Eddie Fisher and Liz Taylor on their honeymoon in Portofino, Italy. They came aboard their yacht from Cannes and spent two days here.
The eternal Cleopatra by Mankiewicz, the cat on a tin roof by Tennessee Williams, third in discord in the unforgettable Giant... Elizabeth Taylor (London, 1932-Los Angeles, 2011) will always be remembered as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Her mother, Sara, pawned her life on her becoming a celluloid goddess—something she herself had brushed with her fingertips—but Liz never really had much interest in acting. her. However, it is worth studying how she knew how to use the media to build her career, as passionately narrated in the book How to be a movie star, by William J. Mann (Babel Books).
Her proverbial eccentricities do not mean that she was an enormous professional and film partner, nor do they detract from the notorious and instinctive interpretations of her, which earned him two Oscars and rave reviews, including a current vindication of the most disturbing films of her, like Suddenly Last Summer or Secret Ceremony. They also aroused the love of a public always torn between rejecting her love scandals and the fascination exercised by this violet-eyed woman. By the way, she did not actually have them in this color, her biographers say, but rather it was one more marketing maneuver orchestrated by her mother.
her passion for jewelry, sex and, in general, for her life, which led her to squeeze every meal, every trip and every destination greedily, she also led her to the Olympus of the tabloids. This March 23 marks the 10th anniversary of his death and, as a tribute, we review here the eight honeymoons enjoyed by the actress who did not cut a hair.
Liz with Nicky Hilton, her first husband, in Paris in 1950.
1.CONRAD HILTON: EXTREME LUXURY (AND HOTEL) IN ROME AND PARIS
“I would prefer a gang war to a repeat of the wedding between Hilton and Taylor,” the Beverly Hills police chief lamented after the notorious link. In 1950, only 18 years old and after having starred in some children's films such as Lassie, the invisible chain, Liz was already a true magnet for the press and the public. After she was credited with an affair with Montgomery Cliff, with whom she had filmed A Place in the Sun (in truth, they were always great friends), Taylor she married Conrad Nicholson Hilton Jr., alias Nicky, playboy and son of the hotel magnate.
Metro Goldwyn-Meyer paid for the party, including the $3,500 cost of the dress, and the banquet was held at the Bel-Air Country Club, where the crowd of onlookers and fans left behind a lot of trash, lampposts and broken signs. After a lavish bachelorette party, Liz played in real life the idyllic image with which she had fallen in love with America in The Father of the Bride, movie she was promoting at the time.
Conrad wanted to impose his will on his father marrying the up-and-coming star, who apparently didn't think much of it, so Metro orchestrated a Catholic ceremony as if it were a shoot. Unfortunately, Nicky turned out to be alcoholic and violent, beating Liz until she miscarried. They divorced her in 1952: she won by mental cruelty, refused alimony, and got her maiden name back. Liz probably never thought about it again. the three months of sophistication that she lived in the European capitals during her honeymoon, in which she became addicted to compulsive purchases and he to the game.
Elizabeth Taylor with her husband Michael Wilding and her baby, surrounded by paparazzi, in 1953.
2.WEDDING IN LONDON AND BACK TO THE FRENCH CAPITAL WITH THE GENTLE MICHAEL WILDING
The actress must have liked the city of love very much, since she decided to spend her second honeymoon in Paris as well. This time she did it in the company of the actor Michael Wilding, her second husband and with whom she had her first two children. She there she became a regular in the boutiques of Place Vendôme, especially Maison Dior. “When they got married, Liz was wearing a pigeon gray suit and Mike wore an air of surprise," wrote one columnist. about the unexpected link.
The interpreters said their vows in 1952, a week before her 20th birthday, during an austere civil ceremony in Caxton, London. They were also not spared a crush of admirers: the wedding reception was held at Claridge's Hotel and afterwards they a bath of crowds from a balcony, as if they were royalty. Michael, who was 39 years old, indulged all the whims of the diva. They had met on the set of Treason (1949) and later they met on the set of Ivanhoe (1952).
She bought herself the engagement ring, with sapphires and diamonds, and she bet on a few years of calm, which was the case for a time. Wilding was said to be homosexual (he did not recognize it and even went to court for it). Liz's biographers bet she did and that she didn't care. She “brought me back to sanity and was the picture of calm, security and maturity”.
Liz Taylor with her third husband, Mike Todd, boarding a train in 1958.
