Elizabeth Taylor: secrets of a legend you never knew

Chamari Senanayake

She will forever be associated with playing Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen so beautiful and so rich that she bathed in ass’s milk - and now it appears that Elizabeth Taylor had a fortune of pharaonic proportions herself

Fame and fortune

- Estimated fortune US $ one billion

- Jewels valued at US $ 150 m

- Launched ‘White Diamonds’ perfume in 1991

- Real estate valued at over US $ 150 m

The Oscar-winning star left a fortune estimated at up to $ 1 billion, one of just 14 women in the world to have become self-made billionaires. Elizabeth Taylor became famous for the massive jewels she wore, worth $ 150 million as far back as 2002.

As the highest paid actress in the world, she was paid $ 4 million the equivalent of $ 47 million today - to star with Burton in Cleopatra then went on to become one of the biggest names in perfume.

Her joint fragrance venture with cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden launched in 1991 and including the famous scent ‘White Diamonds’ has since amassed a combined $ 1 billion. There are also reports that Taylor had a portfolio of real estate valued in excess of $ 150 million, including her ranch-style home in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Taylor was such a well-known figure around the world that, wherever she went, cameras followed and she created headlines. But there are certain facts that have recently seen the light of day or least known by most people around the world about this megastar.

Hollywood golden couple

This astonishingly unseen photograph (until last year) below shows Hollywood golden couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as they enjoyed their first romantic break together on the Italian island of Capri. It was uncovered in a hidden treasure trove of images from Second World War sweetheart Dame Gracie Field’s private collection. Just a few miles away, the world’s presses were hunting them down on the neighbouring isle of Ischia, when the pair’s tumultuous romance had just sparked into life on th e set of Cleopatra. The screen stars were both married at that time and rumours of their relationship had been sizzling since filming of Cleopatra began the year before, but exploded that June that even the scandalized Vatican accused them of ‘erotic vagrancy’ and the US Government threatened to ban them from the country.

Recently a private collector has released the only known picture of the star then aged 24, posing nude. It is understood to be the first time the photo has been shown to the public. It was an engagement gift from Miss Taylor to producer Michael Todd, who was her third husband. The picture was taken by one of her closest friends, actor and photographer Roddy McDowall. She then gave it to Todd as a present after he proposed in 1956 and the pair married a few months later but the relationship was tragically short-lived as Todd was killed 13 months after their wedding day when his private plane crashed during a storm over New Mexico.

Love letters

The most recent gossip about Elizabeth Taylor claims that she was born at a ‘swingers’ party’ in a Cheshire village, rather than London, which is what is written on her birth certificate. It was said that her father, the art dealer Francis Taylor, and his actress wife Sara regularly attended disreputable gatherings in the village and were said to be ‘the swingers of their day’.

It has also been claimed that she was the product of an affair and her real father was actually the millionaire Conservative MP Victor Cazalet, who became her godfather and even spent for her education in rich schools.

Handwritten love letters of then 17-year old Taylor from 1949 was also released recently, when Taylor was engaged to William Pawley Jr, who was in his 20s and the son of a wealthy American businessman and ambassador.

Rise to stardom

Some have written of her bad behaviour as an attention seeking spoiled rotten star, which is believed to be a well-known fact among her close friends.

One night after she was divorced from Richard Burton for the second time, she decided she simply had to tell Burton how she felt. She knew where to find him and it was at the Duke of York’s Theatre where he was appearing in Under Milk Wood. With no thought for the disruption she might cause, she marched on to the stage halfway through his performance.

The audience erupted into applause, but Burton didn’t know why until he turned around and saw his ex-wife.

As the crowd cheered wildly, Taylor took a deep bow. ‘Oh, thank you all so very much,’ she said, as if she had given a performance of her own. She then blew kisses at the audience with wild dramatic arm gestures before telling Burton she loved him and disappearing behind the curtain as he struggled to rescue the show.

