Elizabeth Taylor: A Frank Interview
Famed gossip columnist Liz Smith talks to movie star Liz Taylor, 1973
A few months ago on Instagram, I posted this list of “Items seen on Elizabeth Taylor Burton’s makeup table” to much commentary and reposting:
The list was originally published in the July 1973 issue of Cosmopolitan, at the end of a long interview and profile of Liz Taylor by Liz Smith. At the time, Liz Smith was Cosmopolitan’s entertainment editor—having previously “worked as a ghostwriter for the ‘Cholly Knickerbocker’ gossip column syndicated in the Hearst newspapers.” Smith started writing her self-titled gossip column in the New York Daily News three years after this profile. At one point, she was the highest-paid journalist in the country with her column syndicated nationwide and her visage (and barbed wit) a common guest on TV news and talk shows. Known as "The Grand Dame of Dish,” Liz Smith lived for gossip—and this profile of the other Liz does not disappoint. It is a frank account of trying to get to know the unknowable: a star as great, complicated, and complex as Elizabeth Taylor.
The Queen was on the set (the King was at the dentist), and Her Highness gave some extraordinarily candid answers to some rather indelicate questions.
Cosmopolitan, July 1973
By Liz Smith
It's probably no coincidence that St. Elizabeth is the patron saint of queens.
Of all the good saint's namesakes, Elizabeth Taylor Burton is still the queenliest queen of them all. The world can talk about her double chins, her divorces (three), her excesses, accidents, illnesses, and children, her jewelry, parties-plane-yachts, charities, entourage, her drinking to keep up with his drinking, and her choice of film scripts. She is, nevertheless, at forty-one, still in there, hitting at every pitch. Elizabeth's picture on the cover still sells magazines. Stories about her still sell newspapers. (London's Daily Express recently called her "The Most Fabulous Woman in the World.") Her name on a marquee may no longer be instant box office, but to fans and gossip aficionados the world over, Elizabeth is magic . . . still.
In her thirty-one-year career, Elizabeth Taylor has grossed over $500 million for producers and studios. With two Oscars and five thousand awards (some of them, admittedly, from obscure organizations, honoring her "beauty and popularity") to her credit, she is still walking away with the prizes. Only last year she won the Silver Bear from the Berlin Film Festival for best actress in the film Hammersmith Is Out.
This magazine's previous interviews with Elizabeth took place in Paris, Rome, New York, and again in Paris. Four visits with her may seem excessive, but readers and writers need queens and superstars, and so few are left to write about. So it was great when the cable came: "ELIZABETH TAYLOR DELIGHTED YOUR FORTHCOMING VISIT LONDON." How heartwarming to imagine one might delight a film star who is an international household word.
Interviews with Elizabeth are always improbable, usually impossible. The best way to get one is to talk to Richard first. The gregarious Welshman likes journalists and will see almost anybody who has pencil and pad. Then, Elizabeth always drops around to be with Richard. If you're lucky, she gives some dazzling impressions, a few fast words, wise-cracks, mock quarrels with her husband. Mrs. Burton rarely grants tête-à-tête interviews. For one thing, she thinks she's no good at it. "I tend to be monosyllabic," she says, in a typically short Elizabethan sentence of oxymoron.
The last time I saw her, I'd gone armed with a sheaf of questions; in the week I was hanging about, Elizabeth answered only one—with a very brief sentence—and I was reduced to writing a story about her well-stocked larder and all the things she ate and said and did en passant. The story was O.K. because this woman invariably gives quite a performance even if she won't give an interview, but this time, I am to find out shortly, Elizabeth will actually talk.
I am not visiting Elizabeth Taylor "cold," of course. She has granted me those four other audiences, and anyway I have probably read nearly every word ever printed about her. Still, every collision with a star is an adventure in outer space. Powerful, spoiled, and otherworldly, these fortunate ones can be hospitable or treacherous. I already know quite a lot about this privileged, beautiful woman… that she is often late and can be capricious… that she speaks her mind when annoyed (though a veteran professional, Elizabeth has a star's temperament)… that she can be very serious, and will even cancel working if sincerely upset (when the Olympic athletes were murdered in Munich, there was no movie-making all day). Elizabeth also has a certain English dignity and a kind of guarded indifference; the last is mainly a defense against having endured the world's scandale terrible and its nose in her business for years and years.
I've also seen, up close and first hand, what a very positive force Elizabeth is… the Ceres earth mother who feels she has been very lucky in life: lucky to have had beautiful children, to have become a great star, to have loved her work, to have survived many nearly fatal illnesses, to have found love several times.
