“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”
Born in London to American expatriates, Elizabeth Taylor’s first screen appearance was Universal’s There’s One Born Every Minute (1942). But when she was cast the following year in MGM’s Lassie Come Home, it kicked off a relationship with the studio that would last more than twenty years. She solidified her position as an up-and-coming star with National Velvet (1944) and transitioned seamlessly into more adult roles with Conspirator (1949). Her marriage to her first husband, hotel heir and socialite Conrad “Nicky” Hilton, lasted only months but generated great publicity for Father of the Bride (1950). The distinction between Taylor’s personal and professional life would be forever blurred. She emerged as a fully-formed dramatic actress with A Place in the Sun (1951) and received Best Actress Academy Award nominations four years running: Raintree County (1957), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and finally, Butterfield 8 (1960), which earned her her first Oscar. She ignited one of the biggest Hollywood scandals of the 1950s after the death of her third husband, Mike Todd, when she became romantically involved with singer Eddie Fisher. Taylor and Fisher married in 1959, but the relationship ended during filming of Cleopatra (1963), when she met and fell in love with her costar, Richard Burton—igniting an even bigger scandal. The couple’s tumultuous relationship fueled the 1966 film version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, resulting in a Best Actress Oscar for Taylor. While her box-office power diminished through the 1970s and 1980s, her celebrity and influence never did.
GIVEN EVERYTHING HE HAD heard about her, it’s no wonder Richard Burton was wearing armor. By the filming of Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor had been married four times, divorced twice, widowed once, had three children with two different men and was in the process of adopting a fourth with her third. And she wasn’t yet thirty.
It does suggest a certain take-no-prisoners attitude. But despite Burton’s halter armor and leopard-pattern fur vest, his green silk tunic and matching leather wrist guards, he would end up falling on his sword—at least as Mark Anthony. This was the beginning of Liz & Dick, in hindsight a phenomenon whose scope and power was almost impossible to comprehend—a Grade 10 earthquake, a Category 5 hurricane that would rage throughout the remainder of the sixties and into the early seventies.
Their first scene together had no dialogue; they were just to look at each other. Burton showed up hungover—the attraction was instant and mutual. Still, at least in the beginning, the Welshman had intended it to be “once-over-lightly,” a brief dalliance—he being a man who polished off women like pints. In the men’s makeup trailer, Burton announced, “Gentlemen, I’ve just fucked Elizabeth Taylor in the back of my Cadillac!” A lout for sure, but even more so, a naïve lout: Elizabeth Taylor was no man’s conquest.
At the moment, Taylor was married to Eddie Fisher. A feat that she accomplished by busting up his marriage to her good friend Debbie Reynolds. Fisher and Reynolds had been dubbed America’s sweethearts, and the nation was not pleased. Three years later, in Italy, Fisher and Taylor’s relationship was now winding down or, perhaps more accurately, exploding into a thousand pieces upon the world stage. Fisher initially objected to Burton constantly prodding his wife to drink, not that she needed prodding. The grape and the grain was something Taylor had embraced years earlier, during her brief first marriage to Conrad “Nicky” Hilton—heir to Hilton hotel fortune, and a young man with a gambling, boozing, wife-beating problem.
There had since been numerous stories of her drunken hijinks—different films, different leading men. Taylor drinking chocolate martinis with Rock Hudson while on location for Giant. Taylor jumping into a public fountain with Montgomery Clift while on location for Raintree County. It seemed standard movie star fare, but in matters of the liver, just as of the heart, Taylor rarely did anything half-assed. As her third husband, theater and film producer Mike Todd (born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen), would note, “I have often seen her pour her own champagne for breakfast.” And by this, he meant a bottle, sometimes two.
Cleopatra was to balloon into the most expensive movie ever made. And Liz & Dick’s affair was to balloon into perhaps the biggest scandal ever. Taylor and Burton called it le scandale, an on-again, off-again juggernaut that whipped the paparazzi into an orgiastic frenzy never before seen. Even the Vatican piled on, publishing an open letter in the Vatican City weekly accusing the adulterers of “erotic vagrancy.” Back in the States, Congresswoman Iris Blitch of Georgia attempted to have the couple barred from reentering “on the grounds of moral undesirability.” Of the media spotlight, Burton remarked, “It’s like fucking Khrushchev!” The man had a way with words. “I’ve had affairs before—how did I know the woman was so fucking famous!” But there was no stopping now.
In matters of the liver, just as of the heart, Taylor rarely did anything halfassed. As her third husband, theater and film producer Mike Todd, would note, “I have often seen her pour her own champagne for breakfast.” And by this, he meant a bottle, sometimes two.
Not the suicide attempts, not the drunken rows—often public and violent, Taylor giving as good as she got. It was a love affair set within the scorching hot crucible of movie magazine madness: flashbulbs popping, hands groping—constant pandemonium. When they arrived in Boston in 1964 from their honeymoon, hundreds of crazed fans flooded the tarmac and surrounded the plane. Mobbed at the hotel, Taylor was slammed into the wall, her hair pulled, Burton throwing punches. For the next ten years it was a nonstop circus as they crisscrossed the globe, emptying bottles together and making films together—The V.I.P.s, The Sandpiper, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedians, Boom!—crap, really. The one exception being Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, arguably the best performance of each of their careers. But how far from reality was it? A drunken Martha and George raging around the set during the day. A drunken Liz & Dick raging around the bedroom at night.
