How to Be a Movie Star (27 page)

Except one man
did
influence
Confidential:
Mike Todd. And so the "official version" of his love story with Elizabeth Taylor became virtually the
only
version in the months leading up to their marriage. Just as Harrison had described in his editorial,
Modern Screen
ran a piece that was probably lifted verbatim from one of the press releases put out by Bill Doll. According to this article, Elizabeth met Mike at a party thrown by Shirley MacLaine at the Bit of Sweden café (which gave away a bit of the truth, since MacLaine had helped facilitate the affair with McClory). "For the first time in weeks," the article read, "[Elizabeth's] laughter rang out—no longer forced and meaningless, but gay and spontaneous. And Mike, of course, was dazzled by the girl who has been called the most beautiful woman in the world. But it wasn't only her beauty that attracted him. There was something else—something that he wasn't really prepared for. To those who get to know the real Liz comes an amazing discovery—that this girl is not the flibberti-gibbet you'd expect such a beauty to be. She cares deeply about people, and is completely responsive to their needs."

There it was: the image of Elizabeth and her latest husband that their publicists wanted the world to embrace. But once again, such malarkey does the real Elizabeth a disservice. Columnist Bill Slocum, who traveled with Todd during much of his courtship of Elizabeth, thought what they had was "a marriage of equals." Todd liked to bluster chauvinistically, saying that actresses were like burglar alarms ("They go off for no goddamn reason [and] need a good thumping to stop"). But in the next breath he'd admit that Elizabeth was no "little woman" meekly obeying his every command. "Glamour dames I don't particularly like," he said, "but Elizabeth has a warmth, a schmaltzy quality that's wonderful." For her part, Elizabeth said plainly, "It's nice to be married to someone who thinks I have a brain. That also contributes to making me feel like a woman."

That Mike Todd was bluff and bombastic, a real man's man, made him even more exceptional to his bride. "I loved it when he would lose his temper and dominate me," Elizabeth said. "I would start to purr because he had won." After Michael Wilding, Todd was a revelation. The important men in Elizabeth's life—from her father to her agent to her husbands to her best friends—had always been gentle, cultivated, sensitive people. The abusive Nicky Hilton might at first glance seem to be an exception, yet he was a pampered weakling, a poser. With Mike Todd, Elizabeth had encountered for the first time a big strong man who didn't simply want to use and overpower her, the way George Stevens—or worse, Louis B. Mayer—had done. Here was a tough-talking, masculine guy who wasn't a selfish brute.

Todd had another point in his favor where his wife was concerned: He bore no antipathy toward her gay friends. Coming from the tolerant world of the New York theater, Mike knew lots of homosexuals. He'd stood up to his brothers when they'd criticized him for keeping the overtly gay Dick Hanley around him. Mike was a regular at Greenwich Village drag shows, and in
Around the World in Eighty Days
he strove consciously for the camp sensibility that he had found there. After each actress had tested for the part of Princess Aouda, he'd inquire of Miles White, his gay costumer, "Are they camp?" White would sadly shake his head no. But then Shirley MacLaine came in, and Todd asked if
she
was camp. "Most
definitely,
" White said. MacLaine got the part.

Never before had Elizabeth encountered such a man. She found the combination of Todd's tolerant worldliness and roguish masculinity irresistible. "I don't profess to know what makes ladies fall for guys," said Bill Slocum, "but if it's virility, unpredictability, generosity, an utterly magnificent sense of humor, and the gall of a successful second-story man, then Miss Taylor had found herself an ideal man."

They'd been married in Puerto Marquez, Mexico, on February 2, 1957, less than forty-eight hours after Elizabeth's divorce from Michael Wilding was final. Given the bride's condition, there was no time to waste. Best man duties were shared between Cantinflas, the Mexican star of
Around the World,
and Eddie Fisher, whom Todd had taken under his wing. Fisher's wife, Debbie Reynolds, was Elizabeth's sole attendant, chosen because Mike had wanted her, not because of any fondness Elizabeth had for her. In fact, Elizabeth regarded Debbie—she of the chipmunk-cheeked smile—as overly ambitious and a little too hungry for fame. She knew that the Fisher marriage, regularly hyped in all of the fan magazines, was as phony as the MGM backlot.