Nor am I unaware that though Elizabeth and her husband may share love and life-style, they differ radically in temperament; if Richard Burton were an animal, he'd be a dog, for he wants to be loved and can't resist charming his audience. Elizabeth, on the other hand, would surely be a cat, for, like any feline, she mostly couldn't care less. Only one person at a time ever possesses her essence, and she will never eat out of any stranger's hand. If she hates you, you know it. If she likes you, you feel it. If she loves you, you are possessed. Like a cat, she is fascinating to observe and lovely to look at. But you never know which way she might jump, or whether her claws will be out or in.
I remind myself that with Elizabeth, people don't go too far, get too familiar, pressure or presume. She tolerates very little in the way of lèse-majesté. A mention of someone she dislikes, a hint of slur at Richard's work, the wrong question about the children, a knock at a pal—she freezes. You feel your nose going quickly to frostbite. You stumble around, thawing out, while she profers only acid silence. Silence—that great dark yawning enemy of the interview. Or, what is worse, the all-too-brief answer. This star can always wait, not answer, let herself be distracted, or just look at you with those myopic violet eyes. I've also witnessed times when the famous ETB sense of humor doesn't operate. She can be vague and unperceptive, blank, almost sluggish; perhaps this is a result of the sheltered life she leads. Probably Elizabeth herself no longer recognizes the unreality of her charmed existence, enclosed as she is within a magic circle, guarded by hotel majordomos, chauffeurs, lawyers, bodyguards, servants, studio protectors. press agents, secretaries, and assorted adoring "tweenies."
This time in London everything starts off as usual. Mrs. Burton cancels our first meeting. Why? Only because it's Monday, luv, and if your name is Burton, you seldom feel so hot on Mondays. This time, it's just the blahs… nobody can attribute her failure to appear to dissipation. Miss Violet Eyes hasn't had a drop in weeks. She has been on the wagon for her demanding role in Night Watch, in which she plays an elegant upper-class woman who imagines (or does she?) murder in a deserted house next door. Well, London is a pleasant town to wait around in. And Elizabeth, named for the patron saint of queens, is a queenly cat worth other cats' waiting to look at.
Next morning, early, she will see me on the set of Night Watch. She is sitting in a sumptuous bedroom amid an avalanche of white-leather suitcases. Her costume is a handsome Valentino maroon vest and pantsuit over a matching satin blouse. The jewelry (her own) is what any well-married woman with a Swiss bank account might wear, but Elizabeth's shining long ebony hair is even more luxurious… there's so much of it she looks like a King Charles cavalier. Resplendent in yards of curls (courtesy of Alexandre), the star is breath-taking; a colorful, beautiful, and familiar face that you and I have known since she was first preserved for us at age ten in Lassie, Come Home.
After the cut, Elizabeth walks blindly out of the lights and steps carefully over the cable-strewn floor, muttering, "These damned Valentino shoes. My feet are killing me."
"A lady never says her feet hurt. That's tacky. She says only that her foot hurts," I say in her ear.
The ETB laugh has been vilified in print and called "mirthless." Still, I like the way she booms out those separate "ha-ha's." She seems so surprised to see me I wonder if the cable was only press-agentry. Yet surely no press agent favoring death by natural causes would dare to send a reporter onto Elizabeth's set unknown to her.
She offers the Continental two-cheek kiss, totally unbothered about the possibility of messing up her hair or makeup. Up close, the jet curls are highlighted with almost imperceptible streaks of gray.
"Don't you love to make movies?" quips a co-worker as we trail upstairs to her dressing-sitting room.
"Oh, yes," squeals Elizabeth in a Betty Boop voice. "It's fun!"
She walks holding both hands stretched out in front of her, palms fiat, as if her fingernail polish were wet. Upstairs she excuses herself and heads for the phone, dialing awkwardly with a pencil. When I come back in the room, she says, "I had to call about my baby. Richard had a tooth pulled today, so he'll need lots of kutching [Welsh for "cuddling"] tonight. He's asleep now. Wait—I'm going to make one more call, but don't go." She dials and asks about a friend with pleurisy. Obviously asked in return how she feels, Elizabeth shrugs: "Oh, battered and bruised, but O.K."