MARTHA
I’m loud, and I’m vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody’s got to, but I am not a monster! I’m not!
GEORGE
You’re a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden …
No longer limiting herself to champagne, Taylor started her days with Bloody Marys, then turned things over to Jack Daniel’s; Burton was plowing through three bottles of vodka a day or maybe taking it easy with five bottles of wine. It is a matter of debate as to who could drink more. But they were quite the pair, puking in hotel lobbies, falling down restaurant stairs, punching paparazzi, policemen, costars. Taylor would confess that her capacity was terrifying, saying—”I had a hollow leg. I could drink everyone under the table.” She called Burton a burnout, talentless. He called her a “fat little tart.”
Ugliness, made even more so by the backdrop of such incredible movie-star splendor. Biographer Robert Sellers describes celluloid gods with Rolls-Royces, mink coats (one for him, too), diamonds and more diamonds—Burton out-bidding Aristotle Onassis on a $1.1 million rock. In their massive dressing room suites, butlers and maids catered to a sprawling entourage of hairdressers, publicists, make-up artists, personal assistants, not to mention friends, family members, and hangers-on. Vacation homes and movie locations, traveling with a pack of incontinent dogs and ninety-three suitcases—how did they sustain it all? Physically, emotionally, let alone financially? And why did they want to?
Burton commented in private, “Elizabeth is more famous than the Queen. I wish none of it had ever happened.” Taylor told the press, “I don’t know how many plates I broke over his head.” Finally in 1972, during the filming of Divorce His-Divorce Hers (a two-part TV movie), the well began to run dry. There is much irony here: they were back in Rome, telling the story of a marriage destroyed beyond repair. Burton was a mess physically, Taylor a mess emotionally, nothing new with that. There is a story of him inviting an attractive extra up to his room and Taylor leaping out from behind the couch. She breaks a liter of vodka and chases him around the room with the bottle neck—nothing new there, either. Just that maybe, after a decade, it finally felt old.
Back in Hollywood, the fighting would continue. One day Taylor showed up at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She walked into the bar, where she knew Burton would be, and punched him in the face. Divorce His-Divorce Hers had recently been broadcast on TV—and Taylor soon announced that she and Burton were officially separated. A year later they would get divorced.
Of course, a year after that, they would remarry.
SAID TO BE THE BIRTHPLACE of the Mai Tai, a rum concoction created by “Trader” Victor J. Bergeron, the in-house watering hole of Hilton’s flagship Beverly Hills location was actually the fourth Trader Vic’s in the U.S. when it opened in 1955. (The original was in Oakland; the second, in Seattle.) But with its high-profile clientele—boosted by the hotel’s hosting of the Golden Globes every year since 1961—and international reputation, it elevated Polynesian-themed kitsch into something resembling (whoa) class, and later reappropriated as lounge cool.
Reflecting a nationwide trend toward island-themed bars (thatched palm ceilings, fishing nets, tiki masks), by the end of the 1960s, there were over twenty Trader Vic’s outposts around the globe, many of them affiliated with Hilton hotels. The Beverly Hills location received benediction from such stars as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Anthony Quinn, Mia Farrow, Nancy Sinatra, Jack Lemmon, Ronald Reagan, and Warren Beatty.
But despite the powerful allure of the Mai Tai or the equally tasty Scorpion Bowl, the widespread appeal of Trader Vic’s diminished as the 1970s gave way to the 1980s and the tikiphiles grew older. Still, in Los Angeles, its appeal remained strong all the way into the twenty-first century. More than forty years after its founding, patrons included Kevin Spacey, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Harrison Ford, Jodie Foster, and Russell Crowe.
Sadly, construction plans at the intersection of Santa Monica and Wilshire forced the closure of the original Beverly Hills Trader Vic’s in 2007. Whereas before it was easily accessible to anyone via a street-level high-peaked Polynesian entrance marked by a giant totem pole, it’s now a fully assimilated hotel amenity, with smaller, less colorful digs just off the Beverly Hilton pool.
1 OZ. DARK JAMAICAN RUM
1 OZ. MARTINIQUE RUM
½ OZ. ORANGE CURACAO
¼ OZ. SIMPLE SYRUP
¼ OZ. ORGEAT SYRUP
¾ OZ. FRESH LIME JUICE
MINT SPRIG
FRUIT STICK (ORANGE SLICE AND CHERRY)
Pour all liquid ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake, then strain into a double Old-Fashioned glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with mint sprig and fruit stick. Serve with straw.
THE ROSETTA STONE of giant communal tiki drinks. The original 1946 version of the Scorpion Bowl serves about twelve people.
Another version, also delicious, was developed more that a decade later, in 1958, by restaurateur Steve Crane—one-time B-movie actor and owner of the Beverly Hills celebrity hotspot Luau. A successful restaurateur for twenty-five years who would leave his mark on Hollywood nightlife, Stephen Crane is also remembered as one of Lana Turner’s ex-husbands (the second of seven).
Crane met Turner at Mocambo and married her three weeks later, somehow forgetting to mention he was not yet divorced from his first wife. The marriage was annulled, but after discovering Turner was pregnant (and once Crane was legally divorced), the couple remarried. They would divorce a second time one year later, and it was their daughter, Cheryl Crane, who at age fourteen famously stabbed gangster Johnny Stompanato to death in her mother’s bedroom. Stephen Crane would be linked to numerous other starlets, including Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth. It couldn’t have been his B-picture good looks that seduced them—so maybe it was his bartending skills.