3. PASSION IN MEXICO WITH HIS SOUL MATE, MIKE TODD
Liz married Todd in Puerto Márquez, Mexico, on February 2, 1957, when barely 48 hours had passed since the divorce of her with Wilding. The godparents were Cantinflas –who had worked on Todd's blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days– and Eddie Fisher, protégé of her boyfriend (and whom the girlfriend would marry years later). Also in attendance was actress Debbie Reynolds, wife of Eddie and whom Liz couldn't stand. They were greeted with fireworks at the estate of former Mexican President Miguel Alemán, and Taylor appeared covered in diamonds –rings, earrings and a bracelet– worth $80,000.
They say that the lovebirds did not care allowing themselves to be photographed by the paparazzi fighting loudly at airports. Reynolds recounted how on one occasion the couple had assaulted each other and ended up rolling on the floor and kissing. Liz was 25 and the flamboyant businessman was 50. Both were foul-mouthed and excessive. Todd showered her with gifts and she learned from him all about the art of negotiation, finally getting rid of her from the power that the Metro had over her since she was a child. In turn, she brought prestige to him, who had entered bankrupt several times because of his crazy projects.
They had a daughter, Liza, five months after getting married and went down in the annals of luxury their trips to Moscow, where they gorged themselves on black caviar and chicken kyiv, to Sydney, Hong Kong and Tokyo, where she suffered an attack of appendicitis. Her health problems, strategically disseminated by the media, would become a global concern and even – gossips say – a point in favor of her first Oscar (A marked woman, 1960). They had a private plane, the Liz, in which Mike Todd lost his life when he crashed – pay attention to this detail – due to excess baggage. Specifically, a ton. She would turn her pain into a masterful performance, that of Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958).
With her children and singer Eddie Fisher, at an unidentified airport, in 1959.
4. WEDDING IN LAS VEGAS AND HONEYMOON ON A YACHT: EDDIE FISHER'S FATAL ATTRACTION
The most beautiful widow in America disappointed fans and shocked journalists when she got tired of being sad and found solace in one of her late husband's best friends. The singer's daughter, Carrie Fisher, would suggest years later that her father was comforting Liz ... with her great natural attributes. Eddie could have been, some biographers explain, the first "quality" lover that the actress had. and she put on the world again to be able to enjoy such a passion (pun intended). Even if that meant breaking up a supposedly ideal marriage, Fisher's with Debbie Reynolds, who played for years for the press the role of devoted mother and abandoned wife, while Liz was portrayed as a home wrecker.
It was then that Taylor released columnist Hedda Hopper that famous “What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?”, which the Hollywood journalist would publicly throw in her face. Liz had the blessing, yes, of Mike Todd Jr., her stepson. Eddie Fisher wrote in his autobiography: “We made love three, four or five times a day: in the pool, on the beaches of Mexico, under waterfalls, or in the back seat of a limousine coming back from a party.”
Taylor and Fisher, newlyweds, on the first stage of their honeymoon, in New York (1973).
As if the scandal wasn't enough, Liz converted to Judaism at a time of heightened anti-Semitism to marry in a Las Vegas synagogue, where they ignored people protesting with banners. Her honeymoon was aboard a rented 200-tonne white yacht, sailing to the northeast coast of Spain. They also enjoyed Saint-Tropez and Cannes, where they stayed at the Carlton, ending up settling in Surrey, England, where she filmed with Mankiewicz the wonderful and terrible Suddenly Last Summer (1959).
Eddie stayed in love for a long time but Liz soon tired and some believe that she cheated on him with Mankiewicz. Interestingly, Eddie was the only ex-husband she spoke ill of, What's more, she didn't even want to talk about him, perhaps because of the eternal dispute they had over the custody of her adopted daughter, María.
Burton and Taylor in Capo Caccia, Sardinia, during the filming of 'The Cursed Woman' (August 1967).
5.and 6. RICHARD BURTON: THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE, SARDINIA AND BOTSWANA
Probably Taylor fans they learned to love her as she was as a result of her affair with Burton. His was a movie love, specifically one of the biggest and most disastrous Hollywood productions, Mankiewicz's Cleopatra (1963). But not disastrous - as many people believe because of the black legend– because it was a box office flop, which it wasn't, but because all the incidents surrounding the endless filming of it, starting with Taylor's illness in Europe, which forced the filming to be moved to the United States and to change part of the cast and the director (Rouben Mamoulian).
