ferociously camp rendition of ‘Cuanto Le Gusta’ and Wallace Beery’s club-footed dance routine. As for Elizabeth, she provided little more than colourful scenery, and the moralists frowned upon the scene where, still underaged, she vied with Powell for the attentions of 28-year-old Robert Stack. Even so, at least one influential critic was impressed, Irving Hoffman of the Hollywood Reporter singling her out as ‘a 14-carat, 100-proof siren of the future’.

Next came Julia Misbehaves (1948) – essentially a showcase for the phenomenal talents of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon – a production with distinct but inadvertent references to the crisis within the Taylor household. Elizabeth played wealthy debutante Susan Packett, whose aim was to reconcile her divorced parents whilst attempting to break away from their dominance so that she might have a life of her own with a man of her choosing. The critics – and Garson-Pidgeon aficionados who had never accepted them extant of their pairing in Mrs Miniver-style dramas – were not impressed.

Elizabeth’s first major relationship, at least the first to make the press, was with 23-year-old West Point-graduate-turned-footballer Glenn Davis, whom she met during the summer of 1948. Until this time – adopting the maxim ‘Look by all means, but please don’t touch!’ – wearing a succession of outfits by Francis’s designer lover Adrian, she had been encouraged to flutter her eyelashes at just about every man in sight, particularly the older, unattractive ones, because, according to Sara, these were the ones with the money and power. Sara and Francis had even bought Elizabeth her first car (courtesy of MGM), a powder-blue Cadillac convertible, to help her get noticed – not that this was necessary, and in any case she was not yet permitted to drive it.

The relationship with Davis was almost certainly platonic, an exercise stage-managed by MGM to gain essential publicity after Elizabeth’s last few films had failed to match up to the success of their predecessors. Davis had announced his plans to enlist for military service.

Elizabeth and Glenn Davis met up most weekends during the summer/fall of 1948. He would occasionally collect her from the studio where she was shooting Little Women (1949). Directed by Mervin LeRoy, this had an all-star cast – headed by June Allyson as Jo March, the heroine of Louisa M. Alcott’s classic novel – all of whom were better than Elizabeth, whose squeaky histrionics were lost when pitted against the quiet dignity of Mary Astor, the poetic innocence of Margaret O’Brien and the distinctive presence of that grand old man of the British theatre, C. Aubrey Smith, who sadly died before the film was released. In her blonde wig, it is only towards the end of the film, when she almost comes into her own, that one realises one has been watching Elizabeth Taylor. However, as Amy March, she inadvertently displays some of the later Taylor characteristics of selfishness and impetuosity – she grabs the best costumes and even manages to steal someone else’s intended.

On 8 September 1948, Elizabeth was photographed kissing Glenn Davis a tearful farewell when he left to fight in Korea. Afterwards. she appeared in public, looking glum, wearing his ‘ALL AMERICA’ sweatshirt and the ‘lucky’ gold football chain he had given her. It was all staged, of course.

Elizabeth coped with her ‘war bride’ status by travelling to London in November 1948 to star opposite 37-year-old Robert Taylor in a lacklustre espionage thriller, Conspirator. Sara told the press that whilst in England, still recovering from wartime food shortages, she and her daughter would ‘cut corners’ the same as everyone else. To prove this point, the two of them travelled ‘by common cab’ to the Ministry of Food to collect their ration books – then had the driver convey them to Claridge’s.

Conspirator was promoted as ‘Elizabeth Taylor’s First Adult Love Story’. Both leads were woefully miscast. At 16, Elizabeth was hopeless as Robert Taylor’s 21-year-old wife, whilst he seemed way out of his depth playing the villain, the British officer who spies for Russia and is instructed by his superiors to kill her. There were also rumours of an off-screen romance between the two – fuelled by the studio to prevent Taylor’s homosexuality from becoming public knowledge.