Now, it's obvious that she is battered and bruised. She asks for help in unbuttoning her tight cuffs in order to wash, indicating that she can't do this herself with either hand. Her left-index-finger knuckle is raw and swollen; some weeks before, she had backed off a set and fallen, breaking her finger. The break is so bad she will have to have it reset under anesthetic after the movie ends. "My thirtieth operation," she sighs. But that's not all. Her left arm is black and blue up to the armpit. Ten days before, she and Richard had been in Yugoslavia taking some enforced time off (co-star Lawrence Harvey's emergency stomach operation had shut down Night Watch shooting). While there, Elizabeth slipped on the steps of a swimming pool, and, because she was favoring her bad back and broken left finger, she fell awkwardly, against a jagged tile that severed an artery, muscles, and nerves in her left inner forearm.
"Richard carried me up about a hundred and forty-five steps to the villa. The first doctor we called arrived and fainted at the sight of all that gore. It's a wonder I didn't bleed to death. After they stitched me up, we immediately got on a plane for Switzerland. Even though I was half-dead from loss of blood, I didn't want a tetanus shot in Yugoslavia, and I was right. Swiss doctors know what they're doing… the whole wound had to be opened up, cleaned out and resewed, inside and out. I asked my doctor if I'm accident-prone. He said no, that if I really were, I wouldn't be around anymore. Richard says I'm 'incident-prone.'"
Rebuttoning the tight cuffs of the blouse makes her wince. She looks at her hands.
ETB: "I can hardly make even one fist now. I'm helpless. At least before the pool accident, I had one hand. I'd never realized before how ambidextrous I am!"
LS: "Well, I thought you were the one girl they've never said that about in Hollywood."
ETB: "Right! And I think that's kind of nice."
She goes to the bar. "I'm going to have a ginger ale, by God. Oh, yes, I've been on the wagon for a while. I can still take it or leave it, you know. I'd like to do justice to this film by looking like an elegant lady. Of course, I could weigh ninety-eight pounds and they'd still say I was fat and on the sauce." Glancing back at my tape recorder, she warns: "I tend to get spastic around those things."
There are two darling dogs in the room, black and white Shih Tzus. One is Daisy, a gift from Sir John Gielgud; the other is her puppy. "Daisy met up with this Shih Tzu stud and had pups even though she wasn't supposed to. Poor darling, we took her away from him before there was any romance in her life. This is one of her babies, named, naturally, after its mysterious father: Papillon."
The dogs stand bewitched by their cooing mistress. Their only function in life is to look up adoringly at Elizabeth, holding tennis balls in their mouths and waving silky tails. Why only two of them? So much more modest than the usual Burton menagerie… the expensive yacht parked in the Thames to provide a floating kennel, the ruined carpets in grand hotels from the Plaza to the Dorchester to the Plaza-Athenee, infinite litters of puppies. "Well, I only have these two with me. The rest of the animals are in Gstaad," says Elizabeth, gingerly holding her soft drink in both palms.
Elizabeth seems subdued… low-key. The usual Burton clamor and glamour are scaled down: not only is their animal population much reduced, the whole entourage is smaller. This time the traveling-circus atmosphere, the opulence and extravagance, seem to be on a back burner . . . all that campy carrying on, overt hedonism, and, blatant exhibitionism are absent.
Is Elizabeth quiet because she isn't drinking? Because of the accidents? Because of worries over her son by Michael Wilding? (Michael's young wife has taken Elizabeth's only grandchild and gone home to her mother.) Because Richard is leaving any day to go to Rome ahead of her to begin shooting an ABC-TV movie, Divorce His/ Divorce Hers? Is there trouble in paradise? Who's to say? Without wondering too much about the reasons, I rejoice that Elizabeth is, for the first time, appearing before me not as a willful goddess but as a mature professional. It looks as though we're going to have an honest-to-goodness question-and-answer session.
First, we chat about the death of her father's former art partner. ETB: "A legend… sexually functioning well into his eighties. What a way to go!"
What of the coming separation from Richard? ETB: "I'll hate it. I've got to finish here and rush to Rome and start shooting the day after I arrive. I haven't even read the script yet. And this part is so demanding. I'm too tired to think at night."
We talk about her passion for Art Nouveau, reflected in a silver-gray-and-beige painting on glass (just delivered), the Erté book on the coffee table, and her silver animal belt buckle. ETB: "I've been collecting Art Nouveau for about a year, and suddenly it's hot. Michael Caine gave me a real Erté drawing: it's fabulous. And this buckle, I bought in Rome cheap and made Valentino put it on this belt."
The reaction to Hammersmith Is Out?
ETB: "We had fun doing it and came in a month under schedule. Did it on a shoestring. Maybe it's a mistake to have fun on a picture from the way the critics acted." A reference to her Silver Bear for Hammersmith elicits a wave of the hand as she says, "Thanks for the compliment, but I thought Richard was wonderful—that terrible, mad stare!"
