PINK TRIANGLE

Left photo: “Liz and Dick,” or “Dickie,” as she called him, created a media frenzy every time they appeared in public during the filming of Tennessee Williams’ play, The Night of the Iguana. Whether smiling, scowling, or cursing, the pair stirred up frontpage news both in Mexico and the U.S. Much of what Elizabeth said could not be printed: “My best feature is my gray hairs, both on my head and covering my vagina. Each hair is named Burton.”

Right photo: The motley stars of Iguana assembled for a group photograph. Standing, left to right, Sue (“Lolita”) Lyon; prim and proper Deborah Kerr, and whorish Ava Gardner. Seated, brilliant and dissipated, and as jaded as the defrocked priest he was portraying, is Richard Burton.

The arrival of the “scandalous” Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Mexico City occurred on September 22, 1963. As mobs descended on the airport, it became an international media event. Although she hadn’t been cast in the movie, Elizabeth was accompanying Burton to Mexico, where he’d be filming Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana.

Losing her purse, part of her wardrobe, and even her shoes, Elizabeth made it through the crowd with the help of strong-armed security guards. “Fuck this!” she shouted at Burton. “They think we’re the Beatles!”

Under the scorching Mexican sun, Iguana’s director John Huston (left) tells Tennessee that he had originally wanted Marlon Brando instead of Richard Burton to star as the defrocked priest. However, the film’s producer, Ray Stark, Huston informed him, had preferred Richard Harris or William Holden.

“I flew to Switzerland and lied to Burton, telling him, ‘You were my one and only choice,’” Huston said.

Even before they left the airport, “The Liz & Dick” show entertained the masses by staging a big fight over a missing case of jewelry, each blaming the other for its disappearance. The box later turned up in a packed suitcase.

A press conference had been scheduled, but Burton refused to attend. However, he did issue a statement. “This is my first visit to Mexico. I hope it will be my last.”

Elizabeth had a different opinion. She told the press, “I have always wanted to come back to fucking Mexico. I like fucking Mexico.” The Mexican reporters printed her remarks but left out the two adjectives.

Initially, there was a lot of misunderstanding in the press, headlines claiming that Elizabeth, not Ava Gardner, would be the female star of the movie.

John Huston, the project’s director, had wanted Marlon Brando to play the defrocked priest, but Ray Stark, the producer, favored either Richard Harris or William Holden. Finally, they settled on Burton. Ava Gardner had been their first choice as the notorious innkeeper, but Melina Mercouri was also held out as a replacement.

For the role of Deborah Kerr’s grandfather, Nonno, Tennessee wanted Carl Sandburg, America’s most famous playwright, but he was in failing health. The role instead went to Cyril Delevanti.

According to Elizabeth’s secretary, Dick Hanley, who accompanied the famous pair, Elizabeth arrived “pissed off” at director John Huston. In fact, by the second day, she was already lambasting him as “an ugly, old, mean, withering fart,” charging that he had mentally abused her friend Monty Clift during the filming of both The Misfits (1961) and Freud (1962).

In retribution, the director rather ungallantly chose to bring up the subject of how Elizabeth was “shameless” in stealing Mike Todd from Huston’s former wife, Evelyn Keyes.

Merrily We Roll Along

As a horrified extra (right) looks on during their bus tour through Mexico, Grayson Hall (center), cast as a tour guide and chaperone for nymphet Lolita Sue Lyon (left), really wants to take her to bed. But since that wasn’t possible, she vowed to “move all the mountains in Mexico” to keep Burton’s paws off her.

Zoe Sallis showed up in Puerto Vallarta. It was common knowledge that she was Huston’s mistress.

In 1963, Puerto Vallarta was a seedy little fishing village lying three hundred miles north of Acapulco. Tacky and not very well known, it became instantly famous when Elizabeth and Burton arrived and put it on the international tourist map. Tennessee would soon arrive to join in the chaos.

The actual shooting of Iguana took place on the isolated peninsula of Mismaloya, which had no road access to the mainland and could be reached only by boat. The only inhabitants on Mismaloya were Indians who lived in thatched huts and survived on fishing.

Elizabeth and Burton and all their massive amounts of luggage were taken to Puerto Vallarta and delivered to “Gringo Gulch,” an upmarket neighborhood where Americans had purchased a number of vacation homes. Locals had another name for it, referring to it as La Casa de Zoplotes (the House of the Buzzards) because it lay near a garbage dump.

Whereas Burton had an actual part in the filming, Elizabeth was on site to see that he didn’t go astray in the arms of any of his female co-stars. They included man-eating Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue (“Lolita”) Lyon.

