Elizabeth and Michael Read online

  Chapter 3

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  AFTER THEIR OCEAN liner docked in New York, Sara, the children, and the nanny traveled by train to the West Coast, arriving not in Los Angeles but in Pasadena, where Sara’s father now lived. He had established a chicken farm in the area. Pasadena was also a stop favored by many Hollywood people. There was less hustle and bustle than at the Los Angeles station, and Hollywood personalities could avoid the presence of fans and onlookers. On the West Coast, a whole new world opened up for the Taylor family. Having appeared in Los Angeles in The Fool, Sara knew California. But its beauty was all the more striking as she saw it through the eyes of Elizabeth and Howard. The skies were blue and vast. There were the majestic foothills and mountains, the lush flora and fauna, the swaying palm trees, the bougainvillea, the fragrant eucalyptus. Days were warm, sometimes hot but dry. Nights were cool and inviting. Mostly, California offered Sara, as it did for just about everyone else who journeyed there, the idea of limitless promise. Here was a magical place where anything could happen. Of course, Hollywood was there, too.

  • • •

  Upon his arrival in California some months later, Francis had taken over his uncle’s gallery, then situated at the Château Élysée hotel in Hollywood. But aware that the gallery should be located in a place where things happened, where moneyed people in Los Angeles would take note, he decided to open shop in the Beverly Hills Hotel, the premier hotel in the City of Angels, which had first opened its majestic portals in 1912. Eventually dubbed the Pink Palace because of its pink-painted stucco facade, the Beverly Hills Hotel became famous for its dazzling swimming pool, where everyone scrambled to see and be seen, and its Polo Lounge, where the Hollywood elite—Marlene Dietrich, Loretta Young, John Wayne, or Howard Hughes—as well as ambitious social climbers would pose and posture, dine and make deals. Most sought-after were the hotel’s exclusive bungalows, where guests could have great privacy, coming and going as they wanted without being seen but having all the posh amenities that hotel life offered. The bungalows would be the place where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard secretly rendezvoused while Gable was still trying to get out of his marriage; where Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand would have their sexy, secluded love trysts; where an adult Elizabeth—with her various husbands—would stay on so many occasions; and where later Whitney Houston would meet with music producer Clive Davis to review material for her albums.

  Francis’s gallery, or rather still Uncle Howard’s, would become successful, even more so once his daughter became famous and people sometimes popped in hoping for a sight of the ravishing teenager who might be paying a visit to her father. His serious, knowledgeable style served him well as he dealt—in time—with such clients as Vincent Price, Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, directors Billy Wilder and George Cukor, and one of Hollywood’s greatest stars, Greta Garbo, and as he introduced Southern California to such artists as British portraitist Augustus John, known and celebrated for his paintings of Tallulah Bankhead, T. E. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, and the future Queen Mother.

  In time, the family moved from Pasadena to Pacific Palisades and later to 307 North Elm Drive in exclusive Beverly Hills; they had an additional home in Malibu. As she had done with Little Swallows, Sara transformed her homes into well-decorated, beautifully appointed showcases. In the Pacific Palisades, the family’s neighbors included such prominent movie people as actress Norma Shearer, widow of the legendary MGM production chief Irving Thalberg, and Twentieth Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck. Elizabeth’s playmates were the children of such famous neighbors. “We all grew up together,” recalled producer Richard Zanuck. “She was my sister’s closest friend at Pacific Palisades Grammar School. She and my sister were the same age, and I was three years younger. She’d come to our house, and Irving Thalberg Jr. would join us, and we’d have dance classes and things like that. My sister was begging my father, ‘Please sign her up!’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, she’s just your friend.’ ” Darryl F. Zanuck never forgot that he had passed on her and had also previously passed on putting Clark Gable under contract because he thought his ears were too large.

  At different times, the Taylor children were also enrolled in the exclusive Willard and Hawthorne schools. As Sara struck up new friendships among the Angelenos, she didn’t hesitate to use her London connections. Soon her mind was on the movies. During the filming of Gone With the Wind, when there was a search for a child to play Bonnie Blue Butler—the daughter of Clark Gable’s Rhett and Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett—Sara must have snapped to attention. She had already been told that Elizabeth resembled Vivien Leigh. Her daughter might be perfect for the role. But Francis would not hear of it. He was adamant about the matter. Later Elizabeth herself would say that both parents didn’t want her to work at that time.