The door opens and an assistant director puts his head in timidly. "We're hoping to get the next shot before lunch, but it may be touch and go."
ETB (archly): "Well, darling, I won't leave, then. I'll stick around. I won't go home yet."
Lawrence Harvey enters, thin and saturnine, but in good humor: "Does anyone need me? Star of stage, screen, radio, TV, bar mitzvahs and Jewish weddings."
Elizabeth seems thrilled to see him, as if they'd been separated for months and hadn't just been working together on the set downstairs. They are fond old costars and friends from Butterfield 8 days, and the affection between them is palpable. Elizabeth begins to goad him. "Go on, Larry, show Liz your scar."
Acting like the world's tallest child, he does, adding, "My scar is great and has a long nose at the end of it."
Elizabeth shrieks: "Larry, why don't you wear shorts?"
He zips up. "I've tried everything, even my girl friend's silk bikini panties. But everything hurts on it. You know, they removed part of my colon and now I'm called Semi-colon."
Elizabeth: "We're in great shape, you and I."
Harvey turns to me. "You can't touch her. You can't pick her up. There's no place to get a grip on this woman, this sex symbol. This isn't a particularly sexy film, but occasionally we do touch, and when I come near her she screams. Yesterday she said, 'There's no place you can lift me except under this left armpit.'"
"Never mind that," says Elizabeth. "I want to ask Liz a question about America. Maybe she can explain what in the world Sammy Davis was doing going over to Nixon."
I murmur something or other, then remind her that / am supposed to be asking the questions.
LS: "What two or three women do you admire most in the world?"
ETB: "Ethel Kennedy, Katharine Hepburn, Golda Meir . . ."
LARRY: "Lawrence Harvey . . ."
LS: "That will ruin you socially."
LARRY: "Oh, I'm not so sure."
When Larry and I compliment her on this nicely chosen list, she smiles like a kid. "Gee, thanks."
LS: "You've been avoiding for years telling us your beauty secrets. This time COSMO insists. What are they?"
ETB: "Well, now and then I'm ahead of a trend. In Dr. Faustus, I put sequins on my lips and now I see the girls are doing that. But secrets schmecrets. I haven't got any. I wash my face, then I put hand lotion on to keep from drying out—any kind will do. I wear very little makeup, even in films, mostly only mascara and eye shadow."
LS: "But there must be more to it. What do you think of your looks?"
ETB: "All I see when I look in the mirror is either a dirty face or a clean one, an unmade-up face or a made-up face. I have never considered myself a beauty. Ava Gardner is my idea of a beautiful woman. Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch are all beautiful. When I was young, I suppose I was pretty, but it was a disadvantage in a way, since I was always typecast.
"Men react superficially to beauty. I think I can tell if the vibrations are genuine or not. If it's just flattery, I find it rather condescending. It's better to forget about being beautiful… all that diet and health-farm and make-up business. Enjoy life—that's much more important! If you spend all your time worrying about how you look, then you are living totally within yourself. You lose what really makes a person. No matter what people look like physically, some have an inner glow and vitality that are more beautiful than the best face or figure!"
Elizabeth is called to come and shoot the scene. She excuses herself, asks her secretaries whether lunch with me has been arranged, and goes out. Consideration, manners—two qualities I'd never noticed in her before. While she's gone, I wander toward her makeup mirror. This is the table of a woman who believes she has no beauty secrets… even if there are no secrets here, maybe there is a clue. I take careful inventory of the cosmetics Elizabeth keeps on hand. [The contents of ETB's makeup table are re-produced at the end of this article with no editorial amplification and no thought to advertisers; you may draw your own conclusions.]
Lunch is a merry session in a private dining room with the director, Brian Hutton (he also did X, Y and Zee), producer Marty Poll, Larry Harvey seated between his bride to be, Paulene Stone, and Elizabeth, makeup man Ron Barkeley, actress Billie Whitelaw, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia (a longtime friend whom ETB calls "my pretty princess"), and others. The conversation is spicy, mixed with gossip and larded with anecdote. Many egos are on hand, and performances are lively. Elizabeth says less than anyone. Evidently, the menu she's studying is unique—chosen personally by Elizabeth—since compliments are regularly forwarded to the cook.
She has chosen mozzarella cheese garnished with fresh basil and sliced tomatoes, barbecued spareribs, melon, gnocchi, and for dessert, Raspberry Fool. Elizabeth stirs this pink mess around in her plate with sugar and denies any-one else a taste. "No, this entire one is for me."