But even the presence of the Fishers couldn't keep Elizabeth from enjoying her Mexican honeymoon. Guarded at every turn by Mexican soldiers, the newlyweds were saluted by fireworks at the estate of former Mexican president Miguel Alemán. Since Elizabeth was still recovering from a spinal fusion to treat a herniated disc, Todd carried her up to the balcony so that she could watch the pyrotechnics exploding in the night sky. She was glittering in diamonds from her head to her hands. Mike had given her a matching bracelet-earring-ring set as a wedding gift, reported to have cost $80,000.

This was the picture of the Todd marriage that everyone tried hard to project over the next six months: Elizabeth a fragile, be-jeweled doll carried along in her powerful husband's arms. But occasionally the public got a glimpse of something else—"the part of real life that press agents are paid good money to keep hidden," Mark Miller said. It was inevitable that the publicity would crack from time to time—especially when the subjects in question were as volatile and independent as Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor.

In the middle of Heathrow Airport, Mrs. Todd was having a meltdown.

"It's all your fault!" she shouted at her husband in full view of cameramen and reporters. "
Now
what shall we do?"

It was four months after their marriage and a month before the gala celebration in Battersea Park. The Todds had been living abroad, leasing homes in London and on Cap Ferrat in southeastern France. The press breathlessly chronicled their lives as glamorous international jet-setters. "Life in Europe is too exciting" for Elizabeth, Hedda Hopper reported, "and she insists on going out every night." Mike was "scattering Yankee dollars as if he had a private mint," one fan magazine reported, and swathing Elizabeth "in luxury such as even she had never imagined."

But that day at the London airport, the fairy tale suddenly exploded. As reporters watched, mouths agape, the Todds tore into each other once they realized that they'd missed their flight to Nice.

"For a change it was
my
fault that we were late," Mike snarled.

"I'm getting
fed up
with that line," Elizabeth spit. "I am always getting blamed for the delays. I could
hate
you for saying that."

Todd turned to his assistant, Midori Tsuji, and asked her to charter them a plane to Paris. Elizabeth, in a snit, plopped down in a chair, her bag on her lap. "I don't
want
to go to Paris," she said, sulking. "Paris bores me."

At that, her husband spun on her, giving her an Italian hand gesture universally understood to mean "up yours." One lucky photographer for the
Daily Mail
captured the moment for posterity. Todd's chin juts out at his wife, his fingers point up in the air, and Elizabeth's lips curl in a sarcastic comeback. That one picture, splashed all across the world, seemed to reveal much more about the Todd marriage than all of Bill Doll's carefully prepared press releases. "There's no doubt about what we were saying to each other," Elizabeth admitted later, calling it "the only talking still picture in the world." To the Todds' great chagrin, the photo often ran under the headline Liz says "Paris bores me." The image of the spoiled brat was now enshrined.

So was the belief, in some quarters, that the Todd marriage was a big sham—or at least a public front for a private deal. But contracts always have consequences in Hollywood. "Sure Mike and I fight," Elizabeth said, trying to put the best possible spin on the row. "But some people just can't tell a fight from a family frolic."

Was that what Debbie Reynolds witnessed at the Todds' house in Beverly Hills one night? "[Mike] really hit her," Reynolds said. "Elizabeth screamed [and] walloped him right back ... He dragged her by her hair—while she was kicking and screaming at him." Trying to force Todd to release his wife, Reynolds leaped onto his back like a tigress. But she needn't have bothered. "The next thing I knew," Debbie said, "they were wrestling on the floor, kissing and making up."

This was the flip side of Mike Todd's sophisticated tolerance: his legendary temper. The row at Heathrow dominated every article about the Todds for weeks. Trying to put the scandal to rest, Midori Tsuji, who also worked with Bill Doll in publicity, was dispatched to tell reporters that Elizabeth and Mike were "just horsing around," and that there was no need to "make up" afterward "because nobody was ever really mad." Elizabeth, less disingenuous, admitted, "We scream at each other all the time, using those Latin gestures. Actually neither of us is inhibited, so we speak frankly to each other." And then she offered a bit of what was likely the real truth: "We have more fun fighting than most people do just making love."

It was inevitable that the Todds would fight. Elizabeth was still a whippersnapper, just twenty-five years old, fully half her husband's age. Mike was a bossy Broadway impresario, used to bulldozing his opposition. But his wife proved to be just as stubborn as he was, just as used to getting her own way. James Bacon would never forget his shock sitting in the Todds' limousine and watching "Elizabeth's beautiful mouth" yelling "Fuck you!" at her husband over and over again. "It shattered a dream," Bacon said.

