The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (50 page)

At last, in June 1990, after a nine-week struggle with viral pneumonia, she emerged from the hospital thin and weak, and convalesced at a rented beach house in Santa Monica. Larry gave her a miniature goat, and Senator Warner sent her a home-cooked meal. On June 3, Michael Jackson, who’d visited her at St. John’s, entered the same hospital, complaining of chest pains. His HIV test for AIDS came back negative. It was said that Michael was diagnosed with costochondritis—cartilage inflammation in the front part of the ribs—due to overexertion and stress, but a friend said he’d had an anxiety attack trying to decide whether to sign with Disney or Universal. Elizabeth’s a-sexual, loving relationship with Michael was as nurturing and emotionally reinforcing as her a-loving, sexual relationship with Larry was draining. When she introduced the two men, Jackson, who reads Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, Whitman, and Twain, said he liked the monosyllabic Fortensky.

Elizabeth made lurid headlines again when accusations were filed in 1990 by the California attorney general’s office alleging that three prominent physicians had prescribed excessive doses of painkillers for her—more than one thousand prescriptions dating back to 1983. The doctors involved were Drs. Skinner, Gottlieb, and Michael Roth, a prominent internist who’d treated her for ten years. According to the
L.A. Times
, the three physicians were reprimanded by the Medical Board of California for falsifying patient records to cover up the addictive drugs prescribed to Elizabeth. Gottlieb’s attorney, Harland Braun, said the doctors did not accurately record the drugs Elizabeth was given “to protect her from ending up in the
National Enquirer . . .
Liz Taylor is a different patient, with intractable long term, untreatable pain. She had no life without painkillers.”
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Nonetheless, the DEA accused both Skinner and Roth of improperly administering drugs to Elizabeth.
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According to a prominent L.A. doctor interviewed in 1998, the case was dropped “because Elizabeth Taylor is very powerful.”

By now her good works were so well known that she seemed immune to scandal. “God must have some reason for keeping me alive,” she observed. “Something He wants me to do. And I’ll know. I’ll know. I just have to be still. God knows where we all are.” As she regained her strength she realized, “I’ve got to do something to help people who are
really
sick.” Halston, his fashion empire in ashes, had died of AIDS—pneumocystis carinii, complicated by Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions in his lungs—in early 1990, when Elizabeth was still in the hospital. The fifty-seven-year-old designer spent his last days in San Francisco, surrounded by white orchids, wearing silk pajamas and a red Halston robe, and looking out his hospital window at the Golden Gate Bridge. His funeral at Calvary Presbyterian Church on Fillmore Street was attended by Liza Minnelli, Berry Berenson Perkins, Dennis Christopher, Pat Ast, and D. D. Ryan. Desperately ill herself, Elizabeth was unable to attend.

Upon her recovery, she rededicated herself to raising funds for AIDS sufferers. By the end of 1990, AmFAR had banked $30 million largely thanks to her efforts. She celebrated by making a public appearance to launch the International Conference on AIDS in San Francisco. She continued to collect $1 million donations for AIDS just by showing up at a party. “I’m a great hustler,” she said. “There’s certain things only I can do.” As a result, AmFAR raised $20.6 million in 1992. Seven years later, the figure stood at $100 million. “That’s why I do photo shoots—to keep my fame alive,” she said in 1999. “So people won’t say, ‘Who’s that broad?’”

Though a survivor of seven failed marriages, she was still convinced in the early 1990s that she was “the marrying kind.” According to Kelly Matzinger, “Finally Liz popped the question. Larry was dumbfounded. He told me, ‘I didn’t know what to say. I’d been married twice before and didn’t ever want to be married again.” In July 1991 they became engaged. On such occasions in the past, men had given Elizabeth priceless gems, but on this one, she bought Larry’s grandmother and aunt new dresses and shoes.
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When Larry said he was ready to marry her, Elizabeth put her better judgment on hold. “My heart says to do it,” she recalled. Asked what people would think of her for marrying a man twenty years her junior, she said, “I don’t give a shit what people think.”
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The wedding took place in early October 1991 at Michael Jack-son’s Neverland, with two former U.S. Presidents, Reagan and Ford, among the 160 guests. As Elizabeth and Larry stood beneath a gazebo, exchanging vows in front of New Age personality Marianne Williamson, a helicopter buzzed them, and suddenly a reporter parachuted into the wedding party. “Do you want me to talk louder so everyone can hear?” Williamson inquired. “No,” Elizabeth replied. “Why don’t you just speak to Larry and me?” She gave him a plain gold ring, and he gave her one set with pavé diamonds. José Eber, Elizabeth’s hairdresser, was Larry’s best man. Other guests included Sara Taylor, Phyllis Diller, Eva Gabor, Merv Griffin, Diane von Furstenberg, Carole Bayer Sager, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth’s children and grandchildren, and Larry’s family, except for his father, from whom he was estranged.

