How to Be a Movie Star (19 page)

This was the spin used to restore Elizabeth's public image. And just in time, too. Word was out that George Stevens had crafted a masterpiece. An advance screening of
A Place in the Sun
was held in May at Paramount for magazine writers, and publicist Lindsay Durand told Stevens that the response was the greatest he had ever seen during his eleven years at the studio. "The surprise of the evening," Durand reported, "was Elizabeth Taylor's sensitive portrayal which was definitely attributed to your direction."

As more Hollywood insiders got a look at the picture, Stevens was inundated with praise. "I sincerely believe that with 'medicine' like
A Place in the Sun,
" wrote producer Irving Asher, "our ailing box office would recover in no time to fight ten more rounds with television or any other opponent."

But most people had to wait until the official premiere on August 14, held at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. Edwin Schallert of the
Los Angeles Times
was impressed by the invitation-only crowd—not only Paramount people, he observed, but stars and executives from other studios as well, not to mention a large number of East Coasters anxious to get a peek before the New York premiere two weeks later.
A Place in the Sun,
already being called the "film of the year," drew a remarkable cross section of who was who in Hollywood. As klieg lights swept across the purple sky, fans crowded around the theater to catch glimpses of their favorite celebrities arriving in limousines. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz sat in Row 14 with Irene Dunne; behind them sat Metro exec Joseph Schenck. Groucho Marx was down in Row 11, and Hedda Hopper was even farther up front in Row 8 alongside Bob Hope and Danny Thomas. Jerry Lewis brought a party of nine, including Mr. and Mrs. Dean Martin and Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. In Row 10 sat Margaret O'Brien, who'd once been more important than Elizabeth at MGM. Debbie Reynolds, Donna Reed, and Zasu Pitts took their seats in Row 22; Roy Rogers and Dale Evans took theirs in Row 18; and Mrs. Theodore Dreiser was in Row 7. George Stevens's party filled two rows. But of the picture's top stars, only Shelley Winters was there, with Farley Granger in Row 14. Monty Clift didn't do premieres, of course, and Elizabeth had sailed for London, where she was scheduled to shoot
Ivanhoe.

It didn't matter. They were there on the screen, more magnificently than ever before. When the words the end appeared—af ter the powerful, tender, brilliantly understated final scene where Monty says good-bye to Elizabeth as he heads off to his execution—there was a collective gasp from the audience. Only after they recovered their wits did they burst into wild applause. Stevens was overcome.

The critics largely shared that audience's admiration, and much of their acclaim was for Elizabeth. Edwin Schallert thought that her portrayal had given "special illumination" to the picture. "Here is a heroine as beautifully created as any seen in recent days on the screen," he wrote. "What Miss Taylor brings to the picture as a young actress is sheer magic. There is no question, to my mind, but that she will be a top contender for Academy honors." A. H. Weller in the
New York Times
called Elizabeth's work "the top effort of her career."
Variety
thought her performance was "so far beyond anything she has done previously that Stevens's skilled hands on the reins must be credited with a minor miracle."

All one has to do is watch
A Place in the Sun
to understand why Elizabeth, despite her provenance as merely a screen beauty who made headlines, rose above it all to ultimately eclipse her contemporaries. In that unsparing and breathtaking close-up in what Stevens rightfully knew would be the pivotal scene of the film, Elizabeth Taylor cradles Montgomery Clift as he pours out his pain to her. In that moment she transcends all of the lighthearted roles she had ever played and all of the scandal and sensation associated with her. With that one radiant scene, she became one of the great movie stars.

Elizabeth Taylor learned a very important lesson with
A Place in the Sun.
To be a truly great star required more than just manufactured romances and haute couture and fan-magazine covers. No press agent could do this part for her. To become truly great, Elizabeth had to do it all by herself.

And she did it magnificently. "Tell Mama," she says in that unforgettable scene, fully real, fully believable. "Tell Mama all."