Such had been MGM’s concern for one of their brightest stars that they had forced Taylor into a lavender marriage with ‘baritone babe’ Barbara Stanwyck. When Taylor was suspected of hunting for ‘rough trade’ around Soho, the MGM publicity machine went into overdrive, and once again Elizabeth was appointed the inadvertent stooge for a gay man. Taylor was snapped ‘lusting’ over Elizabeth in her strapless, low-cut gown, which, of course, only caused more controversy – though nothing quite as bad as his lusting over rent boys would have done. Alternatively, he was photographed looking all forlorn in his dressing-room, penning one of his daily love letters to his wife, who was back in Los Angeles with her wardrobe-mistress lover. What Stanwyck and the press did not yet know was that Taylor, who was tired of the charade, was about to file for divorce.

Away from the set, there was little time for sightseeing in the British capital – Sara told reporters that when the cameras were not rolling, her daughter was receiving essential schooling or was safely tucked up in bed. Of course, if that was the case, this posed the question of how could she have been ‘involved’ with Robert Taylor?

Elizabeth and Sara did get around to visiting their former home on Wildwood Road, now loaned out to the Women’s Voluntary Services. They also spent time with Victor Cazalet’s sister Thelma – Cazalet had died in an air crash during the war – and it was she who introduced them to the actor Michael Wilding. Twenty years Elizabeth’s senior, Wilding would, of course, figure strongly in her life in later years. The pair are known to have dated, apparently with Sara’s blessing, and Wilding was photographed kissing Elizabeth goodbye in the VIP lounge at Heathrow.

More controversially, upon her return to America early in 1949, Elizabeth, very much against her will, became ‘involved’ with super-recluse Howard Hughes, who had been monitoring her progress by way of cinema newsreels and movie magazines for months. At the age of 44, Hughes was one of the country’s wealthiest tycoons, although he was already mentally unbalanced, and he believed that he could have any woman – or man – in the world as long as he offered hard cash and lots of it. His conquests are thought to have included Ginger Rogers, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Carole Lombard, Errol Flynn and Cary Grant – whilst Jean Harlow, Italian beauty Gina Lollobrigida and French revue artiste Zizi Jeanmaire famously spurned his advances.

Hughes possessed a massive collection of Elizabeth Taylor photographs, from the flat-chested ones of her National Velvet days to the more recent ones in which she displayed a more than ample cleavage. He emerged from his mansion bolthole to visit Francis’s gallery, striking up a friendship and purchasing several paintings he had absolutely no use for, and eventually invited Francis and his family to his home. Hughes is said to have offered $1 million in cash for Elizabeth’s hand in marriage – moreover, as her father’s permission was required for such a union to take place, Francis is said to have accepted the offer. Elizabeth, however, had stood up to the mighty Louis B. Mayer, so she was unafraid of the scruffy Texan billionaire. Hughes was unceremoniously sent packing.

No sooner had Hughes exited the scene than Glenn Davis arrived home from Korea, hoping to take up with Elizabeth where they had left off. Their reunion would be brief. The press compared their sporting–showbiz love affair with that of French singer Édith Piaf and world boxing champion Marcel Cerdan – the two couples frequently appeared on the same front pages. But whereas Piaf and Cerdan stuck it out – until his death in a plane crash in October 1949 – Elizabeth and Davis would have no such luck.

According to American press reports, Davis turned up at Elizabeth’s 17th-birthday party with an expensive cultured-pearl necklace – and a diamond-and-ruby engagement ring. The latter, however, stayed in his pocket when he was introduced to one of the guests. ‘She had started dating that rich guy Pawley, and, let’s face it, he showed her a better time than I did,’ Davis told biographer Kitty Kelley in 1980. ‘I stayed there for about a week or ten days of high-stepping and then I took off.’ In 1951, Davis married Hollywood starlet Terry Moore, arguably one of the most popular of the ‘studio stooge’ dates. In her time, Moore would keep the ‘outing’ hacks from the doors of numerous gay stars, including Rock Hudson, George Nader, Anthony Perkins and James Dean. The marriage lasted less than a year.