  But Sara’s attitude changed. Because Elizabeth was already a dreamy child—a true romantic—who loved the world of make-believe and who dramatized her experiences, Sara felt the studios had to open their doors to the child and soon went into action. Elizabeth herself now thought of acting in the movies. “When I was a child I was fascinated at the thought of being an actress,” Elizabeth recalled. “At first I had wanted to be an aviatrix, a cowgirl, and a doctor. Then I saw a couple of movies, and suddenly I wanted to be an actress. And just as suddenly, I became one.” Never lost on Sara were the exquisite looks and the impeccable manner of this darling girl—still always beautifully dressed—with a charming British accent, although Elizabeth also picked up American sounds and could go back and forth between accents.

  Ironically, here Francis proved helpful. Stopping by his gallery one day, upon the recommendation of Thelma Cazalet, was Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper. Hopper relished her visits to England, during which she could socialize with the British upper crust. During those trips, she remained friendly with Thelma and her brother Victor, who had first introduced her to the Taylor family. Chatting with Francis at the gallery, Hopper purchased a sketch by Augustus John.

  When Francis told Sara of the columnist’s appearance at the gallery, she lost no time in paying a visit to Hopper, who, along with her rival fellow gossip columnist Louella Parsons, was a power broker in town who knew everybody worth knowing and whose columns could help a star on the way up (and damage a star who might soon be on the way down). Gregarious and in love with show business, she had been an actress herself, and not a bad one at all. Born Elda Furry in 1885 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, and the daughter of a butcher, she ran away from home to New York with hopes of making it in show business. For a spell, she was a chorus girl but got nowhere, then married actor DeWolf Hopper. Because her husband’s former wives were named Ella, Ida, Edna, and Nella, she bristled whenever he called her by one of their names. That led her to see a numerologist, which in turn led her to change her name to Hedda. She and DeWolf divorced but had a son named William, who later became known for his role as Paul Drake on the television series Perry Mason.

  For years, Hopper struggled to stay afloat as an actress, working first in silent features, then in the talkies into the 1930s. On movie sets and at parties, she picked up gossip and was shrewd enough to know when to tell a good story and when to keep something secret, which could give her power as well. Eventually, she left acting and started writing. Because the studios wanted someone to rival Louella Parsons of the Hearst syndicate (who might spill the beans on something that could hurt their stars), they fed stories to Hedda. Then she became so big that the studios saw her potentially as being just as dangerous a power broker as Parsons. No doubt, they felt they had created something of a monster. In 1938, Hopper’s career took off with her column “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood,” which appeared in the Los Angeles Times. She also had her own radio show. In the 1940s, she was so powerful that she made the cover of Time. Known for her flamboyant trademark hats, Hopper in time did cameos in such movies as The Women and Sunset Boulevard and such television shows as I Love Lucy and The Beverly Hillbillies. A very conservative Republican, later she
was a fervent anti-Communist during the rise of McCarthyism. Regardless of the later years, Hedda for decades could be a powerful ally. Or a venomous enemy. Spencer Tracy and Joseph Cotten were among the stars who publicly expressed their disdain for her. Opposed to “race mixing” or interracial relationships, Hopper once became infuriated when African American actress Dorothy Dandridge and actor Anthony Quinn danced together publicly at a benefit, and Dandridge always felt Hopper set out to hurt her career, although later Hedda seemed to accept Dandridge’s stardom. Hopper also kept mum about Orson Welles’s romance with Lena Horne. (But she let him know she didn’t like it.) So angry with Hopper was actress Joan Bennett that she once sent Hopper a skunk for Valentine’s Day with a note that read: “I stink and so do you!” Hopper reportedly named the skunk Joan. Most stars, however, simply grinned and bore her jabs and juggled things like crazy to give both Hopper and Parsons scoops to stay on their good sides.