Elizabeth also had to keep her eye out for at least fifty whores, some of them diseased, who had arrived from Mexico City to service the film crew. At least half of that number of male hustlers had also come to Puerto Vallarta to service homosexual members of the crew. “I’m sure Tennessee will be royally entertained,” Burton said.

Arriving at the port, Elizabeth feared she’d be assigned to some shack, but was delighted by Casa Kimberley, the villa provided for her. In fact, she liked it so much that she eventually bought it for $40,000.

Burton liked the ramshackle port, too, and in time, he built a villa across the street from Casa Kimberley, connecting the two properties with a footbridge that linked the two buildings from points within their respective second floors. Its design was inspired by the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. “I can run across the bridge and escape from Liz when she becomes a raging harridan,” Burton told his assistant, Michael Wilding, who—as her former husband— was all too familiar with her rages.

It would take almost a novel to untangle the past and present romantic entanglements that whirled around the cast and crew of Iguana. Before it was over, Kerr told the press, “I’m the only one here not shacked up with somebody.”

She left out the fact that she was accompanied by her husband, Peter Viertel, the scriptwriter who had previously worked with Huston on The African Queen (1951) with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Viertel had also been the former lover of Ava Gardner.

There were other sexual embarrassments unfolding. Huston had a reunion with Gardner, with whom he’d once had a torrid affair. Huston had also once pursued Kerr.

Elizabeth knew that Kerr had had a sexual tryst years before with Stewart Granger, but she was not certain if Burton had had an affair with her in Britain.

Relationships between Burton and Wilding were still friendly, and Elizabeth had no animosity toward him. It had not been a bitter divorce. They were both involved in the rearing of their two sons, and both of them loved their boys very much, even though neither of them would ever win any awards for parenting.

Wilding was no longer lusting for Elizabeth. He showed up with a beautiful Swedish actress, Karen von Unge. She recalled, “Michael was a dear, sensitive man who should have been a great painter. Here he was, carrying suitcases of chili for Elizabeth from Chasen’s in Los Angeles because she asked for them. She simply asked, and men did—it was that simple.”

Huston looked upon Wilding as “a pathetic figure. He was once a big star in England, but he gave it up for Elizabeth. What did it get him? Now he serves her drinks and picks up dog poop for her. He’s like the Erich von Stroheim character in Sunset Blvd.. Formerly married to Gloria Swanson in the movie, he becomes her butler.”

Anticipating feuds or muggings, Huston passed out derringers to key members of his cast. These were the kind of small pistols that late 19^th-century card sharps were known for concealing within their sleeves. With the pistols, he gave each person a silver bullet with a name etched onto it. Even though she was not a member of the cast, the derringer he gave Elizabeth was gold-plated.

Unlike the others, Elizabeth received five bullets, each with a name on it—Richard Burton, Sue Lyon, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr. The director also included one with the name of John Huston.

On seeing Elizabeth again over drinks, Gardner said, “Dear heart, you and Richard are the Frank (Sinatra) and Ava (Gardner) of the 1960s.”

Evelyn Keyes, though not in Mexico, was present—at least in the group’s collective memory. Elizabeth had stolen Mike Todd from her following Keyes’ divorce from John Huston. Keyes was now married to Artie Shaw, who had been Gardner’s former husband.

The plot thickened when Budd Schulberg, author of the Hollywood novel, What Makes Sammy Run? and the screenplay for On the Waterfront, arrived to seduce Gardner. Viertel had once been married to Schulberg’s former wife, Virginia Ray.

When she wasn’t due on the set for a day or so, North Carolina-born Ava Gardner could outdrink any man in Mexico, even Richard Burton.

According to John Huston, “She could go on all night and on through the following night and through the next day and the next night and the next. Although a beautiful woman, she had a big pair of cojones on her—Those Tarheel women!”

In a conversation one day at the beach with Elizabeth and Dick Hanley, Viertel confessed that he had abandoned his pregnant wife to run away with Bettina, arguably the most famous French fashion model of the 1950s. “She later dumped me for Aly Khan.”

“I know Bettina,” Elizabeth said. “I know Aly Khan, too. Oh do I know Aly Khan!”

“Huston tried to console me when I lost Bettina,” Viertel said. “He told me ‘Aly Khan is one swell guy.’ Then, when Aly Khan fucked Huston’s wife, Evelyn Keyes, I told him, ‘It’s okay, John, Aly is one swell guy.’ He punched me in the mouth. I love John, though. He’s fucked everybody from Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Asphalt Jungle to Truman Capote on the set of Beat the Devil when they shared a double bed. He even screwed a neo-Nazi woman in London who gave him syphilis—something he later referred to as ‘the Hitler clap.’”

