Elizabeth Taylor landed on my radar (and later my gaydar, in a manner of speaking) early on. I thought she was mind-numbingly beautiful, could be a gifted actress, made a few of my favorite films, titillated me with her life of debauchery. I loved her life-long attitude of take-me-as-I-am-or-get-lost. But for me I will always hold her near and dear for her stand-up advocacy of gay men and later of HIV/AIDS. Hollywood, a hypocritical town that has always employed more than a fair share of gays while at the same time dismissing them, found a fierce warrior in Taylor.
She comes by her gay roots quite easily. Before she was born, her father, Francis, had a lover, Victor Cazalet, with whom he lived along with Francis' wife, Sara. She frequently slipped under the covers with Victor as well. No one, including eventually Elizabeth, was confused about the primary relationship. Sorry, Sara. Francis was a frequently unemployed art dealer, Victor a conservative member of Parliament, and Sara was an actress of sorts who became one of the stage mothers of all time.
Elizabeth was 14 when Victor died and she not only knew the score, but she apparently cared far more for Victor, who was loving and paternal with her, than she did her father who was distant and often berated and hit her. If I were writing some fiction about a childhood like Elizabeth's, I would have my character grow up to love gay men, always be looking for a father and having an attraction to men who physically abused her.
Elizabeth never had long-lasting relationships with women. She was a man's woman to the core. But gay men, some of whom she married and some of whom she wanted to marry, always stood in for girlfriends. She was enormously close to several gay men telling them everything (I mean everything) that was going on with her.
Before she became an alcoholic, she was a nymphomaniac. She once said that she didn't sleep around... she simply married the men she slept with. Total bs. She zoomed around town and the world and there was never any tread on her tires. She was treated like an adult from the get-go. By 14 her breasts were enormous, she swore like a sailor and her paychecks bought the family groceries and paid the rent. She lived the life of an adult and expected to be treated like one.
Around that same age her promiscuity began in earnest. Various young men taught her the art of seduction. Interestingly, she never wanted to be just a pretty face. She always sought to be great at whatever she did, in and out of bed. Of course the bisexual Errol Flynn would find her as appealing as she found him. She did all she could to wrangle a meeting. She liked to sleep with bisexual men and he felt the same about young girls.
She loved to talk about her sexual exploits in vivid detail and really, there's probably no one better suited to do that with than a gay guy. She thrilled to swapping stories. It all started at Homo Haven, otherwise known as MGM. I could be wrong (wink) but that place had more gays than there were in heaven.
She was destined to meet fellow child star and fellow transplanted Brit, Roddy McDowall, her first gay buddy. Their friendship would last through his death. They told one another about their conquests, shared a number of partners (separately) and often secured assignations for the other. Don't be fooled by the sweet picture.
She first met McDowall when they made Lassie Come Home in 1943. A year later they would share the screen together in The White Cliffs of Dover. She was no doubt responsible for his 1963 role as Octavian Caesar in Cleopatra. She never had a physical yen for McDowall despite their deep friendship.
Taylor must have been in heaven while making Dover because it had a treasure trove of gay men besides McDowall... Van Johnson, Peter Lawford and Tom Drake. Actually Drake was a gay man, Lawford was bisexual and Johnson is what I call a gay man who was married. Lawford is one she wanted to marry but it never worked out.
Taylor would work with most of her gay actor friends two or even three times. In addition to Dover, she would work with Lawford in Julia Misbehaves (1948) and Little Women (1949). She would work again with Johnson in The Big Hangover (1950) and The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954).
She went to England to make Conspirator (1949) with fellow MGM star, Robert Taylor, with whom she had a location affair. By the time she and the bisexual actor made 1954's Ivanhoe, their friendship had cooled. Friends said it was due to their extreme age difference but when did that ever stop her?
Montgomery Clift sent her into a tailspin. They met on the set of 1951's A Place in the Sun, and according to another costar and Clift's fellow Actors Studio member, Shelley Winters, he didn't even know who she was. He soon would. Each admitted they were blown away by the other's beauty.