Four

Acting Out

June 1955–October 1956

T
OM
A
NDRE WAS HEADING
into a war zone. Rattling over the back roads of west Texas in an open-air Jeep on a swelteringly hot afternoon, he was all too aware of the strife that awaited him on the set of George Stevens's film
Giant—
the director's first reunion with Elizabeth Taylor since their triumph in
A Place in the Sun.
The previous week, production manager Ralph Black—highly regarded in Hollywood as an efficient location man—had walked off the job. According to the report Black had made to Warner Bros., the studio producing the film, he could "no longer take the embarrassment of being abused before the entire company by Mr. Stevens." Andre had been hired to take Black's place, charged by Jack Warner himself with bringing some peace to the set.

It wasn't just the problems with Black. One memo called the entire set "explosive." The team spirit that had characterized
A Place in the Sun
(Monty Clift's occasional outbursts notwithstanding) was nowhere in evidence on
Giant.
Little mutinies were taking place almost daily. Long known for his demanding style, Stevens had become increasingly dictatorial in the past five years. After the huge success he'd had with
A Place in the Sun
and again with
Shane
two years later, few had the temerity to talk back. Stevens firmly believed that every last detail on a picture fell within his jurisdiction—a view that splintered the collaborative enterprise of filmmaking.

Case in point: Against the advice of veteran makeup supervisor Gordon Bau, Stevens had hired rookie Bill Wood to serve as his personal makeup advisor. Wood's résumé consisted mostly of B pictures, yet he was routinely asked to critique the work of people whom Bau called "far more capable men." Writing to the studio, Bau complained, "This situation is creating great disharmony in the makeup crew to the point that several of the men are threatening to quit the production. Should this occur, the situation will be most critical because there are no replacements available."

No kidding. Marfa, Texas—the site of the location shooting—was a forlorn little ranching town of 3,600 inhabitants drowsing under a big orange sky. The
Giant
company had been there several weeks now, and some of them were going stir-crazy. Browbeaten from long days in the sun, they had to drive twenty-six miles to the town of Alpine to reach the nearest swimming pool. Occasionally some of the younger actors like Earl Holliman and Dennis Hopper would commandeer a Jeep to the Mexican border town of Ojinaga, sixty miles away, where they drank lots of tequila to forget, for a night anyway, the pressures of working for George Stevens.

Driving in from the tiny airport north of town, Tom Andre looked out along the hot, flat desert plains. Nothing for the eye to see but prickly pear cactus and dry, rugged earth stretching off toward the horizon in every direction. Marfa itself was just a main road with a couple of shops and an old movie theater. During the war, the army had set up an airfield in town, training several thousand pilots, but they had abandoned the site about ten years ago. "There was nothing to do in Marfa," said Jane Withers, the former child star who had a small part in the film. She would host Monopoly tournaments at her boarding house where she was allowed to serve nothing stronger than Coca-Cola. No wonder Holliman and Hopper were hightailing it to Mexico. The heat, strife, and boredom were wearing these worldly Hollywood types down. Their nerves were frayed. Tom Andre knew his work was cut out for him.

And the stars were just as combative as the crew, perhaps even more so. Of the three top-liners—Elizabeth, Rock Hudson, and James Dean—only Hudson, facing his first real test as an actor, got along with the director. "I followed him around like a puppy," Hudson said, glad to turn himself into "putty" and place himself squarely in the director's hands. But the mercurial, Method actor Dean wasn't nearly so pliable. He regularly infuriated Stevens by snarling in the middle of a scene, "Cut, I fucked up"—a decision that Stevens believed was his and his alone to make.

Elizabeth was having her own troubles with the director. No longer the pampered minor protected from Stevens's tirades by a state social worker, she had to face him like any other actress. Carroll Baker, playing Elizabeth's grown daughter in the film's later scenes, thought the star was still plagued by a lack of confidence in her craft. "She'd had the MGM training where nothing moves," Baker said, "where you're very beautiful but very stiff." As Stevens grew impatient with Elizabeth, he'd begin shouting that all she cared about was glamour and appearance and that she'd never become a real actress. And Elizabeth—twenty-three and no puppy like Hudson—shouted right back.