When Viertel left to return to the set, he, as a man of the world, kissed both Elizabeth and Hanley on the lips before departing.

Tennessee arrived in Puerto Vallarta with Frederick Nicklaus, a young recent graduate of Ohio State University. Tennessee told Huston, “Frederick is the world’s greatest living poet, though not discovered as of yet.”

“You’ve already introduced Freddie boy to me in Key West,” Huston reminded the drugged playwright.

“I’ve dealt with Bogie, so I know how to handle difficult, temperamental personalities,” Huston later said. “Williams is an odd bird, always in flight. He can also ‘fly’ off the handle at just a perceived insult. Not only that, but he is eccentric, a sex addict, a pill pusher, an alcoholic, and, perhaps, a genius. A genius is always difficult to handle. I already had Ava Gardner, Richard Burton, and Elizabeth fucking around. Now, Tennessee with his fat wallet would soon be buying every good looking Mexican lad at the port.”

Tom Shaw, Huston’s assistant director, detested Tennessee and his volatile personality. In his bulldog manner, he said, “I hated the mean son of a bitch. I was having a drink at the bar, and he was berating the shit out of this poor Mexican bartender. At the time, I didn’t recognize who he was. I said to myself, ‘Who is this asshole?’ He was a vicious kind of faggot.”

One night over drinks, the key players were asked by Herb Caen, the San Francisco columnist, what they most wanted in life. Huston said, “Interest.” Gardner wished for “Health.” Burton opted for “Adventure,” Viertel for “Success,” and Deborah Kerr “Happiness.” Elizabeth chose “Wealth.”

James Bacon, the veteran Hollywood reporter who’d once seduced Marilyn Monroe, arrived on the scene. “I’m from Hollywood, and I knew both John Barrymore and Errol Flynn, but I’d never seen such heavy drinking. One night in a tavern, Burton downed twenty-five straight shots of tequila, using Carta Blanca beer as a chaser.”

“I was in no condition myself, but I often had to put Burton to bed at his villa long after Elizabeth had retired,” Tennessee said. “He begged me to help him get undressed, so I took advantage. He didn’t specifically ask me to, but I also removed the Welshman’s jockey shorts. I figured I wouldn’t get a chance like this very often—to see what appealed to the stately homos of the British theater like Olivier and Gielgud in the 1940s, and to so many fine ladies.”

The cast and crew were constantly besieged by reporters, Elizabeth claiming, “There are more press guys and paparazzi here than fucking iguanas.”

Whereas reporters from California relished writing about the heavy drinking and the behind-the-scenes romances, the Mexican newspaper Siempre denounced the entire cast and crew of The Night of the Iguana. It attacked the “sex, drinking, drugs, vice, and carnal bestiality of this gringo garbage that has descended on our country.” Siempre also cited “gangsters, nymphomaniacs, heroin-taking blondes, and the degenerate American playwright, Tennessee Williams.”

One night, while drinking with Elizabeth, it became clear that her body was a sea of insect bites. “Welcome to Puerto Vallarta,” she said, “with its tropical heat, cheating lovers, poisonous snakes, deadly scorpions, hot pussies, and giant land crabs. Of them all, the most devouring are the goddamn chiggers, which dig in real deep and can only be removed with scalpels.”

The local Catholic priest attacked Elizabeth as a “wanton Jezebel” and called on the President of Mexico to deport her as an undesirable alien. When Tennessee’s arrival was publicized in the press, the priest also called for his removal from Mexico as well. “We do not need another notorious homosexual coming to Mexico to corrupt the morals of our young men.”

A drunken Elizabeth was asked one night how she’d describe the three women in the cast. She obliged: “Gardner is lushly ripe for a middle-aged woman; Kerr is refined and ladylike until you get her in bed, or so I’m told; and Lyon is…well, let’s just say nubile. No wonder James Mason had the hots for her. When making Lolita, he temporarily gave up his interest in boys.”

When Tennessee, in a Puerto Vallarta tavern known as the Casablanca Bar, was asked for his opinion of the Taylor/Burton romance, he said, “They are artists on a special pedestal and therefore the rules of bourgeois morality do not apply to them.”

Burton was sitting with Tennessee when he made that pronouncement. When Burton himself was asked for a comment, he said, “I am bewitched by the cunt of Elizabeth Taylor and her cunning ways. Cunt and cunning—that’s what the attraction is.”

