The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (43 page)

Hoping to deflect her interest from politics and get her out of the capital, John urged her to return to show business. She needed little encouraging. By 1979, Washington struck her as “the biggest bullshit town.” On March 5, 1980, she went to London to film Agatha Christie’s
The Mirror Crack’d
, accepting a $250,000 fee and slimming down to 125 pounds. Then, in an ill-conceived foray into legitimate theater, she took Lillian Hellman’s creaky old warhorse,
The Little Foxes
, to Broadway in 1981. Completely misunderstanding the role of Regina Giddens, Elizabeth turned her into a women’s lib heroine instead of the evil bitch portrayed by Tallulah Bankhead in the original 1939 stage production and by Bette Davis in the 1941 movie. Hellman tried to make trouble between Elizabeth and the cast, focusing on Elizabeth’s close friendship with costar Maureen Stapleton. Feeling excluded from their intimacy, Hellman, who’d once written a wrong-headed lesbian play,
The Children’s Hour
, told her friend Peter Feibleman, “What’s the matter with Maureen, she spends more time with
that woman
than she does with her own children . . . There’s something unpleasant at the bottom of it.”
¹²

In deference to the decrepit Hellman, Elizabeth controlled herself during their confrontations, keeping her gaze on the floor. One night, Hellman stomped backstage and objected to Elizabeth’s costume, a $50,000 ball gown Regina would never have worn to breakfast. At the next rehearsal Elizabeth was dressed more appropriately. “Maybe Maureen’s right,” conceded Hellman, “maybe there
is
something special about her.” Nonetheless, Hellman persisted in calling Elizabeth “Liz,” fully aware that she hated the name. Finally Elizabeth told her to stop, and Hellman said, “All right, honey, I won’t . . . I’ll call you anything you like, Lizzie.” Caught off guard, Elizabeth started laughing and spent the rest of the meeting sitting next to the dowager playwright and holding her hand.

When
Foxes
opened at the Martin Beck, the public loved Elizabeth, and the show was a box-office smash, netting Elizabeth $1.5 million for nine months’ work. “Not surprisingly,” Elizabeth said, “my marriage did not survive the run.”
¹³
Though her Washington period was over, Elizabeth would go down in history as the first wave in Hollywood’s takeover of the U.S. government. Apart from George Murphy and Helen Gahagan Douglas, no actor had ever before been taken seriously in public life, but Elizabeth’s friend Ronald Reagan, emboldened by her siege of Washington, and by the conservative tide that washed John into the Senate, decided to run for President. When Ronnie and Nancy moved next door to the Warners in Virginia, Elizabeth threw a chicken barbecue at Atoka Farms in the Reagans’ honor. Four thousand guests showed up, most of them, as usual, to gawk at Elizabeth. On July 16, 1980, Elizabeth sat with Nancy in the VIP box as the GOP National Convention nominated Ronnie for President. In November 1980, he became the first movie-star President. After his inauguration on January 20, 1981, the Warners hosted one of the inaugural balls in the capital.

The end came for the Warner marriage when John abruptly told Elizabeth he’d sold the Georgetown house and bought a two-bedroom flat in the Watergate. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she screamed. Two bedrooms wouldn’t even hold her furs and diamonds, not to mention her pets. On December 21, 1981, Chen Sam formally announced their separation, and Elizabeth went home to Hollywood. On Christmas Eve 1981 an ambulance rushed her to the hospital in L.A., where she was treated overnight for chest pains. She called Richard, whose marriage to Susan Hunt had also failed. He commiserated with Elizabeth and later said, “I can’t live without her.” While filming
Wagner
in Europe he called her frequently, wondering if a third marriage might be the answer for both of them.

She was standing by herself at a party when Radie Harris and I encountered her following a screening of
Endless Love
in 1981. The party was held in the Mykonos Restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for Brooke Shields, the star of the movie, and her young leading man Martin Hewitt, whom Radie was writing about in the
Hollywood Reporter
. Radie and I were with Hewitt, Zeffirelli’s associate Dyson Lovell, and Timothy Hutton in a small group around the radiant, laughing Brooke. I was aware of Elizabeth standing slightly apart from the group, and I could hardly believe my ears when I heard her say, “So
that’s
my competition.” I turned and looked into her tired, rather dead-looking eyes, and she added, “I don’t have anything to worry about.” In the car going home I told Radie I couldn’t believe that a middle-aged woman, hard-looking in her dyed black hair, could possibly compare herself with the dewy Brooke.