Taylor came on strong with Clift, almost to the point of him wanting to bolt. A number of times she proposed marriage. She flew to New York to stay with him. But after she realized there was no point to pursuing him as a husband candidate, she quickly reverted to something her character said in their film... come to Mama. She would mother him for the remainder of his short life... and he cherished it. Without a doubt, he would always be numero uno gay dude in her life.
In 1957 they worked again on MGM's massive Civil War drama, Raintree County. Halfway through the production, Clift attended a gay men's party at her Bel-Air home with everyone getting plastered. He left the party alone and crashed his car into a tree. She flew down the hill and cradled his bloody mess of a head in her lap and has been credited with saving his life. His face was never again quite the same nor was his life. Two years later when Clift was not able to get insurance due to his alcoholism, emotional issues and unreliability, she put up her salary to guarantee his work on Suddenly, Last Summer. In 1965 she would offer to do it again on Reflections in a Golden Eye but it would be too late.
Around the time that Taylor's marriage proposals to Clift went south and while she was making Father of the Bride (1950), she rather impulsively made the decision to become a bride herself. Friends knew she was desperate to be a wife, despite zero skills, and most knew that hotel magnate Nicky Hilton was a poor choice. He was already known for slapping women around, his gigantic sexual appetite and appendage. That had Taylor's name written all over it.
The fact that Hilton was also bisexual must have sweetened her pie. She was nonplussed when she came home one day and found Hilton in bed with Tyrone Power. She then thought the logical thing to do was sleep with Power herself. Like many women married to bisexual men, she thought she could change Hilton. If you're Elizabeth Taylor, why wouldn't you think so?
The marriage didn't last long and soon she was married to Michael Wilding, an older man, British, bisexual, and not unlike her father with his love of wearing dickies and smoking jackets and using cigarette holders. She didn't mind that he had been a decade-long lover of actor Stewart Granger who would marry Jean Simmons and they would all pal around together. When Taylor and Granger filmed the silly Beau Brummel in 1954, they also did the hummana-hummana. Wilding and Taylor were married for five years, had two children and were never faithful to one another.
Taylor acquired a new confidante when she hired Dick Hanley as her secretary. He had previously worked for L.B. Mayer in the same capacity. Hanley was, of course, gay and handled everything for her. He took care of all her business, something that held no interest for her. He worked for her for many years, even lived with her for a spell and so did his occasional boyfriend.
In producer Mike Todd, she did manage to marry an older straight man but they socked away the booze and he socked her often in their brief marriage before he died in a plane crash.
During that union, she hit the jackpot with the release of Giant (1956). She had never received such acclaim for a role and she came across two gay actors (there were at least four in the film) whom she grew to love, one of whom would have a profound effect on her later life.
Two squabbling and very different gay men were her costars, Rock Hudson and James Dean. Giant was the best film Hudson would ever make (and his only Oscar nomination) and the worst film of Dean's brief career. It's long been rumored she slept with both of them. A few years earlier Dean and Hudson had a brief tryst. But ultimately there was great animosity between the two men and because Taylor cared so much for both of them, she was heartsick.
When Dean died before she had completed her work on the epic film, she was inconsolable. Who is to say whether her drinking marathons with Hudson helped or hurt? Regardless, Hudson is the other most important gay man in her life. She dearly loved him. They lived near one another and visited often. They drank, camped it up and gossiped. In the early 80's they would work together in The Mirror Crack'd.
In 1958 Todd died while Taylor was making Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The entire cast was kind and caring with her but she greatly bonded with the movie husband she fought with... Paul Newman, another bisexual which was known to Hollywoodites but not to the general public, even today.
Not long after Todd's death, she married singer Eddie Fisher who had been Todd's best friend. The press made her out to be a homewrecker and a wanton woman. Debbie Reynolds was the victim and Tammy. The truth, however, was that Fisher-Reynolds marriage was on its last legs before Taylor entered the picture.
Reynolds was later quoted as saying Elizabeth was funny and bawdy and loud. She had to marry whomever she wanted to be with. She wanted it to be a conquest. She was absolutely determined not to be the loser and you know what? She never was. I don't know any man who was able to resist her. Elizabeth wasn't the kind of girl you could hate. She truly was a loving and giving person. You just had to make sure you kept your husband in the garage if she ever came to visit.