Graham Jenkins, Burton’s brother, was also in Puerto Vallarta, and he had a more sensitive view of the Taylor/Burton affair. “Richard discovered how much he really needed Elizabeth, and his surrender to her was total. Of course, they still fought like cats and dogs. Each of them was mercurial. But they truly loved each other, and that was so evident. That did not mean that each of them could no longer see with their roving eye. Rich especially would always have that.”

For the most part, Burton was pleased with his role, telling Tennessee, “After this film is released, those boys in the press will stop calling me Mr. Cleopatra.”

The one thing Elizabeth liked about Tennessee’s play was the dialogue. “It contained some of the most bitch wit ever recorded.”

Over a private drink she had with Huston and Tennessee, she told them, “Believe me, no one adores Ava Gardner more than I do. Such a fine actress, if the role isn’t too challenging. I think you’ll make a good picture. Regrettably, if you’d chosen me for the role of Maxine, it would have been a great picture, and I would win another Oscar to give the one I have company.”

“I’m sure you’re right, my dear,” Huston said. “Right on target. Forgive my mistake in casting.”

Before his departure from Mexico in October of 1963 for New York, Tennessee hosted a party at his rented villa near Elizabeth and Burton in Gringo Gulch. He’d invited both of them to attend, but only Elizabeth had shown up.

There, she met Jose Bolaños, a Mexican screen writer who was enjoying a certain vogue. After the murder of Marilyn Monroe on August 4, 1962, he was getting a lot of press attention and being widely hailed as her last and final boyfriend.

Bolaños told Tennessee that he and Monroe had mutually committed themselves to get married, although some of her friends said that Monroe had promised to remarry Joe DiMaggio.

Bolaños was working on a TV commercial twenty-five miles to the south, but had come to Puerto Vallarta with the hope of meeting and ingratiating himself with Elizabeth as he had with Monroe.

Tennessee had been charmed by the charismatic young Mexican and had set up the meeting for him with Elizabeth, presumably without Burton.

Tennessee defined him as a Latin lover archetype, evocative of both Fernando Lamas and Ricardo Montalban. Bolaños was dark and handsome, with a magnetic personality. The night of their meeting, Bolaños told Elizabeth and Tennessee that his dream involved coming to Hollywood and putting both Lamas and Montalban “out of business.” Secretly, he hoped that by attaching himself to Elizabeth, she could use her influence to help him break into the American film industry.

The Mexican screenwriter, Jose Bolaños (appearing in both photos above), anounced that he was going to marry Marilyn Monroe. “I will be her new husband and the last lover she will ever need,” he boasted to a newspaper in Mexico City.

But before the wedding, Marilyn was murdered. That forced Bolaños to look for a new gig. Subsequently, he showed up in Puerto Vallarta with the intention of stealing Elizabeth Taylor “from Old Man Burton.”

Elizabeth might have paid scant attention to Bolaños except for two reasons: He was the only man she’d met in Puerto Vallarta who qualified for that “revenge fuck” she’d planned as a means of getting even with Burton for seducing Gardner. Also, she was tempted by the idea of learning intimate secrets about Monroe’s last lover, especially if the fallen star had considered Bolaños as marriage material.

At Tennessee’s party, Bolaños exuded masculinity, and as Elizabeth would tell Dick Hanley, “He stood so close to me he was practically rubbing that big package up against me.”

On his own turf within Mexico’s film community, Bolaños was known as a “star fucker,” having previously seduced such aging screen divas as Merle Oberon and Dolores Del Rio.

On the patio of Tennessee’s rented villa, lit by colored lights, Bolaños danced both the rumba and the samba with Elizabeth. Tennessee had hired a six-member band, each of the members appearing in tight white pants and shirtless, as per the playwright’s request.

According to his reputation, Bolaños specialized in making a woman feel like she was the only female on earth.

The screenwriter mesmerized Elizabeth with his tales of working in the film industry in Mexico. He had been an intimate friend of the late, great modernist painter, Diego Rivera, and was also close to the Spain-born director Luís Buñuel, a towering figure in experimental cinema.

Bolaños also invited Elizabeth to see the Mexican historical epic, La Cucaracha (aka The Soldiers of Pancho Villa; 1959), whose screenplay he had written.

She pumped Bolaños for any details he could supply about Monroe’s final weeks alive. Hanley came over to join them. “Bolaños was very clever,” he said. “He did not speak unkindly of Marilyn, but he placed Elizabeth on a higher pedestal. About three times, he told her that ‘you are, of course, a far greater star than Marilyn, who possessed neither your talent nor your beauty.”

