How to Be a Movie Star (61 page)

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"one of the most painful": Hopper,
The Whole Truth and Nothing But.

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"walks off with": LAT, September 26, 1941.

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"one of the most beautiful children": LAT, October 21, 1942.

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"so good": LAT, April 2, 1943.

57 Hedda had first met the Taylors: She wrote this in her column on October 21, 1942.

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a letter of (re)introduction:
Ladies' Home Journal,
March 1954.

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"When I was called": Hopper,
From Under My Hat.

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"denoting Miss Hopper's": LAT, March 13, 1940.

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"people who wanted": Interview with Robert Shaw.

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"Gossip has become":
Time,
July 28, 1947.

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"x factor": Basinger,
The Star Machine.

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"Remind me to be around": Secondary quote, no primary attribution, used in Ellis Amburn,
The Most Beautiful Woman in the World: The Obsessions, Passions, and Courage of Elizabeth Taylor
(Cliff Street Books, 2000).

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"Her eyes are too old": This is a quote that has been used in many accounts, including Walker,
Elizabeth.
There appears to be no primary source, however, so it may be apocryphal. But among many in Elizabeth's inner circle, it is accepted as the attitude Universal held toward the child actress.

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"accurate memory": Sheridan Morley,
Elizabeth Taylor
(Applause Books, 1999).

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"casting glances," "Being in films": ET,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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"in a cocoon":
Good Housekeeping,
April 1974.

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with his family to Arkansas City: In 1910 the family had already left Illinois and was living in Cherokee City, Oklahoma (U.S. Census, 1910). In 1915 they were in Arkansas City, Kansas (Kansas State Census, 1915).

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the draft during World War I: No record of him exists in the very extensive draft registration files at the National Archives.

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Howard Young Galleries: Francis Taylor's uncle was a self-made man. Leaving home at age ten to set up a laundry business, he was selling lithographs throughout the Midwest by the time he was fifteen. By the age of eighteen, Young had amassed a fortune of $400,000, losing it all in the Panic of 1896. He started over with a get-rich-quick scheme. Watching the newspapers for obituaries of wealthy men, he'd hire a painter to render oil portraits from photographs, then sell the paintings to the grieving families for $2,000 each. In his early twenties he began investing in fine art; by 1919 he was one of New York's most prominent dealers. Young could be a miser, but he clearly had a soft spot for his nephew. Uncle Howard could always be counted on for a loan whenever Francis and his young family needed it most. Obituary, NYT, June 24, 1972.

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remembered her from Kansas: According to a note Howard Young filed with Francis's passport application on April 1, 1921: "This is to certify that Francis Taylor has been in the service of the Howard Young Galleries for a period of six years as a salesman of art objects" (U.S. passport applications, National Archives). Since Francis didn't arrive in Ark City until some point after 1910, then the most he and Sara overlapped would have been about four years.

61 "permanent retirement": LAT, November 4, 1926.

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"her present intention": NYT, December 26, 1926. Sara's marriage to Francis took place a little more than a week after she'd relinquished the part of Gypsy in
The Little Spitfire;
she'd been considered a disappointing successor to Sylvia Field, who'd originated the part. NYT, September 1 and 12, 1926; October 12, 1926; various newspaper accounts, NYPL.

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The Taylors settled in London: To consider the various ways in which Sara, Elizabeth, and others presented these years, see the
Ladies' Home Journal,
February-April 1954; ET,
Elizabeth Taylor
and
Elizabeth Taylor's Nibbles and Me
(Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946); Thelma Cazalet-Keir,
From the Wings
(Bodley Head, 1967).

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a clandestine affair: C. David Heymann interviewed Kurt Stempler, who admitted to an affair with Francis. J. Randy Taraborrelli in his
Elizabeth
(Warner Books, 2006) interviewed Francis's friends Marshall Baldridge and Stefan Verkaufen, who did not acknowledge physical relationships with him but did disclose other details of their extraordinarily close friendships. In one anecdote relayed by Baldridge, it was clear that Sara resented the intimacy he shared with her husband.

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"all the girls thought": Letter from Mrs. Nona Smith to Hedda Hopper, January 27, 1964, HHC, AMPAS.

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–63 Sara sailed with her two children: U.S. Ship Passenger Lists, National Archive. This wasn't the first time Elizabeth had been to America. On July 26, 1934, at the age of two, she'd arrived with her parents and brother to visit her grandparents; they made a return visit on November 20, 1936, when Elizabeth was four.

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"In that inbred": ET,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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"a lovely, sweet kind man": Draft of a column, dated March 20, 1965, HHC, AMPAS.

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a dinner in honor of Victor Cazalet: LAT, May 18, 1941. Two years later Cazalet would be killed in a plane crash with General Wladyslaw Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish government in exile. It was a shock that left both Francis and Sara grief-stricken for months.

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"[She] had absolutely": HCSBU.

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"You'd never have known":
Look,,
June 26, 1956.

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a wooden ruler across her knuckles: Elizabeth would recall this in several accounts, and a source close to her reported that she told him the same story.