Throughout lunch, Elizabeth has listened intently, laughed appreciatively, and exclaimed from time to time like some little Midwestern housewife who has never been anywhere or seen anything. The talk has run from producer Sam Spiegel to Lana Turner, from Nixon to the Kennedys, from Sinatra to Agnew, back to Jackie and Ari. All Elizabeth says about the golden couple: "I've never met her. I adore Ari!"
Larry makes her laugh constantly, though she refuses to partake of his personally bottled wine and goes on spooning up Raspberry Fool. A discussion is under way about how to answer when people accuse you of being queer or frigid. No consensus is reached, but Elizabeth does say, "Well, I've never been accused of either one."
When the talk is of movie stars and politicians, she becomes practically saucer-eyed. She is a great audience, but withholds comment. One wonders about all she could say—a film star of three decades.
Now the talk turns to COSMOPOLITAN. "What are some of Cosmo's questions?" asks Larry. I reply that an important one is whether women should ever fake orgasm.
Ron Berkeley, Elizabeth's makeup man, speaks up: "Yes, they definitely should. It makes men feel wonderful."
Suddenly Elizabeth is standing up, her eyes ablaze, the Raspberry Fool is forgotten. She points an accusing finger at the handsome, bearded makeup man and sputters: "You stinker! You absolute stinker!" Now she addresses all the men at the table, wounded hands on hips. "I ask you, what is this? As far as that question goes, why can't men give us more orgasms? Why should women have to fake anything? On this I am definitely with Women's Lib." She sits down. We all applaud.
This is more like it… Elizabeth can still flare regally when she likes. As we amble out of the dining room, the conversation breaks apart. I hear Elizabeth quietly chiding one of the men who has been at our table… she is shaming him for being unfaithful to his wife.
Before Elizabeth returns to the set, we get to the list of men she admires most in the world.
ETB: "Well, there's Richard Burton, Stephen Spender, Picasso—God, so many I admire are dead. No, no politicians, at least not in America. And not in England. Hmmm, let's see, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, Lenny Bernstein, Mike Nichols . . ."
LS: "Have you any opinions about Jackie Onassis?
ETB: "No."
LS: "About Gloria Steinem?"
ETB: "No."
LS: "What is this? Are you trying to pique our readers' interest with all these old, hot, Elizabeth Taylor yes-and-no answers?"
ETB: "Well, I really don't have any opinion about Gloria Steinem. It's up to her to do her own thing and it's up to me to do my own thing. As Larry said at the table, 'You take care of your orgasm and I'll take care of mine.' As far as equal pay is concerned, I've been Women's Lib since I was ten. But I know I'm sort of a lucky freak—professionally and domestically, too. There are factors of Women's Liberation I totally agree with. If a woman does the same job as a man, the same pay and privileges and rights should be hers. But all this crap about the husband having to do an equal amount of housework and change baby's nappies, I don't see how I could respect a man seeing him all the time in an apron doing the dishes and cooking while I sat on the couch smoking a pipe. It would turn me off, because I like a man, in and out of bed, to be the aggressor."
LS: "What do you think of Jane Fonda?"
ETB: "I admire her. I think she genuinely believes in what she's fighting for. Sometimes she sounds a bit Marxist-oriented, but I guess that's not the worst thing that can happen to the conscience of an American. When Richard and I gave the Losers' Oscar Party, she came. He had lost for Anne of a Thousand Days and Jane for They Shoot Horses. At the time, we gave her about $3,000 apiece for Black Panthers who were in jail without lawyers. I don't approve of the Black Panthers, or of any terrorist organization, but I do approve of justice. Everybody has constitutional rights. Now, what other goodies do you want to know?
"Oh, yes, my favorite men. I left out a lot of people. There is our director, Brian, then Joe Losey, Michael Caine; I adore Larry [Harvey], Peter Ustinov is marvelous. And Richard Burton. Oh, I said him before."
LS: "Anybody you don't like?"
ETB: "Well, I didn't care for that woman who called her husband a donkey to the press after he lost a foot race the other day. I hope he went home and knocked the ---- out of her. And I don't like the Arab terrorists. They have a price on my head… they've considered me a political enemy ever since I gave $100,000 to Israel. There was even a plot to kidnap and exchange me for the skyjack girl, Leila Khaled. Scotland Yard was with me all the time and I didn't like it much. Spooky.