“Your beauty is a natural beauty,” Bolaños told Elizabeth in front of Hanley. “Marilyn had to become Marilyn Monroe by acting the part, dressing up, and painting her face. With no make-up on, I’m sure you’d look stunning. Surely no one on the planet has eyes as beautiful as yours.”

Hanley drove Elizabeth and Bolaños to his apartment, where they disappeared upstairs. He waited downstairs in his car for two hours. When Elizabeth finally came down the steps, he drove her home. She told him that Bolaños had asked to remain in Hanley’s apartment for the night, not wanting to drive after dark on the impossibly treacherous roads.

Back in his own apartment, he found a nude Bolaños asleep on his bed. Very gently, Hanley draped a sheet over him. “Lucky Marilyn, lucky Elizabeth,” he later told Roddy McDowall.

“The next morning, I made breakfast for him,” Hanley said. “He also let me make love to him, but only in exchange for a big favor.”

“I know you’re her secretary,” Bolaños said, “and you can arrange for me to have a rendezvous with her in Hollywood. I want to be in her life. She’ll tire of Burton. He’s an old man of failing powers, I heard. I want to be nearby when she replaces Burton.”

Bolaños sighed. “All of you mariposas want that. So if you deliver Elizabeth Taylor to me, you can have me on occasion. After all, I’m the most sought after male in all of Mexico.”

Bolaños was already aware of the important roles Tennessee had written for men, including the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, and the role of Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Consequently, Bolaños asked Hanley to call Tennessee immediately to ask if he could spend the day with him, and possibly the night.

Tennessee was only too eager to invite Bolaños over, telling Hanley, “If Marilyn and Elizabeth can go for him, why not me?

In the aftermath of that call, Tennessee spent a day and a night with Bolaños before he headed out of Puerto Vallarta the following morning.

Tennessee was so taken with Bolaños that he promised to write a role for him based on the archetype of a dashing young Mexican. “The part will be ideal for you.”

On most mornings, Tennessee met Elizabeth at her villa. Together, they headed out, wading through chickens, naked children, and mange-encrusted mongrel dogs. He and Hanley carried the makings of a picnic with them, to be shared with Burton later when they reached the remote peninsula where filming was occurring.

Huston liked to launch his day with five Bloody Marys, and Elizabeth and Tennessee joined him.

Portraits of the Iguana cast, including Sue Lyon (upper left) and Richard Burton, with an anguished Ava Gardner pictured below. “Every eligible red-blooded Mexican man in that part of the country was after Ava, and many of them got lucky,” Huston said.

The director didn’t like the way Tennessee handled Ava’s character. He accused the playwright of turning her into a female spider. “You’ve got it in for women. You don’t want to see a man and a woman in a love relationship.”

One day, Elizabeth was feeling ill and Tennessee went alone, telling Huston that he stood ready to write additional dialogue.

Huston told him, “I don’t think we’re going to get much shooting done today. The heat is crushing, and Burton disappeared into Ava’s dressing room at ten o’clock. They may be in there for the day.”

As author Nancy Schoenberger wrote: “Ava seemed to come alive in Burton’s presence. The press were not just covering a congregation of some of the world’s greatest talents and personalities in a remote Mexican village, they were waiting—hoping?—that Burton and Taylor’s vaunted love affair might founder on Ava Gardner’s dangerous shoulders.”

The coming together of the drunken, poetry-spouting, lust-filled Welsh actor and the Tarheel femme fatale and sex symbol had sparked “meaningful eye contact,” as Huston described it to Tennessee.

One day before noon, both Gardner and Burton got drunk on a local moonshine known as raicilla. It was made from the agave plant. Gardner called it “cactus piss.”

Huston defined it to Tennessee as “a cactus brandy stronger than tequila.” Burton told him that the way to drink raicilla was straight down. That way you can feel it going into each individual intestine.” When Elizabeth tried it, she said, “I hear it’s made from cactus. Tell the fuckers who brewed it that they left the god damn needles in it.”

One evening when Elizabeth was suffering from “turista,” Hanley drove Tennessee and Burton to the Casablanca Bar. To Hanley’s surprise, a sultry Gardner was waiting there for him. Burton turned to Dick, “I can always count on you for being discreet around Her Ladyship.”

Actually, Burton was wrong about the degree to which Hanley would remain discreet.

