How to Be a Movie Star (30 page)

Mike was eager for Elizabeth to star in
Cat,
despite the statements of some Taylor biographers to the contrary. His reasoning was simple: Now that profits from
Around the World
were finally leveling off, Elizabeth stood to be the bigger moneymaker in the household, and Todd was counting on cash from
Cat
to seed
Don Quixote.
He also may have been bracing for another looming fi nancial crisis: The government was again investigating him, this time suspecting fraud in his recent tax returns. The results of the investigation would be inconclusive, but several people who knew him said that they wouldn't be surprised if Mike had routinely underreported his income.

As plans for
Cat
continued apace, Elizabeth became more excited about the film; she knew what it could do for her. Maggie the Cat—the sexually frustrated wife of a sexually confused scion of a Southern cotton family, as restless and as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof—was part spoiled sexpot, part compassionate earth mother, a role ready-made for Elizabeth. Paul Newman's part (as the tormented Brick) was actually the center of the piece, but Maggie—one of the greatest of Tennessee Williams's gallery of female characters—was a stunning and sexy opportunity for Elizabeth to cavort around a hot plantation bedroom in a white slip and draw upon the same sensitive attributes that had made her work in
A Place in the Sun
so memorable. Newman was a rising name but not yet the icon that he would become. For the first time Elizabeth Taylor was unquestionably the star of the picture, not playing second fiddle to a Clift or a Hudson.

Brooks had come to the film only after George Cukor, faced with objections from producer Pandro Berman, had bowed out. Cukor's idea had been to cast Joan Blondell as Big Mama, Maggie's mother-in-law, which would have brought the two wives of Mike Todd together on the screen. Instead, Brooks cast Judith Anderson and brought Burl Ives in to re-create his Broadway incarnation of Big Daddy.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
was shaping up to be one of the major films of the year. Everyone wondered how Metro would finesse the central conflict of the play—Brick's unresolved love for another man. The death of his childhood friend Skipper seems to have stilled his very existence. On stage there had been freedom of expression; in a Hollywood still fearful of the heavy-handed fist of the Production Code, such matters would need extreme delicacy. Cukor seemed glad to be free of the responsibility: "I couldn't do an emasculated version," he told Louella Parsons, "and I don't see how the movie itself could be properly presented." The controversy made the project even more interesting to anticipate. "This is one film that everyone expects to go sky high," Parsons said.

Elizabeth wasn't the only one in the family planning big things. As
Around the World in Eighty Days
finally reached smaller theaters across the country, Todd came up with the inspired idea to turn their premieres into fundraisers for charity. Bill Doll's press agents poured into small cities to coordinate things in the weeks prior to the opening nights. Flying in on the
Liz
for the film's premiere at the Strand Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut, Todd himself effusively thanked the audience who had paid the exorbitant price of $5.00 per ticket and raised thousands for two local children's charities. For his largesse, Todd received a thunderous ovation. Back in Los Angeles, in his continuing campaign for respect and recognition, he posed at the County Museum beside a weary-looking Elizabeth as he donated several paintings from his collection, including a Renoir, a Pissarro, and a Monet. Obviously exhausted from Liza's difficult birth, Mrs. Todd could still grasp the effectiveness of her husband's methods of self-advancement. Giving back cemented fame. Celebrity was a two-way street, and those who benefited from the public's attention and affection must never forget their part in the exchange.

Eighteen thousand people were jamming into Madison Square Garden on the night of October 17, 1957, for a "Private Little Party"—as the two thousand lights on the giant marquee spelled it out—being thrown by "Mike and Liz." Most of the men wore rented tuxedos and the women stumbled around in high heels. Many a mink stole was stepped on as the crowd pushed and shoved their way inside. Dick Hanley, hovering by the entrance, was so anxious that he started to sweat. His boss had thrown many a successful social gathering before, but never for this many people from so many walks of life. Ordinary Joes and Janes, who had been randomly se lected to attend, knocked shoulders with movie stars and socialites. Hanley just held his breath and hoped for the best.