"But as for individuals… 'hate' is too strong a word. There are several directors I wouldn't work with again for any amount of money in the world. But I don't want to say their names. I doubt it would hurt their feelings, but it might."
Again they call her to the set. Every time this happens, Elizabeth hesitates slightly. She goes on talking or doing whatever she is doing, making them wait just a beat of time, only a few minutes. The hesitation is a touch of droit du seigneur, just the mildest reminder of prerogatives won through years of stardom… and it's rather impressive.
Later, I ask Elizabeth what she would most like to change about herself.
ETB: "Well, I'd learn to be more punctual. I think that's a disease with me. I really mean to be on time, but something happens. And I wish I'd had more education. I regret that. And I regret not having gone onstage. But I don't regret any personal things, except when I've hurt people inadvertently. If I had to write my epitaph, it would say: Here lies Elizabeth Taylor Burton. Thank you for every moment, good and bad. I've enjoyed it all."
LS: "Don't some of the bad things in life bug you?"
ETB: "Yes, some things do. I haven't lived in a vacuum, you know. Richard and I don't hang around with the jet set at all. We go to two or three parties a year. We've only thrown one party in our lives, on my fortieth birthday in Budapest, and though we gave the equivalent of what the party cost to UNICEF, people resented our 'extravagance.' We're neither of us—Richard or me—unaware of how people suffer. My philosophy of life is definitely not to just live and let live. I'm concerned about life. I'm frightfully involved.
"The one place I've learned I have to let go is with the children. You can't invade their privacy. You can't bind them to you; that's the worst thing a mother can do. You can love your children with all your heart, but you can't make them love you. It's like when you have a crush on some-body—it doesn't mean they have to have a crush on you. It's marvelous when my children want to be with me… they are most of the time. But you just have to offer them your love and let them go."
Elizabeth's hairdresser, Claudia, comes in with a schedule, saying, "You must plan to see the dentist. Don't you want to?"
ETB: "Oh, I do. I broke a cap and it's sort of stuck in with love. Now let's see… I've made appointments to do six different things this Saturday with Richard gone. I'm seeing the dentist, a doctor is flying from Paris to see my hand, and I wanted to go to the country for lunch. Well, I can't go—what a drag. Or I could cancel the dentist and see him Monday night. Oh, why do I schedule things for the bloody weekend. And I've still got the children, though Maria has to go to Switzerland tomorrow, Liza starts school in Windsor on Friday, and Christopher will want to fly to Munich early for his winter clothes.
"Sure, the kids go around by themselves. Christopher is seventeen, Liza is fifteen, and Maria is ten. We put her in the hands of a stewardess at the airport and have a car and a driver she knows meet her wherever she's going."
Elizabeth doesn't mention her oldest son, Michael, who is in marriage trouble and living in a hippie commune, having publicly disavowed his mother's way of life. But it seems obvious that Elizabeth was thinking of her firstborn when she made her speech about children a moment ago. "Come on," she says, "more Cosmo questions!"
LS: "O.K., do you love yourself physically?"
ETB (puzzled): "What?!"
LS: "I mean is there anything about yourself you'd like to change, physically?"
ETB: "Yes, I'd have a couple of less chins. I'd be inches taller. I'd be naturally slender, willowy."
LS: "How much was your mother responsible for how you turned out?"
ETB: "Oh, I think we are responsible for ourselves, to ourselves. Do you mean was I influenced by my mother? Well, of course. We have always had a good, close relationship. She wasn't a stage mother. You know, every kid's dream is to be older than they are, to dress up, to make believe. And to live in a world of fantasy. My world of fantasy really happened. But when I came home from the studio, my parents were wise enough to pull me back to earth. So all my friends were out of show business, except Roddy McDowall, whom I've known all my life.
"Just imagine the thrill of being a kid at MGM in its heyday, seeing Roman emperors and eating lunch with cowboys and Indians. Passing Marie Antoinette on the set and women in hoopskirts. It was like going to Disneyland every-day."
Then I show Elizabeth COSMO's next question, written in the magazine editor's own hand: "What does she do to guard her health?"
"Oh, bugger all," gasps Elizabeth, laughing. "What do I do to guard my health? Well, sometimes it seems like nothing, doesn't it? I sure don't watch what I eat or try to get plenty of sleep. I just go with the wind. If I have to lose weight, I go on my own particular diet, no bread, no potatoes. Sometimes I try the Drinking Man's Diet. Or the Low-Carbohydrate Diet. I don't have a set regime. I love to eat. I eat when I'm hungry. Sometimes my appetite goes and then I never force myself. Lately, since the accident in Yugoslavia, I've been taking vitamins. Mainly, I try to live and enjoy every minute as it exists. I think about tomorrow, but I don't worry about it. I'm not a worrier. I enjoy, relish life, enjoy the now, and have great fun. I'm also a fatalist. Oh, ----, they're ready on the set."