“After Ava and Richard consumed enough alcohol to resink the Titanic, they retired to one of the hot-bed shanties out back, where they disappeared,” Hanley said. “I wondered if Richard would be able to get it up in his condition. I sat in the bar with this beach boy hustler waiting for their return.”

“Tennessee hired this other hustler and seduced him in our car. Ava and Richard were gone for about three hours. When both of them finally emerged, they were barely able to stand up.”

“I literally had to toss them into the back of our car, where they cuddled up with Tennessee for the ride back home,” Hanley said.

The next day Elizabeth suspected that something had happened between Ava and Burton. She also suspected that something might be going on between Burton and Sue Lyon, who played the rigidly chaperoned blonde nymphet in Iguana.

In some ways, Lyon’s casting in that role had been influenced by her involvement, in 1962, of Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, an adaptation of the novel by Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) about a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with an adolescent girl.

Burton, incidentally, had seen Lyon’s film interpretation of Lolita three times, exhibiting a keen interest in both the film’s concept and in its protagonist, of which Elizabeth was emphatically aware.

Elizabeth wasn’t the only person struggling to keep Burton away from Lyon. At the debut of filming, she had arrived in Puerto Vallarta with her boyfriend, Hampton Fancher III. Huston’s biographer, Lawrence Grobel, described the boy as “a tall, pale youth ravaged by love.” Soon after his arrival, Fancher warned Burton, “I tend to be murderously inclined.”

The circumstances which led to Burton finally being left alone with Lyon involved the fact that her boyfriend, as it turned out, was married. His young wife arrived unexpectedly on the set one day. Fancher would marry Lyon before the year ended, after his divorce became final.

As Lyon remembered it, “Richard drank so much at night that the alcohol literally oozed out of his pores the next day. It gave off a terrible odor.”

One night, Tennessee served as a “beard” to protect Burton during one of the actor’s secret flings with Lyon. He’d told Elizabeth that he was going drinking with Tennessee to discuss future roles for them.

Instead, he left Tennessee in the Casablanca Bar, talking with yet another hustler, while he and Lyon disappeared upstairs into a private room.

Tennessee could not wait around for the shooting to end. He had to fly back to New York to face other commitments. He was in a Broadway theater when he heard the news about Kennedy’s assassination. He later heard that both Elizabeth and Ava Gardner took the news rather badly. Both of them had had flings with the assassinated president.

In the future, Tennessee would deal with Elizabeth and Burton again when they filmed Boom! in Sardinia, based on his play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.

But Truman was also a friend to the Burtons, and would have several encounters with them.

So would Gore Vidal, when he urged Elizabeth to interpret the role of a transsexual in his controversial film, Myra Breckinridge, starring Mae West.

Truman Writes a “For Real” Sex Scene Featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher in BUtterfield 8

Elizabeth Taylor and Truman Capote had known each other for years, their relationship mostly stemming from their mutual friendship with the doomed Montgomery Clift. Truman encountered her on frequent occasions, and he shared some of the most dramatic moments of her life with her.

During the shooting of her Oscar-winning role playing a prostitute in BUtterfield 8 (1960) [Elizabeth was starring opposite Laurence Harvey and her then-husband, the singer Eddie Fisher], the scriptwriters of Hollywood went on strike.

Despite the [supremely inconvenient] strike in force at the time, she wanted her dialogue sharpened and extra scenes added. She especially wanted changes in the script to include love scenes between Fisher and herself. Prior to her involvement in script changes, the onscreen relationship between her character and Fisher’s character had been strictly platonic.

Consequently, she approached both of her friends, Tennessee Williams and Capote, to tweak the script for her. Whereas Tennessee was reluctant to get involved but agreed to rewrite some of it, Truman was delighted with the unpaid assignment.

When he came to discuss its details with Elizabeth, he found her distraught, almost on the verge of tears. She told him, “I have to work. I have no money. Eddie has no money. Debbie Reynolds took it all when they divorced…every last cent.”

Soon, she and Truman jointly conceived of a torrid love scene “under the sheets” between Fisher and herself. Truman devised a scenario that director Daniel Mann claimed was perhaps too hot to film. Eventually, however, Mann’s curiosity became voyeuristically intrigued, and he arranged for the scene to be shot, albeit with a sense of caution.

On the set, on the day of the actual filming, both Fisher and Elizabeth [who were married to each other at the time] stripped completely nude and crawled together under the sheets.

Elizabeth Taylor later confided to Truman Capote: “Eddie Fisher (depicted with Taylor, above) fucked me better on camera than he did at home. Could it be that he needed an audience?”