  On the day Sara visited Hopper’s home, she had decided Elizabeth would “audition” for the columnist. “Now sing for Miss Hopper,” she told her daughter. Clearly, the child was not a budding Deanna Durbin or Judy Garland. “It struck me as a terrifying thing to ask a little child to do for a stranger,” Hopper remembered. “But in a quivering voice, half swooning with fright, this lovely, shy creature with enormous violet eyes piped her way through her song. It was one of the most painful ordeals I’ve ever witnessed.” It was one of the few times that young Elizabeth lost her composure. But Hopper was enchanted by Elizabeth and wrote about her in her column. “Deanna Durbin’s teacher, De Segurola, has a new find—eight-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, whose mother was Sara Sothern, the lame girl in the play ‘The Fool,’ and whose father, Francis Taylor, has just opened an exhibit of paintings and drawings by Augustus John in the Beverly Hills Hotel.” Hedda also joined forces with Sara to help Elizabeth find movie work. But Hopper’s enthusiasm did not lead anywhere.

  “Nothing her mother and I could do, and we did plenty—introduced her to studio heads, arranged to have producers listen to her sing—did any good,” recalled Hopper.

  Eventually, the first real break came through Sara’s friendship with the couple J. Cheever Cowdin and his then fiancée Andrea Berens. Upon meeting Elizabeth, Andrea found her captivating. Later Cheever himself felt the same way. “They were not without influence,” said Hopper. “Cheever had got some banker friends to put money into Universal Studio. The Cowdins were much attracted to Elizabeth, and because of their influence she was put under contract at Universal.” Hopper didn’t say it, but Cowdin owned 17 percent of Universal’s stock. But before the Universal contract came through, Sara also drummed up interest from MGM executive Benny Thau, and more important, from MGM’s chieftain Louis B. Mayer, who apparently wanted to sign Elizabeth. Elizabeth herself preferred MGM. But Sara went with Universal.

  From the beginning it was a rocky situation at Universal. A casting director at the studio, Dan Kelly, wasn’t impressed, perhaps believing that Cowdin was forcing the girl on them. “This kid has nothing,” Kelly wrote in a stinging memo. “Her eyes are too old; she doesn’t have the face of a child.” He would live to regret those words. Regardless, Elizabeth was signed to a seven-year contract with six-month options. She would be paid $100 a week, with Sara receiving $10 a day for each day she accompanied Elizabeth to the studio. For later generations that might not sound like much, but at the time, it was a good contract for a newcomer. By now, through Sara’s push, Elizabeth was represented by one of Hollywood’s most powerful agents, Myron Selznick, the brother of film producer David O. Selznick. Like the others, Myron saw something in the girl. Elizabeth appeared in Universal’s There’s One Born Every Minute, opposite Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer of the Our Gang movie series. (Not much of a film, There’s One Born Every Minute would be remembered years later precisely because it marked Elizabeth Taylor’s movie debut.) “Elizabeth was there for one year, but studio chieftains always resent anybody who’s brought in over their heads through front-office influence. They made sure the girl got nowhere fast,” said Hopper. “Her contract was dropped.”

  Shortly afterward, Benny Thau saw a friend of Sara’s at a dinner party. He remembered Elizabeth. When he learned she was no longer at Universal, he soon signed her to a seven-year contract at MGM. But the studio didn’t appear to have major plans for her.

  Through all of Sara’s maneuvers and machinations, Francis professed to wanting little to do with a career for his daughter. Elizabeth was to have a normal childhood.

  But now fate intervened in Elizabeth’s future through Francis. “Her mother tried everything to find her another job, but it was her father who happened to land her at MGM through a chance remark he made to producer Sam Marx,” said Hedda Hopper. Actually, it wasn’t so much a chance remark as it was part of a concerted effort or strategy on the part of Francis Taylor.

  With America’s entry in the Second World War following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, Los Angeles was always on alert, fearing a possible attack from Japan. Families stocked up on canned goods in case there was a bombing. Blackouts and air-raid drills were commonplace. During such drills, Francis Taylor, who had become an air-raid warden, found himself lulling away his time in conversation with another air-raid warden, Sam Marx, a producer at MGM.

