"She was like a mirage...irresistible like the pull
of gravity."
Richard Burton
Before Elizabeth Taylor Meets Richard Burton
In 1960 MGM requires Elizabeth Taylor to make the movie BUtterfield
8 but she hates the part (which she feels exploits her tabloid life)
and she makes everyone's life hell on the set. She goes on to win an Academy
Award for the performance.
"No Sale!" Elizabeth Taylor is learning to be an impetuous
minx. The movie is one of the first to have a merchandise tie-in with Bell
Telephones.
"I'm not like anyone. I'm me."
The movie Cleopatra in 1963, is her reward for doing BUtterfield
8. Famously, she is paid one million dollars to appear in the film
but she isn't the first actor to receive a million dollars for a film. That
was William Holden in 1957 for The Bridge Over the River Kwai.
People aren't happy about this newly-dubbed bad-girl being so largely rewarded.
At the beginning of filming in London, she contracts what is mistakenly
thought to be spinal meningitis. She then contracts pneumonia and almost
dies. She is declared dead by the press but a tracheotomy saves her life.
Eddie Fisher nurses her back to health. By the time the filming of Cleopatra
has stopped in London although 7 million dollars have already been
spent. Elizabeth Taylor's recovery takes 6 months.
It's after this near death experience when Elizabeth Taylor wins
her first Oscar. Shirley MacLaine will famously quip, "I lost to a
tracheotomy."
Incredibly, instead of the studio replacing her, they wait for
her recovery and reboot the film in Rome.
Before Richard Burton Meets Elizabeth Taylor
Richard Burton is a smash in the stage play of Camelot, with Roddy
McDowell and Julie Andrews, who he unsuccessfully tries to bed.
By the time Richard Burton is offered the role in Camelot
he has already earned himself a reputation as a prodigious drinker, blow-hard
and lothario.
Richard Burton then makes a big splash with The Longest Day.
Richard Burton now has box-office appeal.
Cleopatra Meets Marc Antony
Due to Elizabeth Taylor's illness, the original Caesar, Peter Finch,
has to be replaced by Rex Harrison. The original Marc Antony, Stephen Boyd,
has to be replaced by Richard Burton, ending Burton's run with Camelot
on Broadway. Stephen Boyd later jokes that he should have been invited to
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's wedding. The movie Cleopatra costs
40 million dollars to make and has a 30-acre Roman set. The production is
dubbed a "hurricane of sex and glamour." Elizabeth Taylor is chronically
late every day and literally thousands of hours are spent waiting for her
over the year-long shoot. And the cast parties, drinks and lives lavishly.
Elizabeth Taylor allegedly drank a drink called Ivan the Terrible. Reportedly
everyone drank a lot of Bloody Marys too.
Poet Philip Larkin wrote a poem about how the history of "Sexual
intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three" and some surmise this
is a reference to when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton met.
"I want to be free of you! Of wanting you!
However, Richard Burton is unimpressed with Elizabeth Taylor their
first few meetings. She seemed a very removed celebrity, he thought. Likewise,
Elizabeth Taylor is determined not to be another notch on Richard Burton's
belt. But soon the rumors begin. Federico Fellini had just coined the word
paparazzi (which sounded like a buzzing insect to him) in his 1960 film La
Dolce Vita and the term sticks after the hoards of photographers stalk
the set of Cleopatra looking for picture of an illicit affair between
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Rumors of their affair leak all over
the world causing troubles for each of them at home with their respective
spouses. The affair also slows down filming even more. Liz & Dick became
a media frenzy. The paparazzi finally snare photos of the couple lovemaking
in hidden places. This famous photograph confirms the story.
Up yours!
After six weeks of shooting end, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
break off their torrid affair and Elizabeth Taylor takes 30 sleeping pills
in despair. She calls life without Richard Burton "scenes missing"
referring to the filler title cards in rough cuts of movies. Friends advises
Burton to "resist swimming against the tide of life" but Richard
Burton responds that Elizabeth Taylor is "an ocean."
After Cleopatra, the couple have some platonic lunches in Switzerland
near where they both happen to have homes on opposite sides of a lake. But
soon they reunite again. The furor over Elizabeth Taylor's home-wrecking starts
up again and she is denounced by the Vatican for "erotic vagrancy."
A U.S. Congressman tries to have their passports revoked.
Richard Burton goes on to make Night of the Iguana in Mexico
with John Huston and he takes Elizabeth Taylor with him. It is here where
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton experience life as a couple for the first
time. The set is a very social affair with the cast and crew.
