Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1960)

down, the coughing and the fever suddenly seemed too much. They had to leave the dinner untouched on the table. They took her to the hospital — Harkness Pavillion. The diagnosis was made — double pneumonia— and Eddie moved into the room next to hers to be close by. The doctors said that hers was one of the worst cases of double pneumonia they’d seen in a long time and that her lungs were almost completely congested. The delay in coming to the hospital, they claimed, made her condition almost critical. For three weeks, she lay in the hospital bed, and for three weeks, Eddie was with her every minute when he wasn’t on-stage at the Waldorf. He tried to cheer her up — bringing her hot pizza (which she couldn’t manage to eat), arranging for the mink sweater that he’d ordered for their six-months wedding anniversary to be delivered to the hospital, making sure that her children called her every night. She could never get used to hospitals, though she’d been in so many — fifteen different ones altogether — for manipulations, examinations, and then that four-hour fusion operation on her back three years ago, the caesarean during Lisa’s birth and a series of throat operations. So it was with great relief that, on December 13, Eddie came for her and she walked out of the hospital, wan and weak, leaning on his arm, but out in time for Christmas just the same. The new year January, 1960. “Liz Taylor is definitely pregnant,” she read in the paper, one day. And another rumor, nicer, perhaps, than the report in a British paper two months after their marriage in June, that she was “expecting in November.” The latest rumor brought all kinds of scary warnings from her friends, from the press, and from people she’d never even met. “Don’t have another child,” they’d said. “Caesareans are dangerous — to the mother, to the child”— they went on. When she insisted she wasn’t pregnant, they accused her of lying. When she replied it was nobody’s business but hers and Eddie’s if she were pregnant or not, they wrote that she was nasty and uncooperative. In the end, she simply bit her tongue and said nothing. February, 1960. Funny, but about all this eventful month, she remembered just one thing: her 28th birthday. A crazy day, with sweet, kind, loving Eddie doing everything to make her happy. And a day of memories: They’d talked about her childhood. The first day on the set of “National Velvet.” She was thirteen. Her mother, always a little off-camera, gave hand signals — hand on stomach when her voice got too shrill; hand on heart when she wasn’t showing enough emotion; hands on cheek when she should smile more; hand on neck when she was overacting. . . . March, 1960. She remembered how horribly March began, with memories of Mike’s death — two years ago — and how beautifully it almost ended. . . . almost. She and Eddie’d been to visit his mother in a Philadelphia hospital, where she was recovering from a heart attack. After they’d left the hospital, she slipped on the pavement and severely cut her leg. The motion picture strike was on; her leg was slow in healing; so it seemed a fine time to take a vacation from everything. She and Eddie flew off to Jamaica in the British West Indies. On the plane down, Eddie just had one cup of consomme, but she threw caution P and diet to the wind. During the five-andone-half-hour B.O.A.C. Britannia turbo she ate almost without stopping and drank glass after glass of what Eddie calls Liz’s soda — champagne over ice. Paradise— but not for long At Montego Bay, they transferred to a small plane that was to take them to the Hotel Marrakesh at Ocho Rios, Jamaica. At the hotel, they stayed in their own three-room cottage (two bedrooms, a living-room, and a private patio) . But it was the bathroom that really delighted her: it had a bath tub eight feet long and six feet wide, with three marble steps going down to it. She took one look at it and cried out, “Oh! Eddie, it’s my own private swimming pool.” For a while, they were in paradise: no crowds to bother them, no reporters to plague them, no films to make, no records to cut — just privacy. They slept late, ate a combination breakfast-lunch at twelve or one o’clock, and then lazed around the beach or patio all day. At dinnertime, they would attend an outdoor barbecue with the hotel guests or dine alone on their own patio. At night, they’d walk along the beach in the moonlight, or take rides on the bay in glass bottom boats, or visit offbeat native night clubs, or watch goat races on the sand. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ INVEST IN II. S. SAKS BONDS NOW EVEN BETTER ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Eddie was fascinated by the races, real contests between six goats, each of whom was guided on a leash by a native boy. The guests would bet on each race. She and Eddie never bet on the same goat. She’d get advice on whom to bet from their favorite waiter, dubbed “Benny the Bookmaker” by Eddie. Eddie talked directly to the jockies, offering to split his winnings with them. She’d bet two dollars a race and Eddie would bet ten, and every night she’d win and he’d lose. At the end of their stay in Jamaica, she turned all her winnings over to her adviser, “Benny.” Each lazy day was followed by a still lazier day. They went shopping for things for the boys and for Lisa. They sneaked in to see “National Velvet” and nobody recognized them. Each evening, they’d call Michael and Christopher in New York. It took a century to get through to them, but it was worth hearing their voices, even when Michael swore that he was eating his vegetables while his nurse insisted that he wasn’t. Late at night, they’d sit on the patio — he’d sip Coke and she’d drink iced champagne — watching the lazy moon overhead and listening to the pleasant beat of the surf close by. They had never been happier. Then the champagne went flat and the bubbles burst. It all began innocently enough. They’d meant to go shopping, early, but they’d been racing up and down the beach like high-school kids and had forgotten what time it was. Too late, they realized that shops closed at 4:30. Eddie called up one of the stores and asked if they’d stay open a little longer. “Sure,” they said, “be here by six.” But then other shopkeepers heard that they were coming and they all decided to stay open. Some of the guests heard they were going to the shopping area and they decided to go along. Soon, a whole bunch of cars were following their Cadillac to the stores. They went, they purchased things, they returned to the hotel, and that should have been that — but it wasn’t. A local newspaper ran a front-page story about “Elizabeth Taylor and her faithful retinue.” That was just the beginning. Next came a vicious editorial which matched in untruth and bad taste anything that had ever been written against them. All the old charges were made . . . and some new ones as well: it poked fun at her “broken leg” and pointed out she’d had a miraculous cure (it didn’t matter that she’d never claimed her leg had been broken) ; it accused her of “buying” an appreciative audience for Eddie’s Waldorf comeback; it said she maneuvered a part in “Butterfield 8” for him; it unloosed a flood of innuendo and criticism. Paradise wasn’t the same. Not so long afterward, they left Jamaica and flew back to New York. How much more could Liz take? She didn’t stop smiling April, 1960. Early in April and the night of the Academy awards. She tried not to let her hopes rise. When people told her that George Sidney had said, “Elizabeth Taylor will win an Academy Award for her performance in ‘Suddenly Last Summer,’ ” or that the conservative Herald Tribune had stated, . . if there were ever any doubts about the ability of Miss Taylor to express complex and devious emotions, to deliver a flexible and deep performance, this film ought to remove them,” she smiled and changed the subject. She remembered the year before, her “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” nomination, and the public opinion which had turned against her after Eddie gave up Debbie. So she smiled and thanked people for their good wishes and tried not to dream of the Awards. Only Photoplay’s Sidney Skolsky revealed her true feelings when he recalled how she’d told a London newspaperman earlier in the year: “My ambition is to win an Oscar before I retire. Only then will I be really content to settle down to a full domestic life.” She did not admit this to herself, again, as at the Pantages Theater, on the night of the presentation, she sat next to Eddie, in the midst of a small group of friends, and listened to the presentations being made. Her smile was easy and natural, as if she were home, alone, with Eddie and their kids. Then the moment came, the card was read, and the name rang out: “Simone Signoret.” She did not stop smiling for a moment; she clapped her hands with the others, and she did not believe it when someone, sitting close by to her, told the press he had heard her whisper, “Oh, no.” . . . But she could not be sure. Eddie comes home Matilda, Elizabeth Taylor’s pet monkey, jumped up on the desk and pressed her nose against her mistress’s cheek, and Liz had to laugh. The calendar dropped from her hand. At that second, the door opened and Eddie came in, his arms piled high with fancily-tied packages. It took a few minutes for him to pile the gifts on the couch and when he turned toward her, she was smiling, and the look in his eyes told her that, for the moment, everything was all right and she forgot the heartbreak of the past year, and the jinx that seemed to follow her The End LIZ STARS IN “SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER” FOR COL. SHE’LL BE SEEN WITH EDDIE IN M-G-M’s “BUTTERFIELD 8.” EDDIE RECORDS FOR RAMROD.