65 to run the MGM schoolhouse in 1932: U.S. Census, 1920, 1930.

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"The Little Red Schoolhouse": LAT, October 17, 1926; July 18, 1934; September 12, 1937; September 9, 1948; MGM Collection, AMPAS.

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"Muzzie ... was someone": Jean Porter oral history, Southern Methodist University Oral History Collection (SMU).

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"She didn't teach me shit": Quoted in Dick Moore,
Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star: And Don't Have Sex or Take the Car
(HarperCollins, 1984).

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"Between camera takes": ET,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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"kids ... out of place": Moore,
Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.

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"I paid the bills":
Interview,
February 2007.

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"I was in constant rebellion": ET,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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Dorothy Mullen would remember Elizabeth: Walker,
Elizabeth.

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–68 "I wouldn't put her": HCSBU.

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"to come out sounding": Kitty Kelley,
Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star
(Simon & Schuster, 1981).

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"Americanese":
Interview,
February 2007.

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Pan Berman took over from Mervyn LeRoy: The NYT reported on June 26, 1943, that Berman had taken over from LeRoy.

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measured her against the wall: This was told in Sara Taylor's seminal article in
Ladies' Home Journal,
March 1954, where many of the legends of her daughter's career were first codified. Elizabeth repeated it in
Elizabeth Taylor.

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"There was this place Tip's": ET,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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"It was high time":
Ladies' Home Journal,
February 1954.

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"Something quite magical": HCSBU.

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She burst into tears: This description is culled from several sources, including the interview with Clarence Brown in HCSBU; Alexander Walker's interview with Pandro Berman, relayed in Walker,
Elizabeth;
and various accounts given by Elizabeth and Sara over the years.

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"rocket to stardom": Syndicated, see
Hartford Courant,
November 14, 1943.

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"the biggest kid part": NYT, October 10, 1943.

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"the bluest of blue": Photo caption, undated press release (1943), NYPL.

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"Mr. Strickling didn't pay": Emily Torchia oral history, SMU.

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The lifeblood of the publicity department: Various memos and other papers in the MGM Collection, AMPAS, painted a picture of the workings of the publicity department. I also consulted Peter Hay,
MGM: When the Lion Roars
(Turner Publishing, 1991) and Ronald L. Davis,
The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood's Big Studio System
(Southern Methodist University Press, 1993). For the distinction between East Coast and West Coast movie reporting, see Neal Gabler,
Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).

72 "Young Elizabeth loves animals": MGM press release, carbon copy, no date [circa 1943–1944], NYPL.

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"absolutely native":
Ladies' Home Journal,
February 1954.

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CHILD LITERALLY GROWS:
LAT, February 27, 1944. A press release with the same headline and virtually the same copy was found in the collections at NYPL.

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"The child puts a spell":
Photoplay,
December 1945.

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–74 Dick was thirty-five years old: U.S. Census 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930.

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"the iron lung," "stars were born," "He looked rather": ET,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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Francis Taylor's brother: John Taylor was quoted in Heymann,
Liz.

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"Big Daddy Mayer": ET,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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Guilaroff worked around the clock: Sydney Guilaroff,
Crowning Glory: Reflections of Hollywood's Favorite Confidant
(General Publishing Group, 1996). Guilaroff's claim, sometimes echoed by Elizabeth, that Brown was fooled by the wig might be discredited by a memo from the legal department quoted in Kelley,
Elizabeth Taylor,
that concluded the studio did not have a contractual right to order Elizabeth to alter her appearance. However, I could not locate this memo among the MGM Collection at AMPAS.

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"She was thirteen," Hirshberg said: Notes from the Jack Hirshberg Collection, AMPAS.

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"her charms to perfection": Hopper,
The Whole Truth and Nothing But.

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"Oh, don't end it that way": HCSBU.

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"She never knew": Kelley,
Elizabeth Taylor.

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the chipmunk leaped onto Hedda's arm: Hopper,
The Whole Truth and Nothing But.

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"Aunt Hedda": This comes from an interview with Robert Shaw and is also referenced by Hopper herself in an article that she penned about Elizabeth in
Photoplay,
August 1951.

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"I haven't yet seen
National Velvet
": LAT, October 27, 1944.

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"Elizabeth gets a star rating": LAT, November 11, 1944.

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"plan into action": LAT, December 13, 1944.

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"face is alive": NYT, December 15, 1944.

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"one of the screen's most lovable characters":
New York Sun,
December 15, 1944.

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"as natural and excellent a little actress":
New York Post,
December 15, 1944.

79 among the top ten most profitable pictures of the year: Accurate earnings are difficult to come by before 1950. The National Board of Review calculated
Velvet
as one of the top ten most profitable films (NYT, December 22, 1945). The Gallup Poll also listed it as one of the top ten "most popular films" of 1945 (LAT, December 24, 1945). Although it was released in Los Angeles and New York in December 1944, it did not go into general release until January 1945.

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"Now if you can love a child": Sheilah Graham syndicated column, as in the
Hartford Courant,
January 30, 1945.