  Francis often spoke to Marx about Elizabeth. Regardless of Universal’s decision, he took pride in Elizabeth’s accomplishments. After all, she had successfully landed a role and had proven herself capable of appearing before the cameras. That was no easy feat: fear might have overcome other children; an inability to “communicate” with the camera might have occurred with others. But Elizabeth had already shown she had the goods. No doubt he was aware how much his daughter loved make-believe. And he must have also spoken of the family’s years in England. (Remember: Elizabeth could still conjure up her British accent.) Marx remembered that he wasn’t particularly interested in Francis’s talk “about his beautiful daughter, which is not the sort of thing producers fail to hear very often. . . . In fact, you generally hear it quite a lot. So I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. . . . I wasn’t being very nice to Francis Taylor. Just putting him off.” Though Francis’s conversation with Marx may have seemed like idle chatter, it proved important.

  One afternoon, Francis received an unexpected, urgent call from an exasperated Marx, who talked about his hassles with the casting of MGM’s Lassie Come Home, which he was producing. Crucial to the film was the role of a little British girl. The young actress Maria Flynn originally hired was not working out. For one thing, according to Marx, she had grown too tall to appear in scenes opposite child star Roddy McDowall. MGM simply had to find a child with the right demeanor, the right look, and also a cultivated British accent that sounded as if she came from Britain’s upper class. “MGM had just made a film called Mrs. Miniver, and there were six or seven very charming little English girls in that film. And the casting office agreed to get them over to my office around 5 o’clock. And then I remembered Francis Taylor,” said Marx. “Francis Taylor was at his gallery, and he reported that his daughter was over in Pasadena with her mother and possibly would get there but he wasn’t sure.”

  Another version of the story was that Louis B. Mayer, who had not forgotten his meeting with Taylor at MGM previously, had a telegram sent to the Taylor home in Pasadena, requesting that Elizabeth be brought immediately to MGM in Culver City for a test for Lassie Come Home. Perhaps Marx had spoken about the child to Mayer, who set the test in motion. But Marx was always adamant about his version of the story.

  Hearing the news, an excited Sara knew Elizabeth would have to be prepared and coached—mainly during their drive to MGM in Culver City—for the interview and test. She would have to sit in the right way, speak in the right way, and answer questions about herself in the right way. Essentially, the studio would first like to look her over to see what kind of personality she had. Then they’d have to see if she could do the part. Sara would also devise cue
s to indicate to Elizabeth when to smile, when to look sad, when to tone down the dramatics, when to pump things up. During the drive, Elizabeth remained cool and calm, listening intently to everything her mother told her. Whatever was going on inside the girl would be hard to say. She knew that the interview was important to her mother, the person to whom she was closest. But she would never succeed if it did not, indeed, also mean something to her.

  As Sara drove through the gates of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Elizabeth was entering a special world. Established in 1924, now run by the autocratic yet supremely proficient Louis B. Mayer, MGM was the most powerful of Hollywood studios. A city unto itself, MGM sat on 167 acres in Culver City with thirty sound stages, seven warehouses, thirty-seven acres of outdoor sets as well as acres of outdoor settings with jungles and rivers, plus a police force of fifty officers and four captains, a first-aid department with doctors and nurses, a dentist, a chiropractor, a commissary considered the best in Hollywood, a barbershop and newsstand, a water tower, a power plant, a you-name-it. Some six thousand people were employed by the studio, which could boast of excellent directors, writers, cinematographers, choreographers, set designers, costume designers, hairstylists, publicists, and an astounding music department. Then there were the stars—more than there were in heaven was how the studio described the astounding lineup. At one time or another, MGM would have under contract Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamarr, Lena Horne, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Lana Turner, Robert Taylor, Angela Lansbury, Dorothy Dandridge, and the king himself—Clark Gable—as well as the great child stars Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Jackie Cooper, and Margaret O’Brien. Not only were there stars under contract but also featured players and supporting players, giving employment to a range of excellent character actors and actresses. This sprawling behemoth that could easily intimidate, frighten, even terrify, the strongest of personalities represented the big time, the top of the heap. But the little girl sitting by her mother’s side calmly surveyed the place. Young Elizabeth took Metro—as it was often referred to in show business circles—in stride. She understood there was work to be done, that she had to let them know she was right for their movie. As she made her way through MGM, people took notice of her extraordinary looks. Yet no one could really have predicted that she would become the queen of the lot, Metro’s most heralded beauty, the greatest movie star certainly of the second half of the twentieth century and, as Katharine Hepburn would say, the last of the great movie stars.