Taylor established with this film a new way of negotiating actor contracts, with a percentage of the profits, and she was the first woman to collect a million dollars for a role in Hollywood. After a very expensive shoot in which the studios did not decide if the romance between the Irishman and the star benefited or harmed them, the film was cut in a way that did not satisfy anyone. The public filled the cinemas –it was already the 60s, time of free love and the end of certain hypocrisies, and the conservative fans were relieved by equally enthusiastic hippies – but the debt incurred by the studios was so great that they ended up in court accusing the lovers of being responsible for the disaster. Ultimately, Taylor and Burton struck gold, and he left his wife and his two daughters to follow Liz to the ends of the world.
Elizabeth Taylor with her fifth husband, Richard Burton, in London (1967).
She "she's a wildly exciting lover, she is shy and sharp and does not suck her thumb, she is an excellent actress and I will love her until she dies”, Richard wrote in his diary, and it may have been so. He, a sort of Lawrence Olivier (a 'serious' actor), also discovered the uneasiness that living with a superstar produced. The result: world travel, self-destructive behaviors (excessive eating and drinking) and a considerable list of titles in common, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), which earned Liz her second Oscar.
They fell in love in Rome but their passion was unleashed on the west coast of Mexico, in a white brick and stucco house on the edge of a cliff, in Bahía de Banderas. They were married in Quebec in March 1964, in a ceremony officiated by a Unitarian pastor, which was held in suite 810 of the Ritz-Carlton hotel. On their honeymoon they traveled on a private yacht named Kalizma, a six-cabin floating palace. and two suites with which they went to Sardinia and other destinations on the Mediterranean coast. They divorced in 1974 and vows were pronounced again the following year in Botswana, with two hippos as witnesses and less conviction. This time the marriage only lasted nine and a half months.
Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, lawyer John Warner, arriving at London Heathrow Airport (October 1977).
7.A TOUR OF RALLYINGS THROUGHOUT THE COMMONWEALTH, WITH JOHN WARNER
A few months after Richard Burton rebuilt his life by marrying a model much younger than him, On December 4, 1976, Liz said 'I do' for the seventh time, this time to an aristocratic farmer from Virginia named John Warner. This American lawyer and former politician (the last of Taylor's husbands still alive) was United States Secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974 and Republican United States Senator for Virginia from 1979 to 2009. A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he married Liz before he was elected to the Senate.
"We were always friends, until the end. She was my 'partner' laying the foundation for 30 years of public service in the United States Senate, representing Virginia, a state she loved, as she reminded him of her childhood in England. I will remember her as a woman whose heart and soul were as beautiful as her classic face and her majestic eyes,” he said when she died a decade ago.
elizabeth had houses in Mexico and Switzerland, she had spent many years living on the Kalizma, her and Burton's yacht, and in hotels around the world. After more than fifty movies, four children and six weddings, the actress was probably longing for a home, so they married on top of a hill on the ranch, in a simple episcopal ceremony, at sunset. Elizabeth wore a purple turban, a gray dress, a matching coat fox fur and a bouquet of lavender.
Boosting your spouse's political career perhaps she bored the star, for whom a honeymoon touring the Commonwealth might not have been very exciting. She ate and drank nonstop to alleviate the boredom until, assuming that there was no room for her in the world of cinema, she decided give the chest do in the theater. With La Loba, a true success on Broadway, she showed that her power of attraction was still intact.
With her last husband, Larry Fortensky, in 1990.
8.LARRY FORTENKSY, THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY... AND A SNOW ANGEL IN SWITZERLAND
Liz's wedding photos with Larry are pure kitsch history. Michael Jackson acted as godfather in the last marriage whim of the actress, determined to marry the carpenter, thing he did in 1991 at the famous ranch of the king of pop, Neverland. Taylor madly loved the singer, about whom she never believed, by the way, the rumors of child abuse. "I wasn't so sure," said Fortensky, whom Liz had met at a detox center, the famous Betty Ford Clinic, in 1988.
Shortly after the wedding, the marriage began to fail. They say that Fortensky, pressured by her, left her job and he accompanied her on her adventures around the globe, although she never felt completely comfortable, especially because of her media harassment, who also always questioned her intentions towards the veteran star.
During the five years they were married (they divorced in 1996), They traveled California's Pacific Coast Highway on a motorcycle – “We were wearing helmets and no one knew who she was. We could be alone and free" he remembered later, stopping to eat hamburgers in service areas. “Once in Japan we paid for a dinner of about $30,000. She was a good steak, but for that price she could already be, ”Larry would joke years later. After their divorce, they remained friends and had long phone conversations. Larry kept a photo of Liz on a trip to Switzerland together until his death. in which she made an angel on the snow wearing only a fur coat over the nightgown