In 1960 she won an Oscar for a film she truly despised, BUtterfield 8. Some carped who better to play a prostitute?The lady was not amused. Her marriage to Fisher was already in trouble but the good news was that she was working with another bisexual, Laurence Harvey, and she acquired another dear friend.
Harvey said they didn't care for one another at first (something he was used to) but after they sniffed each other out, we became fast friends. Bitches in heat recognize each other. They both loved to camp it up and gossip about their past relationships of all varieties and tear apart Hollywood. They stayed in touch despite her upcoming hectic life. In 1973 when he was dying of cancer and could not get insurance, she pulled a rabbit out of her hat and got him as her costar in the thriller Night Watch.
In 1962 Taylor and Fisher arrived in Rome where she was to costar with Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd in Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. The history on the making of this film is legendary and could be a posting (or two) here all by itself. We know that because of Taylor's many absences/illnesses those actors had to get on to other assignments and were replaced by Rex Harrison and Richard Burton.
Taylor and Burton had met years earlier at a party but she got no sparks. They flew on the Cleopatra set to the tune of a bonfire. Their affair was international news for months and months and after they married their globe-trotting relationship became daily newspaper fodder. She loved his voice and thought he was the best actor she'd ever known. He said she was the most astonishing, self-contained, pulchritudinous, remote, removed, inaccessible woman I had ever seen. Her face was divine but her breasts were nothing short of apocalyptic. They would topple empires before they withered. Indeed, her body was a miracle of construction.
They married, divorced, remarried and divorced again. Their battles were volcanic. Still, they had much in common. Both were hedonists, lovers of travel, spenders of large sums of money and Olympian boozers. Slapping and punching was also on the menu. They were also sexually insatiable. Both cheated but he did so often with both women and men. Burton was no doubt a great lover of women but he liked quick, random sex often and knew where it could be found.
In 1967, she made Reflections in a Golden Eye, the film she wanted to have as her fourth costarring venture with Clift. But he had died and was replaced by Marlon Brando in the role of a closeted, gay, married army colonel. She'd known Brando for some time but got to know him quite intimately on this movie. She knew Clift was always horny for Brando, too, which likely held some extra allure for her. Here was but one more Taylor costar, famed for being a ladies' man, who tripped the light fantastic with dudes.
In the mid-80s Taylor lost a dear friend and gained one. Some have said that her friendship with pop star Michael Jackson was an odd one. Most of us may agree on that but for those taking the time to look closer, is it so odd? First off, Liz loved odd relationships. Both had unhappy childhoods and neither could remember not being famous. She'd known some devastatingly unhappy times and he was currently going through one. She was attracted to wounded birds. And.. and... AND she loved gay men. Are we missing something here?
When her beloved Rock Hudson died in 1985, she was devastated. Just as she had always respected his being in the closet with the public, she knew he had AIDS. Of course she knew he was dying almost as soon as he knew. His death began an AIDS-fueled homophobia. Taylor thought it was deplorable and about time that she do something more than being the den mother for her large gay circle of friends. Her work had started before Hudson's death but it went roaring forward after he passed.
She said she stood up because someone had to. And frankly, what else was she doing? She worked very little. She had just divorced her senator and not yet met her construction worker. She was overweight and completed her first stint at Betty Ford. Working somehow to bring attention to this dreadful disease was a way for her to have something to do and she needed that. She would put her fame to some good use and as usual, she threw all she had into it. She would ultimately help raise $270 million.
She and a doctor-friend set up a foundation and a month later they joined Dr. Mathilde Krim's foundation to form the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfar). While its focus was on research funding, Taylor started another foundation, Elizabeth Taylor's AIDS Foundation, which concerned itself with raising awareness and providing support funding. Her support cannot be underestimated. She was tireless in her efforts. She received many awards and honors for her work.
She died eight years ago and reportedly left the bulk of her $600 million dollar fortune to AIDS charities.
Links to past postings:
Taylor-Made for the 50's
Her Films with Burton
Next posting:
A movie biography
Very interesting...
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