Her mother was a beautiful American actress, Sara, and she cut short her own career to marry Taylor’s father Francis in New York in 1926. The couple moved to London two years later when Francis became manager of an art gallery in Mayfair. They had a son Howard, born in 1929, and daughter Elizabeth in 1932. From the moment her beautiful daughter was born, she began plotting her rise to stardom.

Taylor was enrolled in singing and dancing lessons by the age of two, and was taught how to ‘be a lady’.

The mole on her cheek was accentuated with an eyebrow pencil to invite comparison with screen legend Vivien Leigh, and her mother even taped photographs of her daughter and Leigh to their refrigerator so that visitors would remark on the likeness.

Following the outbreak of World War II, the family moved back to America and her mother set about networking ruthlessly with people who might help her get her young daughter into the movies.

Finally, 12 year old Elizabeth Taylor become a star from National Velvet, the Oscar winning movie based on a novel of a young girl rescuing a horse and training him for the Grand National Steeplechase and riding him to victory disguised as a boy, which is famous as one of the most culturally, historically and aesthetically important movies in the world. The studio gifted her ‘Pie’ the horse who acted in the movie as a birthday gift after the filming was done.

It is often said that Taylor’s mother controlled every aspect of her daughter’s life and was equally determined to choose the men she would date. By the time Elizabeth was 17, she was a very attractive girl. Soon these assets caught the eye of eccentric billionaire aviator Howard Hughes, a customer at her father’s art gallery in Beverly Hills.

Hughes, who was then in his mid 40s, had bedded Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Bett Davis and Katharine Hepburn, among many other beautiful women.

He effectively invited Sara Taylor to offer her daughter promising that, if the girl could be persuaded to marry him, he would put up a considerable sum of money to finance her future movies. Under pressure from her mother to agree to this deal, Taylor rebelled, for the first time in her life.

Her idealistic ideas about love led to some truly disastrous choices over the years when it came to men and ended in eight marriages and divorces. This all started with her first husband Nicky Conrad Hilton Jr.

The socialite son of millionaire hotel owner Conrad Hilton, he was one of the wealthiest and most eligible bachelors in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Taylor married Hilton in May 1950 after a brief of courtship and she was only 18 years old.

With his dark good looks and rakish charm, 23-year-old Hilton seemed exactly like the kind of leading man she fell in love with in her movies. In truth, he was a violent alcoholic with serious drug and gambling problems who beat Taylor up.

On one occasion he kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant, causing her to miscarry.

This led to their divorce in February 1951. When the divorce was finalized, it was significant that Taylor did not ask for alimony from Hilton. ‘I don’t need a prize for failing,’ she remarked at the time.

While filming the famous movie Giant, Elizabeth Taylor worked with two of the most handsome men in Hollywood, James Dean and Rock Hudson.

While there were rumours that Elizabeth and James Dean had a brief affair, most of her associates claim that it was merely a friendship. James Dean died in a car crash even before he turned 25 and still remains one of the most loved characters of cinematic history.

Rock Hudson apparently dated Elizabeth Taylor in 1956, however remained one of the closest friends of Taylor until his death in October 2, 1985 in Los Angeles, California at age 59 from AIDS.

After Rock Hudson’s death, she co-founded the ‘American Foundation for AIDS Research’ in 1985, and the ‘Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation’ in 1993 and plowed both her time and money into its work, especially as her acting career waned in the 1980s.

The BBC once noted that her charity work had grossed as much as her film career. She received the ‘Presidential Citizen’s Medal’, the ‘Legion of Honour’, the ‘Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award’ and a ‘Life Achievement Award’ from the American Film Institute, who named her seventh on their list of the ‘Greatest American Screen Legends’.

No matter what she did, Elizabeth Taylor always reprised her role as a Queen of film industry and with her amazing beauty and tireless work for charities, she will forever remain a ‘legend’ of this world.