But in a sense Elizabeth was right. No one would ever call Brooke Shields a legend.

Chapter 12
Private Lives and Public Bottoms

On a bright, crisp day in November 1981, Elizabeth attended Natalie Wood’s funeral in Westwood Memorial Park off Wilshire Boulevard in L.A., where her father was buried. Only days before, as a member of the board of directors of L.A.’s Ahmanson Theater, Elizabeth had encouraged Natalie, whose career was faltering in her forties, to try her luck as a stage actress and star in the Ahmanson’s revival of
Anastasia
. After Natalie got drunk and fell off her yacht, drowning in the Pacific, Elizabeth was one of the first to call on her husband, Robert (R. J.) Wagner. “R. J. knows I’ll always be there for him,” she said. “It’s that simple.” She’d always remember Natalie as “warm, loving, giving, supportive.” A few yards away from Natalie’s white-and-gold coffin, which was covered with 450 white gardenias, was Marilyn Monroe’s crypt with its vase holding a single rose from Joe DiMaggio.

Deciding to settle down in L.A., Elizabeth bought Nancy Sinatra Sr.’s $2.8 million house in Bel Air, the exclusive community that stretches from imposing gates on Sunset Boulevard into the high, steep terrain dividing Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. This would be her home to the end of the twentieth century and beyond. Elizabeth’s house teeters atop winding Nimes Road, concealed behind white gates. The curious are discouraged by aggressive guards who patrol the area, including Secret Service personnel who protect neighbors Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Elizabeth’s sitting room features two Warhol portraits of her. The comfortable overstuffed couch has rose-print pillows, and the lamp-shades are also rose-print. On the coffee table lie boxes inlaid with semiprecious stones, as well as an assortment of figurines. Framed photos stand on the end tables, along with a large mother-of-pearl peanut and a violet orchid plant. White walls, English antiques, and Aubusson carpets provide an elegant setting for her collection of Monet, Modigliani, Utrillo, van Gogh, Degas, and Renoir.

Elizabeth’s son, Christopher Wilding, married Aileen Getty in 1981 after Getty trustees gave permission. They established an antique clothing boutique in Santa Barbara, but it soon failed because of its unusual location. They had two children, Caleb and Andrew, and moved to the Monterey Peninsula, settling in Pebble Beach. There Christopher studied glassblowing and worked for a few years as a stained-glass artist. “He does beautiful work,” said his brother Michael, who married Jack Palance’s daughter, Brooke, in 1982. This time twenty-nine-year-old Michael wore a white tuxedo to the ceremony, which was more traditional than his hippie wedding to Beth Clutter, signaling his embrace of respectability in the 1980s. Fame as an actor still eluded him, but Elizabeth went to New York to see his performance in the Riverwest Theater’s off-Broadway production of
Dead Wrong
, quietly entering the auditorium and taking an inconspicuous seat in the back. Later, she arranged for Brooke to host a cast party, and the following night she took the couple to a quiet dinner. “Our relationship is a good one,” Michael said, referring to his mother. “There’s friendship and kindness. We see each other often and have good feelings for one another.” In later years, she could scarcely have been more solicitous of his career. When she was unable to come to New York to catch his off-Broadway efforts, she’d fly the whole cast out to Bel Air for a private performance. The recipient of boundless maternal indulgence, Michael Jr. at last stopped complaining about Elizabeth’s diamonds and superficial values, even acknowledging that she had some talent. “I think she’s a very fine actress,” he allowed. “I’m sure I’ve learned from her—just by watching her over the years.”
¹

On February 13, 1982, Elizabeth attended her twenty-one-year-old daughter Maria’s wedding in New York. The groom was talent agent Steve Carson, the son of wealthy Florida orange growers, whom Maria had met at Studio 54. After a physically challenged childhood and a shy adolescence, Maria had turned into a swan and was working as a model. Elizabeth and Princess Grace de Monaco came to the wedding rehearsal, which was held in a Manhattan restaurant. By the following September, Grace, overweight and suffering from menopausal depression, would be dead at age fifty-two. She lost control of her Rover 3500, plunging 110 feet from a zigzagging mountain road near the palace in Monaco. In one of Grace’s last conversations with Judy Balaban Quine, one of the bridesmaids at the royal wedding in 1956, Grace had been “marveling again about Elizabeth Taylor’s beauty,” Quine recalled.