Between takes, Elizabeth sits briefly at the makeup table, lightly running a brush over her face or reapplying her mascara, adding a touch of lipstick. Claudia barely touches her hair and Ron stands behind her. Though he has been the Burtons' makeup man for many years and I've seen him on five separate occasions, I've seldom seen his hands on Elizabeth. She always seems to do her own makeup.
Elizabeth tells us a story. "The other night Jane Eyre was on British TV with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles. So the kids had never seen it and we gathered around. I'd played Joan's best little girl friend—as a child—in it. So I kept saying to the kids, 'Well, I think I'm coming on in just a minute. Any minute now, you'll see me as a child. Wait, maybe it's a flashback. Yes, it's a flashback.' The children just kept looking at me. Then the screen flashed 'The End.' They'd cut my entire part out!" she wails.
We resettle to wait for the next call to the set. Elizabeth is propped up with cushions in a straight-backed chair, her swollen hands resting on her thighs. I ask another COSMO question.
LS: "Do you think people can learn anything about becoming more sexually turned on from teachers, books, clinics, or are sexual emotions just au naturel? An editor's note reads: 'Elizabeth is said to be by nature just simply sexy and uncomplicated. Is it true?'”
ETB (giggling): "I love these questions. They're hysterical. All I can say is I dig sex and, fortunately, I never had to go to a teacher!"
LS: "So you never read any sex manuals?"
ETB: "Yes, by running my hands over Richard. He's my manual."
LS: "COSMO would like to know the balance of power in your marriage. Are you an imperious queen, as rumored? Or are you going to tell us that a man must run things and the woman just go along? Is there equality in your home?"
ETB: "I've never heard that power-breakdown expression before. I think Richard and I have give-and-take, yes, an equal relationship that is for me ideal. He's strong, but needs cuddling sometimes. I hope I'm the same. I am liberated. I don't understand women whose importance to themselves depends on their husband's job or his importance. It wouldn't matter to me what Richard did and I don't think it would matter to Richard what I did. Equality in our house is absolute. There's no professional jealousy.
"Oh, yes, I know, after my award in Berlin, he's supposed to have said, 'Wait till I get her onstage.' But that's just a joke. In badinage, we'll say anything to each other, and only people who know us intimately understand. Some peo-ple take us seriously when we fight. The great thing is not to care what anybody says. I'm not going to change my way of life for anybody and when I say my way of life, I mean ours.
"The whole suggestion of love as a power game is sick. It's like making a prenuptial agreement. Oh, to even think about that! Marriage is trust. It's mutual. You know, if I were sick, Richard would cook for me, and I for him."
LS: "And change your nappies?"
ETB: "Yes, he has; and I have for him. Oh, while we're on this subject, I thoroughly disapprove of alimony. I don't see why the hell some poor man should pay for the privilege of going to bed with a woman. Women are as able, as capable, as strong, and can go out and get a job just as easily as men. I've never asked for alimony. I'd rather starve! Marriage is mutual. Why should a woman be paid? Marriage is where you get as much as you give. I've gotten a lot out of all my marriages, and I wouldn't have wanted to be paid like a prostitute, either."
LS: "Do you feel that way even about the terrible time you had with Nicky Hilton?"
ETB: "Oh, yes. I learned from that, too. I was so totally naive. I had to grow up sometime. It was an education. After all, remember, I was a virgin. And, of course, from Michael Wilding, who is my very good friend, I have two beautiful sons."
LS: "What's the worst fight you and Richard ever had?"
ETB: "Oh, good God, I couldn't remember that. We adore fighting. Richard is like a well, there's no plumbing that depth. You can't describe an erupting volcano."
I mention the theory that healthy fighting saves marriages.
Elizabeth smiles. "No wonder Richard and I are convinced we've been married for ninety years. What would I do without him? I don't fear death. I've been through that. I don't mind growing old so long as it's going to be with Richard. If I lost him, I guess I might be afraid again. But I think I'm strong enough not to be shattered by aging. Oh, I don't know, maybe I would be."
