BIOGRAPHY: How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in HollywoodBy William J Mann Faber and Faber, 406pp. £20
SHE ONCE remarked to the late Dominick Dunne "without an iota of braggadocio" that she couldn't remember a time she wasn't famous. Frankly, my dear, neither can we. Ever since critics greeted her performance in National Velvet(1944) with delight – "Her face is alive with youthful spirit, her voice has the softness of sweet song" – Elizabeth Hilton-Wilding-Todd-Fisher-Burton-Warner-For- tensky, née Taylor, has been the litmus test for uberstardom in all its most glamorous and grotesque manifestations.
And she hasn't gone away, you know. Only recently the Telegraphinformed us, courtesy of Burton's niece, that the great dame still "pines for Uncle Rich", and it's with the momentous meeting of those two wilful, destructive egos in the Eternal City that her latest biographer chooses to begin.
Taylor was a 29-year-old mother of three – four weddings, one funeral – when principal photography on Cleopatrastarted. Already an Oscar winner, she was, according to the director's son, so beautiful it made his teeth hurt. Not as much as Sybil Burton's heart was hurting, or indeed poor Eddie Fisher's. That at least was the view of Hedda Hopper, the syndicated columnist who'd been hugely instrumental in making Taylor famous and was now seething. She informed her 33 million readers that the notorious Hollywood home wrecker was back on the prowl. "Her beauty masks a wilful, ruthless nature," she declared, pronouncing Taylor "sick, very sick". But even as headlines screamed "Liz, Burton romp as Sybil waits alone" the unrepentant husband stealer continued to up the ante, telling one reporter that her co-star had a sort of "jungle essence" and that when they looked at each other "it's like our eyes have fingers and they grab ahold". Chick-lit authors take note.
Their brazen adultery equally infuriated the Vatican, L'Osservatore Romanocalling her an erotic vagrant. "Your motive, Madam, is that when a bigger love comes along you kill the smaller love" – a criticism that today could so easily be taken as a compliment. The American Catholic press followed suit, condemning the "nauseating" stories coming from Rome. "How did I know the woman was so f***ing famous?" an astonished Burton asked. "She even knocks Khrushchev off the front page."
Art Buchwald agreed. “Nuclear testing, disarmament, Berlin, Vietnam and the struggle between Russia and China are nothing comparable to the Elizabeth Taylor story.”
William Mann's motive in writing about Taylor is not that she was once the world's biggest movie star and the first female to be paid $1 million a picture plusa share of the profits but "to investigate the mechanics of her fame and the alchemy that assured her enduring celebrity", which, clumsy as it sounds, he does horrifyingly well.
The mechanics of her fame involve early days with an ambitious mama hustling MGM to employ her darling daughter, coupled with the studio’s relentless campaign to build her into its biggest asset, but what constitutes her “enduring celebrity” has more to do, methinks, with the comforting thought for us lesser mortals that the road to excess does not always lead to the palace of wisdom. For although the “incandescent beauty” may have been portrayed as a smouldering siren who lured men into mortal sin, it does not appear to have been her raison d’etre. Nor, indeed, was being a star.
When Taylor and Burton were asked to sum up their motivation in a word, Burton said "adventure" and Taylor "wealth". And given that the only book she has ever published is titled My Love Affair with Jewellery, you can take it the woman wasn't talking about laying up treasures in heaven.
"I don't pretend to be an ordinary housewife" was one of her more succinct quotes at a time when MGM was tearing its hair out trying to portray her as just that. Shooting a scene in Butterfield 8, the director handed his star a couple of eggs and told her to pretend to make breakfast as she stood at the stove. "But what do I do with them?" she implored. She had never made breakfast.
Her vulgar appetite for all the material world could offer enthralled the public. Mike Todd, described by Timeas "an open-handed sort who would pass out salted nuts at his own hanging if he owned the beer concession", showered her with the obligatory furs and diamonds, making sure every whim was gratified and the press was fed every glittering detail. Good for business, don't you know.
In fact one could argue that her decline as a movie star neatly coincides with the rise and rise of celebrity journalism. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famoussurely has its origins in the material extravagance and moral ambiguity her existence personified.
Instancing the fact that before Taylor the paparazzi were just a bunch of aggressive Italian photographers and not the worldwide phenomenon they fast became, Mann suggests the Taylor-Burton affair occurred just as society was beginning to slough off the old moral imperatives imposed from above.
“I try not to live a lie” was what she said at the height of the scandal. “I can’t be that hypocritical just to protect my public.” And her public seemed more than willing to suspend judgment on the transgressive pair. Shame it all ended so badly. “Beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography,” Burton confided to his diary. “She is Sunday’s child, she can tolerate my impossibilities and my drunkenness, she is an ache in the stomach when I am away from her and I’ll love her ’til I die.” How mean spirited, then, of Sally Burton to forbid Taylor’s presence at his funeral, something her die-hard fans have never forgotten.
In the acknowledgments the author thanks his husband – “always my first and best critic” – and it’s fair to say that Taylor has been a good and steadfast friend to gay men. Liz Smith recalled an evening the star was invited to dinner by a wealthy admirer. “Who is this person?” she asked, insisting she didn’t visit people she didn’t know. When told that her would-be host liked to dress up in satin ballgowns and stick diamond tiaras over his bald spot, she reportedly said: “Oh, why, he’s one of us then. Of course I’ll go.”
For gays these days the 77-year-old is more patron saint than uberdiva. The first Hollywood star to speak openly about Aids, on the death of her close friend Rock Hudson, she has helped raise millions for research and, despite her increasing fragility, is still happy to be wheeled out to headline the odd gala event.
Mann closes with one of her two stage performances. Hitting 50 and fed up playing second fiddle to her sixth husband, the Republican senator John Warner, Taylor lost a pile of weight and took on the role of Regina in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. Sadly, I saw it. Transferred from Broadway, where she got standing ovations, to London, where she didn't, the star looked slightly bewildered. Slow moving and slow on cue, she had a whispery voice that needed much amplification, hence the ostentatious flower displays on every available surface, ill-hidden mikes sticking up forlornly through their stems.
Jeananne Crowley is an actor