Yet given the temperaments of Todd and Taylor, their butting heads was preordained. How different this new husband was from Michael Wilding, who just couldn't hold his own as a sparring partner. Mike Todd, in contrast, would shove his wife across the room when she yelled at him, whereupon she'd pick herself up, dust off her dress, and shove him right back. It was, after all, a marriage of equals.

He teased her in public, sometimes unkindly, something else the chivalrous Wilding never would have done. To reporters Todd referred to his wife as "Lizzie Schwartzkopf" and chided her for being too chunky in the derriere. Compliments were few and far between. Instead he said things like "She told me I was wonderful. What more brains and discrimination can you ask for than that?"

He'd never been a very romantic suitor, even with all those diamonds. "No deep-breathing declarations of adoration, no sentimental gush," said Bill Slocum. But Elizabeth preferred it that way. When she was younger, the romance of the movies had influenced her views of love and marriage. But now she found flying around the world with Mike, bopping and brawling, fighting and frolicking, to be a heck of a lot more fun than those simple, homespun, sugar-coated MGM love stories—especially since the deal with Todd included a new fur coat or piece of jewelry practically every week.

On one anniversary—whether the fourth month or the sixth, Elizabeth couldn't remember—Mike asked Teitelbaum the furrier to come around with two coats, a black diamond mink and a Diadem mink, so that his wife could have her pick. After considering them both carefully, she announced, "My choice is both of them"—and, indeed, she got two mink coats that day. After seeing the "chandelier-sized" diamond earrings that the Duchess of Kent had worn in London, Elizabeth hinted she'd like a pair herself. "Another Saturday night present," Mike said, sighing to reporters. "It's the little things that count," Elizabeth cooed. Mike laughed. "Little diamonds, little rubies, little emeralds," he quipped.

The Todds' glittery life was followed by an avid public who waited on tenterhooks for every new chapter. It offered a panacea for an industry whose allure had faded. By 1957 old Hollywood—and its way of doing business and seeing the world—was dying off bit by little bit. For many oldtimers, the film colony had become nearly unrecognizable. "Talk about dull days!" Hedda Hopper wrote to the Todds soon after their marriage while they were staying at Cap Ferrat. "We have never had them duller with fifty-two pictures being made outside the country. You can imagine what we use for news." Trying to ingratiate herself, Hedda reminded the newlyweds that they'd invited her to visit; she hoped to make the trip right after she filmed the "first hour-long TV show for Lucy and Desi." It was television, not the movie studios, that now ruled Hollywood.

But if the old Hollywood was on its way out, Mike Todd, with Elizabeth Taylor at his side, did not intend to exit with the crowd. He was a new kind of producer, one who understood that the rules were changing; in point of fact, he was one of those changing them. To survive in a world where stars emerged more frequently from television and rock and roll than they did from the silver screen, Todd knew that the machinery of fame needed to be more enterprising and more pervasive. It wasn't enough anymore for a new movie star to pose for a spread in
Photoplay;
now Tab Hunter sang, however awkwardly, on
American Bandstand,
and Debbie Reynolds appeared on
I've Got a Secret.

Mike Todd glimpsed the multimedia of the future better than most. Although he rented office space on the MGM lot, he had no intention of joining up with the studio. His dream, in fact, was to make the studios obsolete by creating a production empire that would encompass Broadway, film, music, and television—and every one of his projects would be big, bold, and better than anything that came before. "He was going to remake the entire field of entertainment," said Miles White. "A lofty goal, but that was Todd." His movies were going to change the way the public went to the cinema: The screens would get even wider, the sound louder and deeper. He'd even begun talks about perfecting 3-D and other special effects.

"Dad felt that the films he was making were
shows
rather than movies," his son said. He wanted a return to big theaters with grand premieres. He conceived of the idea of "cameo" appearances, cramming as many stars into his picture as possible. His exhibitors were contractually forbidden to sell popcorn—a loss of revenue that they accepted from him, but no one else. "Mike thought food was distracting from the film," said his assistant, Glenda Jensen, "as well as the fact that he hated the smell of the butter sauce."