The Garden was decorated by British production designer Vincent Korda (
The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Thief of Bagdad
) in various hues of blue and pink. At one end a forty-foot tall Oscar made of gold chrysanthemums towered over everything. In the center sat an enormous cake, thirty feet wide and fourteen feet tall, made with two thousand eggs and fifteen thousand dollars' worth of cake batter. Workers had to carry the cake into the hall in pieces and assemble it right there on the floor. The famed Symphony of the Air, conducted by Arthur Fiedler, tuned up as people filed in to their seats. It was all to celebrate the one-year anniversary of
Around the World in Eighty Days,
which by now had grossed nearly sixteen and a half million dollars. A replica of the balloon used in the movie by David Niven and Cantinflas hovered over revelers' heads. The party, with its elephants, kangaroos, performing horses, Philadelphia Mummers, and Scottish bagpipers—all coordinated by Ringling Brothers–Barnum and Bailey—would be Todd's biggest public relations feat yet.

If, as Hanley prayed, nothing went wrong.

"Because it was the beautiful public who made
Around the World in Eighty Days
the great success it is," Todd had announced in advertisements in all the New York papers, "I would like to invite 1,000 wonderful people from the New York area to attend our little birthday party in Madison Square Garden on Thursday, October 17, as my guests." At the Rivoli Theatre on Broadway and Forty-ninth Street, tens of thousands came by to drop their names into a box. One thousand lucky winners were called the day before the event with the exciting news that they could hobnob with Mike and Liz and their famous friends for a night. Similar drawings were held at various theaters around the country, with two winners chosen from each theater to be flown to New York, put up at a swanky hotel, and then escorted to the party. It made for a large number of hoi polloi mixing in with the elite of Broadway and Hollywood. "Hope to see you at the party," Mike had ended his ad.

He sure did. "Everyone in town wanted to get into the Garden that night," said Miles White. "Not just ordinary people, but big shots, too. If they hadn't been invited they were begging for tickets. There was a crush of people at the gates trying to get in."

Having sent more than ten thousand invitations, Mike had made sure that "everybody who was anybody" got invited. Spotted entering the Garden were Tony Curtis, Ginger Rogers, Shelley Winters, Beatrice Lillie, Elsa Maxwell, Walter Winchell, and, of course, Hedda Hopper. If someone wasn't on the list, it was a deliberate omission. Glenda Jensen recalled a "major British actor" who was incensed that he hadn't been invited, and Mike, for whatever reason, remained adamant about not letting him in. Nonetheless, the actor finagled a ticket from somewhere and made sure to be there. To miss the biggest social gala in ages was unimaginable to those who counted themselves as "somebody."

The invitations, which had arrived in mailboxes about two weeks earlier, were designed to look informal and low-budget. Printed in a cursive typewriter font, they included a perforated rsvp postcard—the latest in smart, efficient party-throwing. "It seems the party grew from a few chums to an international exposition," Mike cheekily informed his guests. "Therefore we now have logistics, statistics, and other departments functioning and they want to know, 'Are you coming?'" He promised "no blood tests, fingerprints, or other information required. Just make an X." Then he added, "Sorry, Liz says black tie, so all the boys should look pretty."

There was also a postscript from "Liz" herself: "Girls, if you want to sit and look pretty, wear everything. But if you want to mix and mingle, don't wear a big flouncy ball gown. I did at one of Mike's parties and it was a mistake. Wear short evening dresses."

The entire Todd operation stayed at the nearby Taft Hotel, where they changed out of their work clothes into their fancy duds. Some of them were just as starstruck as the guests being flown in from the sticks. "What an evening it was," Glenda Jensen said. "I was overwhelmed with the glitter and glamour of the people and events going on." She could scarcely believe that she, the daughter of a coal miner from Nottingham, England, was "mingling with the greats and not-so-greats of Hollywood and Broadway."

Making it all even more exciting was that the whole world was watching. Todd, always keenly aware of the value of television cameras, had arranged with CBS to broadcast the party live. It meant preempting their highest-rated dramatic series,
Playhouse go,
and paying Todd $175,000 for the privilege. A young journalist by the name of Walter Cronkite was assigned to narrate. For guests, this wasn't just a chance to attend a fabulous party—it was an opportunity to be on national TV.