Elizabeth had had the new beau waiting in the wings for a while, setting yet another precedent. Twenty-eight-year-old William Pawley was heir to the multimillion-dollar Miami Transit Company. He and Elizabeth met in March 1949. As usual for her, it was love at first sight, and Pawley did not hang around for someone else to muscle in on his territory. First, he wrote Elizabeth a series of love letters, telling her how much he worshiped her. Receiving a positive response, he flew to Los Angeles to gain the approval of her family – in other words, Sara. This was, of course, forthcoming, and soon afterwards, having consulted with Louis B. Mayer, Sara escorted her daughter to Miami to meet the future in-laws. They were mobbed by thousands of fans at the airport and were trailed by hundreds of camp followers as Pawley showed his guests around his home territory. Occasionally, ‘shriekers’ would be employed by MGM’s Florida representatives to incite excitement amongst the crowd, if it was not already evident. They gathered outside theatres and restaurants, allowing the couple scarcely a moment’s peace. It was painful for Pawley, although Elizabeth lapped up this adoration whilst pretending to be unnerved by it all.

Though many would submit to the humiliation of doing so in the future, William Pawley made it clear that he would never walk in a movie star’s shadow. Sara was actually in favour of this, seeing as the pickings were suitably rich, whilst Elizabeth, as usual, didn’t know what she wanted – except as much attention as possible. She had just been contracted to The Big Hangover (1950) with Van Johnson and Father of the Bride (1950) with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett – the latter her biggest break to date – and she tentatively promised that once these were in the can she would retire.

Pawley did not know Elizabeth well enough not to believe her. He tried to expedite matters by asking her to marry him, and on 2 June 1949 she was photographed wearing an emerald-cut diamond ring. Whilst Pawley refused to divulge how much this had set him back, only that Elizabeth was worth every penny, she told Photoplay, ‘In Hollywood, I would not be anything but Elizabeth Taylor. In Miami, I’ll be Elizabeth Pawley. I like that!’

Then, as would happen with just about every relationship Elizabeth embarked upon, the rot set in. Pawley reminded her of her promise and began ‘moulding’ her into what he saw as the ideal wife – telling her how to dress and conduct herself in public, instructing her on what she should and should not eat, and giving her suggestions on how she should speak and to whom. The further the engagement progressed, the more Elizabeth worried that her own marriage might turn out like that of her parents. She was, and forever would remain, hopelessly insecure where men were concerned. She had virtually no female friends or confidantes to turn to for advice and therefore found herself stewing over problems which as yet did not exist – even when things were going well, she was persistently searching for reasons why they should not be.

In her own bizarre way, Elizabeth must, therefore, have been grateful for the release that came prior to shooting The Big Hangover, when she was informed that, before going on to Father of the Bride, she would be working as a loan-out in an even bigger project, sharing top-billing with Montgomery Clift in Paramount’s $2-million remake of An American Tragedy (1931). The finicky director George Stevens chose Elizabeth not, it is alleged, because he considered her to be in Monty’s class, which she certainly never was, but because he was convinced that their combined beauty would ‘set the screen alight’. Pawley offered her an ultimatum: unless she renounced the film, there would be no wedding. Elizabeth chose the film, and, initially, Pawley adopted a Machiavellian front, accompanying her to the wedding of her friend Jane Powell in the September. The next day, taking a leaf out of the book of the Hollywood system he so despised, he called Hedda Hopper – not Elizabeth – to announce that the engagement was off.

Elizabeth, in all probability, could not have cared less. On 22 August, her photograph had adorned the cover of Time magazine. The gist of the accompanying feature was that the golden greats of yesteryear – Dietrich, Stanwyck, Davis and Crawford – had passed their sell-by date and that Hollywood was now embracing a new type of goddess. ‘MGM has . . . turned up a jewel of great price, a true star sapphire,’ the editorial read. ‘She is Elizabeth Taylor!’ The studio disapproved of the analogy. Elizabeth was still only 17 and still a minor, promoted by them as being the archetypal, pure-as-the-driven-snow girl next door. So far as is known, she was still a virgin, never having been let out of her mother’s or chaperone’s sight for a moment. And this is how a very naive public would have viewed her, despite the fact that she was a busty, beautiful teenager. Her next film, however, would help her to grow up in the eyes of the public.