Tom Andre had been chosen carefully by the studio to mediate. Known as an efficient manager, the fifty-year-old Iowa native had been in Hollywood since 1930, serving first as a studio secretary and then as a production manager, most recently for William Wellman on
Blood Alley,
starring John Wayne. His wife was Eloise Jensson, chief costumer on television's biggest show,
I Love Lucy.
Andre had clout, connections, and tact. He'd been instructed to bring order to the town like a frontier sheriff.

What he found when he arrived in Marfa on Saturday, June 18, 1955, was a massive Hollywood enterprise laid out in west Texas. Enormous fans had been erected to whip up dust storms; a network of hoses had been installed to pump out molasses that looked like gushing oil. On the cracked desert floor, Stevens had built the towering façade of a Gothic ranch house, the film's legendary Reata, home of Bick Benedict, wealthy cattle rancher (Hudson) and his beautiful wife Leslie (Elizabeth). And on the surrounding prairie, prop men had created miniature oil derricks, symbols of the conflict between Benedict and his nemesis, Jett Rink, played by Dean.

Stevens may have been at odds with his crew, but he went out of his way to win over the townspeople, opening the set and allowing hundreds to congregate each day to watch the filming and eat the free lunch that he provided. The presence of so many onlookers made Elizabeth nervous and the crew anxious. Under the blazing sun, surrounded by so much volatility, it's easy to understand why tempers often boiled over.

The only two people who seemed to really like each other were Elizabeth and Rock. From day one they'd been the best of pals. Hudson, twenty-nine, was sympathetic to any worries that Elizabeth may have had about her craft. Like her, he was known more for gorgeous good looks than for his acting talent. Despite this, Stevens had chosen Rock over Clark Gable for the role of Bick, and the actor was feeling the pressure. Elizabeth offered him an escape. "They were both a couple of kids at heart," said Mark Miller, Hudson's close friend. "When they got together, they could act out and have fun."

As the sun sank past the horizon and stained the desert red, Tom Andre watched with a mixture of concern and amusement as Elizabeth hauled out the booze. With Stevens having called the last "cut" of the day, she and Rock were playing their daily game of "Prince of Wales," chanting at each other as they chugged down beer after beer. Their drinking had become legendary. When a freak thunderstorm hit Marfa and dropped hailstones all over town, Elizabeth and Rock ran around collecting them in buckets to use as ice in their Bloody Marys. Another night they devised a chocolate martini—vodka and Hershey's syrup—and proclaimed it perfection, at least until they woke up with monumental hangovers the next day. Though they were never late to the set, Stevens couldn't have been too pleased when his two stars kept running to the "honey wagons"—the portable toilets—to throw up between takes.

Some people thought that such behavior was extremely unbecoming, especially on the part of Elizabeth, who was by now respectably married to a respectable man and the mother of two children, the second one born just four months earlier. Of course, her close association with Rock also led to rumors that the two were having an affair, but certainly Andre had been around long enough to know that Hudson was gay. At one point Rock entertained a visitor from Hollywood, his agent's secretary, Phyllis Gates, whom he was thinking of marrying to deflect the stories that swirled around him.

Elizabeth's husband, the urbane British actor Michael Wilding, also visited the set, and it's likely that no chocolate martinis were mixed for the duration. Chroniclers have tended to portray Wilding as worried that Hudson was trying to steal his wife, but surely the man knew better. Still, he was committed to the marriage, and he saw what was happening. Out there in the heat of the desert, far away from Hollywood, Elizabeth was rebelling—not just against the tyranny of George Stevens but the tyranny of her life. For twelve years everything in her life had been determined by the needs of her career. That included her marriage to the staid, much-older Wilding, designed for the public as an antidote to Nicky Hilton. If Elizabeth had hoped that being liberated from her mother would give her more independence, she found that she was still duty-bound to the studio, to her public, and to her fame. She might be one of the most popular stars in the world, but she increasingly felt that the only way out, the only way to preserve some small part of herself, was to go over the top. To act out. To say
to hell
with the rules. It was the same spirit of independence that had saved her from being eaten alive by the studio the way poor Judy Garland had been. And everyone—her studio, her director, her husband—was wise to take heed.