Drinks, Mike promised, would be on the house. The champagne toast that kicked off the evening came courtesy of Renault Champagne. "Product placement," as it's called today, was everywhere. The food caravan that prominently made the rounds of the Garden offered cheeses from Kraft, shrimp from the Atlantic Trading Company, cream sandwich cookies from Burry Biscuit Company, crackers from Sunshine, frankfurters from Nathan's, beer from Pabst Blue Ribbon, and coffee from Chase and Sanborn. Everything was, of course, donated—fifteen thousand doughnuts, ten thousand egg rolls, a ton of Boston baked beans, two hundred gallons of vichyssoise—which meant that not only did Mike escape any costs for the extravaganza, he may actually have come out ahead. And then there were the free gifts being promised to "each and every guest" from such sponsors as Bristol-Myers, Cessna Aircraft, Decca Records, Fiat Motor Company, Guinness of Dublin, Hermes-Paris, Heublein, Olivetti Typewriters, and Vespa Motor Scooters. Raffles would be held throughout the night; the luckiest guests would walk off with an airplane or a new car.

Mike and Elizabeth arrived from their townhouse on Seventh Avenue just before the show started, and right away the eagle-eyed host saw that things weren't going quite as he'd hoped. Already guests were griping because unscrupulous waiters were charging them five bucks for bottles of wine that were supposed to be free. As Mike hustled emcee George Jessel up onto the rostrum, Elizabeth took her seat—but promptly had her hem torn when Mike Jr. stepped around her and hooked his shoe on her dress. As Dick Hanley had feared, it was all downhill from there.

The entertainment started with the popular Emmett Kelly, the famous circus clown, trying to sweep up the spotlight on the stage. But the acts that followed were more likely to be hokey than hot: Dieter Tasso, the "world's greatest juggler"; various bands from New York, including one from the city's sanitation department; the San Francisco fire brigade; folk dancers from Hungary; the Monarch Elks of Harlem. The crowd got restless, many preferring to chase after the beer wagon instead of watching the acts. By the time Buck Steele's troupe of ten dogs astride matching palomino horses came out, Todd had left his seat and gone down to the floor, yelling at the organizers to speed things up and to get all those yahoos milling around back into their seats.

"Dad [became] the unexpected star of the show," Mike Todd Jr. said. "The TV director [Byron Paul] kept zooming in on him, shouting and jumping up and down, waving his fists trying to keep the show going." Millions of television viewers got an up-close glimpse of the angry, cursing Mike Todd they'd previously only read about.

On the stage Sir Cedric Hardwicke was falling off Tonga the elephant, hanging on for dear life from the howdah on the animal's back. "Disaster struck and struck again," said Shirley Herz. Off to the side of the hall, there was suddenly a buzz of commotion. Herz found one of her colleagues threatening a guest with a wine bottle. The guest, disappointed by his raffle win of cheese samples from Kraft, was attempting to push a dishwasher out of the Garden. "He had been promised a gift and he wanted his gift and he was going to take it," Herz said. "He found this dishwasher..."

Meanwhile Elizabeth was getting pretty antsy herself. During rehearsals she'd told Hubert Humphrey, the senator from Todd's home state of Minnesota, that the speech he was scheduled to give was "corny" and that no one would buy it. Humphrey sat beside her now, frantically scribbling notes in a last-minute attempt to punch it up. All Elizabeth wanted to do was cut the cake—her only scheduled part in the show—and get the hell out of there. This was not the fun night that she had been promised. She wasn't happy that Mike left her alone most of the night, her only company being a politician she considered dull as dishwater. "Nobody told me who he was," she said.

Todd sure knew who Humphrey was; according to the columnist Earl Wilson, he'd tapped the senator's chest and told him he'd "make him president" someday. It was just the sort of grandiose statement that Todd was known for, and when he'd walked into the Garden earlier that night he was full of such swagger. But by ten o'clock he was running around raving like a madman, with dutiful Dick Hanley following behind, shrilly repeating his boss's orders just in case someone had missed them. That wasn't likely. Todd was loud and forceful, even if some chose to ignore him. When the Mummers decided to take a second loop around the Garden with their banjos and ostrich feathers, Mike blew his top. "Off! Off!" he shouted. "Get those Mummers off!" The head Mummer just lifted an eyebrow and said, "Screw you, sweetie, we dragged our asses all the way in from Philadelphia and we're going around twice."