They even buy a house in Puerto Vallarta and their celebrity turns
the sleepy fishing village into a tourist town. They cause a frenzy of mobs
where ever they go, for the duration of their marriage. Once a mob twists
Elizabeth Taylor's back and pulls out her hair. In Mexico, she loses a purse
and her shoes. She is nonchalant about the mobs, having been famous her whole
life, but the situation disturbs Richard Burton greatly.
Richard Burton takes Elizabeth Taylor to meet his family in Wales.
They are set against liking her, having sided with his wife Sybil in the divorce.
But soon Elizabeth Taylor wins them over, like she always does. Richard Burton
dubs her The Princess of Pontrhydyfen. Elizabeth Taylor helps Richard Burton
gain the confidence to come out about being epileptic and a hemophilic. They
raise money and awareness for both health issues.
The Poem
Silvery ice cubes floating in a glass,
the liquid waves at their crests,
a burning spirit melting them down,
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Clang-clang-clang
went the ice cube sinking
into the sea of it.
He tipped his hat. He took a seat.
Who knows what tomorrow brings.
She lives to see the lights of town,
the bright neon signs on the shoreline.
Life without him was like a rough cut movie
with too many
SCENE MISSING.
This frenetic attention of Liz & Dick will never cease, even
after they became an infamously unpopular couple and their movies together
are bombs.
In 1963 Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton make their first film
as a legitimate couple, The V.I.P.s.
I don't belong to anyone!
In 1964 Richard Burton appears in Becket with Peter O'Toole.
Richard Burton out-drinks Peter O'Toole.
And during the same year he plays Hamlet.
It is during March of 1964 and the run of Hamlet in Toronto
that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor get married. She wears hyacinths
and lilies in her hair. The press over Liz & Dick is now so over-the-top,
fellow actor Hume Cronyn quips, "Poor old Shakespeare didn't stand a
chance."
Due to running their own production company and earning percentages
of the gross on their movies, they become very rich, very fast. They live
in hotels and on their new yacht The Kaliszma to avoid paying taxes. Their
large entourage becomes hard for friends to penetrate and they lose touch
with many of their longtime friends. Elizabeth Taylor begins to experience
issues with her weight. She loves to eat fried chicken. But the buxomy stars
of the past are losing their appeal to the new Twiggy look.
In 1965 Richard Burton makes The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
They reunite in 1965 to make The Sandpiper.
"I don't think it's possible for a man to really love a woman like
me."
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor give a
poetry reading for a charity event where they read "The
Ruined Maid" and "Portrait
of a Lady." Next they make the explosive movie of the play Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1967. Known for their off screen, often playful
fights, they are suited to play the dysfunctional characters of George and
Martha.
Makers of the film say Richard Burton was initially "four balls
two strong" to play the part of George. But he loves the play and works
hard to tone down his machismo. Everyone has doubts about Elizabeth Taylor
pulling off Martha, (Edward Albee had wanted George Mason and Bette Davis),
but Elizabeth Taylor pulls it off and goes on to win an Academy Award and
BAFTA Award. Burton wins a BAFTA but not an Academy Award.
Most people assume Liz & Dick always fought like this and they
do have rip-roaring yelling matches but Elizabeth Taylor calls these just
games and theatrics.
Dumbbell!
U2 Interlude
"George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good
to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly
as I can change them."
In 1967 they score big with Shakespeare (and Franco Zeffirelli's)
flamboyant, busomy The Taming of the Shrew.
They will be nominated for a few awards for this one.
By this time, the Burton's are spending lavishly on jewelry, traveling,
their massive entourage, staying in grand hotels and their yacht lifestyle.
This seems out of step with the late 1960s ethos of earthiness and a war on
poverty. Buying big jewels makes them very conspicuous. This is when the bad
reviews of their movies start to appear and some speculate that this is a
commentary on their aristocratic lifestyle. And also their large personas
start to overwhelm their movie characters.
To woo the wife!
And they make their first of many missteps in 1967 with the movie
Doctor Faustus.
The movie was a big bomb.
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
The also fail to entice audiences with 1967s The Comedians
My God, it's you!
Even Tennessee Williams' Boom! wasn't a hit for them.
Malicious distortion!
A story then appears about the private yacht they arranged just so
their cats and dogs would not have to quarantine in London. This does even
more damage. Has fortune turned on Liz & Dick? Things will not improve
in the 1970s.