Claudia comes in to ask her to sign a photograph. I ask for one, too. On mine, Elizabeth languidly and thoughtfully inscribes a scatological but affectionate sentence… right across the voluptuous space of her black and white bosom. Looking calm, cool, collected, in charge, Elizabeth quietly requests pillows for her back. She has let off a lot of steam, has broken the monosyllabic sound barrier. It has been a lucky day for an interview. She seems bemused when I ask if she ever worries about money, frets about it slipping away so fast. Does she feel financially secure?
ETB: "Yes, we spend a lot of money and we give a lot away, but that's the only reason to have money. Our lawyer is brilliant, and he's made us secure. The children are taken care of… we're taken care of. Everything is in trust and I think we'll be financially comfortable the rest of our lives.
"Even if there is a terrible disaster, say a crash like 1929, where everything loses value, paintings are worthless, real estate depressed, jewelry useless, money like toilet paper… we'd be O.K. so long as we had warmth and food and each other. Richard and I had some of our happiest times in Italy in a really crummy one-room apartment on the beach. We would go down there to be together even though we had a huge Roman villa with a cook and servants. We'd spend weeks there. I'd barbecue and there was a crummy old shower and the sheets were always damp. We loved it—absolutely adored it. And when we go to Gstaad, we don't have any staff around. We do all the cooking and housekeeping. If I cook, he washes up, and vice versa. Those really are our happiest moments."
LS: "What are some of your other happiest memories?"
ETB: "Oh, there are so many. Too many to isolate one."
LS: "Which is worse to you, physical or emotional pain?"
ETB: "Why, emotional pain, of course. It's so hard to forget. Nature, or God, or whatever you want to call it, gives us a built-in anesthetic so we can forget physical pain. Sometimes you can never forget emotional suffering. I wouldn't like to relive Mike's death. Or the whole thing after Cleopatra. Yes, that was bad. It was agony… the loneliest time of my life. But happily it's all worked out. Sybil is happy now and has a wonderful child."
Claudia comes back in and Elizabeth hands over her big diamond. "Please, Claudia, will you clean it? Now I've hurt my hand, I can't do anything. Claudia has to do all my little menial chores like cleaning my diamonds and rubies. And that used to be about as domestic as I got." (Ah, a touch of the queenly Mrs. Burton here.)
I ask what she thinks of filmmaking today, and about the critics' feeling that Richard hasn't done much recent work that's worthy of his talent. She bridles a bit, and there is the threatening moment of silence.
ETB: "Well, Liz, nobody sets out to do a bad film—write a bad book—make a bad record, do they? Richard enjoys working. He doesn't do films cynically, but he worries a bit more about money than I do. He was raised in extreme poverty, while I grew up luxuriously. Before the war, when I was a child, we had eight servants, and even during it we had two. That was before I went to America and made money in movies. Richard's concern for tomorrow isn't fantastic, and since I'm much too fatalistic about such things, it's probably good that he cares. About movies today? In this business you make what you're worth at the box office. Nobody pays fantastic salaries because they like you. Or the color of your eyeballs. If you're in a bummer and your value goes down, you have to be realistic and go with it. My ego doesn't demand large salaries; today we work for expenses and percentages and the whole business is different. It's fair. I like the independence of independent films."
Brian sticks his head in, "Honey, we're ready for you."
Elizabeth rises slowly, bids me a fond farewell, leaves in a normal, modest, nonfrenetic manner. I can't get over how calm and unflamboyant she's been. I surmise that the queen without her king runs a different kind of court, saving up all her madness to play Scheherazade at night to his Sultan Schahriah. Visiting Elizabeth has been "another trip" this time.
Weeks pass. I'm dining with a friend who starts talking about the filming of Divorce His/Divorce Hers in Rome. The Burtons were outrageous, he says. They weren't accustomed to the modest budgets and limited scheduling of TV drama, and they did little to adapt. Nobody knew what to expect next; they were uncontrollable. One day, Elizabeth came on the set, waving an invitation from a munitions heir announcing he must meet her and take her to dinner. "Who is this person?" she asked grandly. "I don't know him. I don't go out with people I don't know." Very "Off with his head."
Then the director said, "Oh, Elizabeth, you should go. This guy is absolutely mad, weird, likes to dress up in satin ballgowns and stick diamond tiaras over his bald spot." And then, according to my friend, Elizabeth's haughtiness abruptly vanished: "Oh, why, he's one of us then, luv. Of course I'll go!"
The subdued mood in which I'd caught Elizabeth had, then, given way again to the old flamboyance. Not really surprised, I assumed that in the land of the Queen and her King, most things had gone back to normal.
That was amazing. Makes me want to pull out my copy of Catherine Opie’s ET book. Highly recommend!