As Fisher later claimed, “Having the camera on Elizabeth and me and with that faggot, Capote, drooling at the mouth, turned me on. I had sex with Elizabeth. We really went at it. She liked it rough, and I delivered.”

Later, in his memoirs, he denied that he had a climax, but Elizabeth, in dialogues with Truman, insisted that he did.

“It was evident that Fisher was blasting off inside Elizabeth,” Truman said. “From the look on her face, she was also experiencing an orgasm. She was not good enough an actress to fake it.”

Later, their scene was judged as too hot for the screen, and it ended up on the cutting room floor.

Richard Burton & Truman Capote Share A Drunken, Three-Day Collaboration at The Plaza?

Kay Meehan, who was married to Joseph Meehan, the former head of the New York Stock Exchange, was one of Truman’s “swans.” In the wake of the publication in Esquire of early chapters from his controversial novel, Answered Prayers, all of his other swans had deserted him because of their scandalous and thinly veiled portraits of themselves.

The other swans weren’t returning his calls, but when he phoned Meehan asking if she’d join him for lunch at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, she accepted. She arrived to find Truman on one of the banquettes, engrossed in a head-to-head huddle with Richard Burton.

Because of that day’s heavy rainfalls, she entered the Oak Room like “a drowned rat” [her words]. There, she found Truman and Burton going over his lines for his upcoming Broadway appearance in Equus (1976), in which he would interpret the role of a psychiatrist.

“A tape recorder was on, and he and Truman were rehearsing dialogue line by line,” she said. “It was obvious that he was picking Truman’s brain. The contrast in their voices was amazing, with his squeaky high-pitched tones and Burton’s husky baritone.”

“I had a fabulous time, and I think Truman was testing me but also rewarding me. After all, all his other swans had flown away, and he was seeing if I were still loyal. He hadn’t told me that Burton would be there. If he had, I would surely have accepted his invitation. He wanted to see if I’d appear at a rendezvous where he’discretion be the only other person there.”

Later, there was speculation among the swans and others that Burton would somehow reward Truman for helping him rehearse his lines in Equus. Babe Paley—no longer committed to any sense of discretion about Truman’s private life—openly exposed the idea at parties.

It was later learned that Truman and Burton spent three nights together in a suite at the Plaza, ostensibly to work on the actor’s stage presence and delivery. Gore Vidal later sarcastically remarked, “I’m sure the little midget was rewarded for his services. I’m certain that he wanted to learn firsthand what turned Elizabeth Taylor on. The Devil’s most devious angel just had to know the secrets of everybody who was a media event.”

“Eddie [Fisher] Claims That You Made a Pass at Him”

In February of 1961, Joseph Mankiewicz, the director, was working almost around the clock to complete the script of Cleopatra, to star Elizabeth Taylor. She and her then-husband, Eddie Fisher, flew to London, where filming was to begin.

On March 4, just as the cameras began to roll, illness struck as Elizabeth became incapacitated with a severe case of Asian flu.

Fisher demanded the best care for her, and summoned Lord Evans, the personal physician of Queen Elizabeth. He ordered an oxygen tent for her and a portable toilet, the same one used by Her Majesty when she traveled to remote corners of the Commonwealth.

Fisher also ordered around-the-clock nurses for her. In the early morning hours, a night nurse noticed that Elizabeth’s face was turning blue, and she was gasping for breath. She called the desk and shouted for them to get a doctor quick.

In a touch of irony, some doctors were having a late-night reception at The Dorchester. Among them was Dr. J. Middleton Price, one of the best anesthesiologists in the British Isles. He was rushed to Elizabeth’s hospital suite. “She had turned blue as the sea,” he said, “and was unconscious. I estimated that if I had not gotten there, she would have died in fifteen minutes.”

The doctor picked her up by the heels and tried to make her lose some of the congestion in her chest. That did not succeed. Next, he stuck his finger down her throat, hoping to make her gag and breathe again. Still, nothing happened. He then pounded her chest,

“So the doctor started gouging at my eyes,” Elizabeth related in her memoirs. “He gouged like mad and I opened my eyes…I took a deep breath, which kept me alive.”

Dr. Price determined that only a tracheotomy would save her life. But the operation had to be performed in a hospital, although it was very risky to move the patient. He decided, however, that it was worth the chance, and an ambulance was summoned to The Dorchester.

While Elizabeth Taylor was confined to a hospital bed, she asked Truman Capote to take her husband, Eddie Fisher (photo above), out to dinner in London. Perhaps too eagerly, he agreed.