At the wedding of Maria Burton and Steve Carson, the bride sounded exactly like her mother, saying, “My marriage will be long-lasting. The fact that there have been divorces in my parents’ pasts doesn’t scare me. I’m a separate person.” Separate, yes, but different, no. Soon Maria was burning up the telephone lines to Elizabeth for marital advice. Her husband complained, “Maria wants a more glamorous life, more like her mother’s. I’m not offering that. I want a family life-style. I’m devastated over the split. I’m still in shock.” At first Elizabeth advised a clean break but later reversed herself and tried to get the couple back together. Perhaps the Carsons had broken up in the heat of anger, she suggested, and should reconsider once they’d cooled off. Besides, she added, she’d be hurt by their divorce. Eventually Maria decided she’d acted hastily and returned to Carson.
²

When Elizabeth arrived in London on February 23, 1982, to prepare
Foxes
for a West End opening on March 11, she emerged from the plane wearing a mink coat over her jeans. During a chauffeured ride from the airport in her new $135,000 Rolls-Royce, she told the driver to stop at The Feathers pub in Chiswick, where she downed a pint of bitter. A leased Chelsea townhouse at 22 Cheyne Walk—redecorated in lavender—was part of her deal with producer Zev Bufman. She settled in with Chen Sam, an Italian hairdresser, a dresser, and four full-time security guards. At the Victoria Palace, where she’d shortly open, the marquee and two dressing rooms were also being painted lavender.

Ever since Elizabeth learned that Susan Hunt had left Richard, she’d been calling him three times a week, asking if she could join him on his film location for
Wagner
in Europe. Richard had asked his brilliant, award-winning director, Tony Palmer, if Elizabeth could visit him on the set, but Palmer wisely demurred. Now Richard rang Elizabeth from Venice to say he was flying in a private jet to London for a charity performance of
Under Milk Wood
. She asked him to be her escort while in London, and he agreed, but before leaving Vienna for the long weekend break, he became interested in one of Palmer’s production assistants, thirty-four-year-old Sally Hay. “She was not the type to stand out in a crowd,” wrote Graham Jenkins. “She had neither the salary nor the style to make the best of herself.” Such niceties no longer mattered to the aging, trembly Richard, who was shopping for someone who could offer comfort, not glamour. After spending some time with Sally that night, he told Brook Williams, “She can do everything—cook, type, do shorthand.”
³

In London, Elizabeth dispatched her chocolate-colored Rolls to collect Richard at the airport and bring him straight to Cheyne Walk. “Where’s my present?” she joked, but she was shocked at how much older he looked than his fifty-six years with his lined, sagging, pasty face and fragile, 140-pound body. Richard was concerned over her condition and appearance as well. Later, she would confirm that she was taking too much Percodan at this time. She invited Burton to her fiftieth birthday party at the trendy Legends disco. Though overweight, she stuffed herself into a silver-and-lavender harem pants outfit. “My eyes had disappeared into suet,” she admitted. The guests included Nureyev, Ringo Starr, Tony Bennett, Maureen Stapleton, and Elizabeth’s children. The pregnant Maria, also in attendance, commented, “It’s almost impossible to describe the anticipation—the specialness—I feel about having a child of my own flesh and blood.” Grateful for the attention and advice she’d received from Elizabeth and Richard, Maria added, “She makes me feel that I too can be and do anything I want. After all, it was they who taught us how precious love is.” The Carsons would name their baby daughter Elizabeth.
⁴

After the party, Richard claimed that he made love to Elizabeth at Cheyne Walk after throwing her entourage out, calling them “homos and hangers-on.” Later, when she read his newspaper interview bragging that she’d begged him to marry her, she rang Graham Jenkins and said, “I could kill your brother. He’s shouted his mouth off about making love to me on the night of my birthday. He was too drunk to find his way down the street, let alone into my bedroom.”
⁵
Still fiercely competitive and apparently determined to sabotage Elizabeth’s imminent West End opening, Richard delivered a parting shot before leaving London, telling reporters, “I firmly believe she cannot act onstage.” He returned to Venice and proposed to Sally Hay.