Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

can understand what it is like to be fourteen and have pimples. The boys used to wait for me to show up at high school — not to make passes, just to laugh.” Tall, skinny, withdrawn and insecure, Kim as a little girl would lock herself in her room and hide from the mocking world. Her mother, trying her best to help her daughter, took her to a Chicago psychiatric clinic for treatment. But Kim’s revenge on those boys who laughed at her and the world that mocked her wasn’t to come until much later when her body was featured, unclothed, in a slew of magazines. This proved she was beautiful, she was alluring, she was someone to be loved. Her revenge was even sweeter: The boys, while looking at the photos, could long for her and desire her, but they could never actually have her. Brigitte Bardot’s ugly-duckling appearance as a child was only emphasized by her beautiful mother’s attempts to transform her into a lovely swan by the use of cosmetics, hairbrushes and clothes, but nothing could conceal Brigitte’s frizzy hair, large teeth, puffy lips, thick eyeglasses and awkward body. Mother tried, but Brigitte wouldn’t cooperate. Today, in looking back at her mother’s strictness and her own half-hearted defiance of it, Miss Bardot says, “It is true I am never really well-groomed. When I was a young girl, this made me the despair of my mother. She used to take away my dessert and forbid me to go out.” Eventually, this defiance of her mother’s concern for grooming and clothes (significantly, Mme. Bardot owned a dress shop) was to result in Brigitte’s compulsive rejection of all clothes. On and off the screen, in a series of naked or near-naked milkbaths, strip teases, seductions and bathing scenes, Miss Bardot was able to completely shock and shame her strict mother. The most convincing example of the validity of Dr. Greenwald’s thesis that women pose nude before the cameras in defiance of their very strict mothers — and of our own amendment to this theory : namely, that the over-disciplining of daughters by often beautiful mothers usually makes their daughters feel ugly and rejected, which adds further fuel to later rebellion — is to be found not in an actress, but in society model Christina Paolozzi. When Miss Paolozzi’s undraped figure, as photographed by Richard Avedon, was revealed in the pages of Harper's Bazaar, the impact on her parents and on the blueblooded world of the Four Hundred was as if an atomic bomb had been dropped on Times Square. Society with a capital “S” struck back by dropping Miss Paolozzi’s formerly-listed name from the current edition of the Social Register. The roots exposed What made this daughter of Count Lorenzo Paolozzi, a descendant of Italian royalty, and of Alice 0. Spaulding, of a socially prominent Boston family, agree to strip off her clothes in public for all to see? Well, no matter what she says the reason is, the roots of her present actions can be found in her past. Miss Paolozzi exposes these roots inadvertently when she says, “Even as a child, I couldn’t do things right. Once, when I was 12-years-old, I put on a nightgown that was slightly transparent. I wanted to show my mother I was growing into womanhood. She was so shocked, I’m not sure she’s gotten over it yet.” It is not surprising, in the light of all this evidence, that Elizabeth Taylor fits into the same pattern. Heralded for years by others as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” she does not share the general estimation of herself. On the contrary, she has said many times that she does not consider herself beautiful now, nor did she feel she was beautiful as a child. In the matter of strictness. Miss Taylor’s mother’s actions and attitudes toward her daughter took a peculiar form. A would-be actress herself, she concentrated all her energies on her daughter’s career. “Smile Pretty . . ■” From the time Elizabeth was eight, Mrs. Taylor figuratively pushed Elizabeth. Pushed her out of bed and to the studio. Pushed her to be at makeup on time. Pushed her in front of the cameras. Pushed her to turn emotions on and off on cue . . . to study her lines ... to smile prettily for the still photographers ... to be nice to the publicity people ... to land bigger and better parts. Pushed her from childhood into premature adulthood. When she tried the same tactics on Elizabeth’s two-year-older brother, Howard, he promptly pushed back. When, against his wishes, his mother arranged a screen test for him, he showed up for the appointment — but with all the hair shaved off his head. No hair, no handsomeness. No handsomeness, no test. He had met his mother’s pushing with a counter-aggression of his own. She backed down and he won. But Elizabeth Taylor is incapable of such spontaneous rebellion, such open hostility. Besides, her mother had a powerful ally — the studio. As director George Stevens once told writer Bill Davidson about Miss Taylor, “In addition to the matriarchy in which she was raised, she also had an artificial patriarchy imposed on her — the studio. It took the place of her own retiring father. The studio, like a domineering parent, was alternately stern and adoring. All day long, some official was telling her what to do and what not to do. She spent all her preadolescent and adolescent days inside the walls of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She worked on the set every morning and spent three hours in the M-G-M schoolroom every afternoon. She had no time to play, no contact with other children. Between takes, she was sent to a vacant room somewhere to study.” It was an impossible, hopeless situation. They were too strong, she was too weak. Instead of finding some way to push back, she tried to escape. Where? Into daydreams (years later she said, “I used to escape to the girls’ room”) ; into some hidden corner of M-G-M (Stevens recalls: “The school and the studio became the same to her, and when she ran off somewhere when I was setting up a new scene, she was really trying to play hooky from school”). But when she ran away, someone always ran after her — her mother, a vice-president in charge of keeping tabs on Eliza How I Learned SHORTHAND ■ ■ in £ Weeks SHORTHAND ^ No Strange Symbols — No Machines by Miss Janet Lakin "After graduating from my SPEEDWRITING shorthand course, I accepted a job of my choice — secretary in a large advertising agency. The work is full of fun, friends and interest. 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