The next day, Fisher told his wife, “Never again! The little devil reached under the table and groped me. He told me, ‘Some reports have you heavy hung; others claim it’s a small sausage.’ He said he wanted to find out the truth for himself!”

With dome lights flashing and sirens wailing, she was rushed to the private London Clinic where Dr. Terence Cawthorne awaited her. He performed the life-saving tracheotomy by drawing a scalpel across the soft part of her throat right above her breastbone. Here, he made an incision allowing him to insert a breathing tube connected to a respirator.

His diagnosis was acute staphylococcus pneumonia, which is most often fatal. She would retain a small scar at her throat for the rest of her life, although she would in most instances cover it with a piece of jewelry.

Still desperately ill, she was put in an iron lung as a means of controlling the rate of her respiration and linking it to just the right amount of oxygen.

Seven doctors, including Lord Evans, were at her bedside. Dr. Evans even gave Queen Elizabeth a daily bulletin on his famous patient. It was Dr. Evans who also discovered that she was suffering from anemia, and he ordered blood transfusions, intravenous feedings, and doses of antibiotics. He also prescribed a rare drug, staphylococcal bacteriophage lystate, which Milton Blackstone, Fisher’s agent, personally carried with him aboard a hastily scheduled flight to London.

During her stint in the hospital in London, Elizabeth had been fed intravenously through her ankle. Regrettably, that caused an infection in her lower leg. As she admitted in her memoirs, “I almost lost my leg…I just let the disease take me. I had been hoping to be happy,” she said. “I was just pretending to be happy. But I was consumed by self-pity.”

Early on the morning of March 6, a radio station in Pensacola, Florida, broadcast the news: “Elizabeth Taylor is dead. Doctors in London fought to save her, but it was hopeless. The little girl who won our hearts in National Velvet died a living legend.”

The news was picked up and broadcast on other stations before a bulletin was issued from London: “Elizabeth Taylor is not dead. She is the hospital in a fight for her life, but is still very much with us.”

A few newspapers published her obituary, and Elizabeth got to read a summation of her life. She later commented, “These were the best reviews I ever received, but I had to die to get these tributes.”

On March 10, the first optimistic bulletin was released, claiming she had made “a very rare recovery.”

Later, she defined the experience as “absolutely horrifying. When I would regain consciousness, I wanted to ask my doctors if I was going to die. But I couldn’t make myself heard. Inside my head, I heard myself screaming to God for help. I was frightened. I was angry. I was fierce. I didn’t want to die. I stopped breathing four times. I died four times. It was like falling into this horrible black pit. Dr. Evans later told me I lived because I fought so hard to live.”

Also residing at The Dorchester, Truman Capote was one of the first guests allowed to visit her after her operation. He recalled it as a “media event, with the streets clogged with fans and the idle curious.” At her request, he slipped in a magnum of Dom Pérignon and some books to read, mostly his own.

“I visited her in London in the hospital when she had that tracheotomy. She had what looked like a silver dollar in her throat. I couldn’t figure out what held it in place, and it surprised me she wasn’t bleeding or oozing. A few nights later, I went out with Eddie Fisher. The next afternoon, Elizabeth told me that Eddie thought I was trying to make a pass at him. At that moment, she played a trick on me and yanked at the plug in her throat, spurting out champagne—I’d brought her a magnum of Dom Pérignon—all over the hospital room. I thought I was going to pass out.”

Fans on every continent mourned her, even though she was still clinging to life, but just barely. Mobs of people descended on the London Clinic for around-the-clock vigils.

Each day, her condition improved until it was finally judged safe for her to leave the hospital, though in a vastly weakened condition.

On March 27, Elizabeth, in a wheelchair, made one of the most spectacular exits from a hospital in the history of England. Wrapped in sable, with a white scarf covering her neck, and in preparation for her flight to New York, she was handled with the care of a porcelain doll as London bobbies held back threatening hordes and a mob of paparazzi. Airport security nestled her into a kind of canvas sling, and lifted her into the waiting plane.

With Cleopatra delayed once again, Elizabeth was coming home. She predicted to Fisher that “Cleopatra will never sail down the Nile on that barge of hers.”

Spyros Skouras, President at Fox, sued Lloyds of London for three million dollars, but settled for two million, as compensation for the production delays on their attempt to film Cleopatra at Pinewood.

In a huddle, Wanger and Skouras decided that England was no place to film an exotic epic like Cleopatra. They agreed to scrap $600,000 worth of sets at Pinewood and to relaunch the filming in Rome in September of 1961, allowing Elizabeth time to recuperate.