The final tab for the wedding came to $1.5 million, and Jackson picked up the bill. Later, when he fell into disgrace, charged with child molestation, Elizabeth rushed to his defense, calling him the least weird man she’d ever known. The Fortenskys accompanied Michael to London, where he entered a private clinic for addiction to painkillers. Subsequently he resolved a civil case involving his relationship with a young boy by paying out $26 million. A criminal investigation continued but was dropped at the end of 1994, and no charges were ever filed.
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When Oprah Winfrey conducted a joint interview with Elizabeth and Michael, Elizabeth revealed for the first time that her father had beaten her. “We both had abusive fathers,” she said, and she later told Barbara Walters, “That just popped out of my mouth.”
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In October 1991, as a thank-you present for their million-dollar wedding, the Fortenskys gave Michael a $20,000 rare albino bird from the Amazon. Elizabeth also gave Michael a moody five-thousand-pound elephant named Gypsy. After honeymooning in Europe, the Fortenskys returned to the United States in November 1991. Elizabeth celebrated her sixtieth birthday at Disneyland in February 1992 with hundreds of guests. On national television she told Johnny Carson that she was astonished to have made it to sixty. One of the guests at her Disneyland party, Michael Lerner, was nominated for a 1991 Oscar as best supporting actor in
Barton Fink
. On the sixty-fourth annual Oscar night in March, Lerner lost to Mike Wilding’s father-in-law, Jack Palance, for
City Slickers
. In the evening’s grand finale, after Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins accepted their Oscars for
The Silence of the Lambs
, Elizabeth swept into the spotlight in a white gown, wearing the distinctive red AIDS ribbon. Thirty-four years after they’d costarred in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, Paul Newman gave her the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award—her third Oscar—presented in recognition of her breakthrough work with AIDS. When she got home, she placed the statuette on the game-room bookshelf alongside her Oscars for
Butterfield 8
and
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

At 700 Nimes Road, the Fortenskys settled in with four dogs, including Larry’s German shepherd and a lovable Maltese he gave her named Sugar. Her gay friends, being outsiders themselves, understood Larry’s feelings of not belonging, but among her Bel Air and Beverly Hills chums, such as R. J. Wagner, Burt Bacharach, and George Hamilton, Larry looked ridiculous. During the course of her eight-year marriage to Larry, well-meaning old friends struggled to convince themselves that this unlikely relationship was eventually going to prove viable. “Larry’s authentic,” said the usually more perceptive Carole Bayer Sager. “He means what he says and he says what he means. He’s strong and supports her emotionally.” Such friends were unwittingly reinforcing her worst delusions, the most pitiful of which was that Larry had “quickly . . . adjusted” to her life.
⁶³

Of course he hadn’t and couldn’t, but she deliberately mistook his bumptiousness for gritty horse sense, just as Richard had once attributed mythic qualities to her that proved equally bogus. Larry, she maintained, had discovered some “larceny in my world. Some of it’s petty and some grand.” Her ill-considered flattery made him smug. He cockily informed her that Stanton had it all over Bel Air, and he could teach her a thing or two. In his heyday as a member of Teamsters Local 420 in L.A., he’d pulled down $18.50 an hour. “I like the work, I like the dirt, I like the mountains, I like the big machines,” he boasted.
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Perhaps blinded by love, or lust, Elizabeth must have believed him, for she told a reporter, “Larry sees through the world of bullshit I live in. He’s very protective.”
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As the pink-cloud period of their marriage continued, she saw him as “very strong and wise”; he “eased into my life with grace and style.”
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She played Svengali to his Galatea, trying to turn him into someone she wouldn’t be ashamed of, giving him a new haircut and speech lessons. It didn’t work. At parties he looked like her bodyguard, saying little and lurking in the background. Since they obviously had little in common, friends assumed he was a great lover like John Warner, but his former wife asserted that he was perfectly average.
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Asked by a reporter if she and Larry practiced safe sex, she replied, “Larry and I are regularly checked. And at the present moment we do not use condoms. If you’re in a monogamous relationship for a certain amount of time and are true to each other and have tested negative a couple of times for AIDS, I think you’re safe.”
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She posed for a magazine cover dangling a condom on her finger, shocking both the press and religious leaders by advising young people to use rubbers. Sensibly, she argued that kids have a right to be informed and educated by parents, teachers, preachers, and politicians.

If Elizabeth could have accepted Larry as the unambitious, unkempt Homer Simpson he was, there might have been at least the ghost of a chance for the marriage, but “she wanted to change him,” said Kelly Matzinger, “and there’s no one in the world who can do that—not even Elizabeth Taylor.”
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A long-time party girl and jet setter, Elizabeth enjoyed socializing, but Larry’s idea of a good time was lolling in front of the TV, where no one would call him “Mr. Elizabeth Taylor,” and watching
Matlock
and
The Andy Griffith Show
.

She used the vast sums of money collected from selling their Neverland wedding pictures to establish the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF), which unlike AmFAR concentrated on patient care.

As Elizabeth’s fragrance line continued to flourish, by the end of 1992 she was among the ten richest women in Hollywood, with a fortune estimated at $150 million. She was listed in sixth place, between Dolly Parton ($158 million) and Jane Fonda ($143 million), and the number one spot was occupied by Oprah Winfrey, who was worth $200 million. Unfortunately, Elizabeth began to have a series of serious falls the following year, partly due to the stressful situation at home. Her marriage had been deteriorating ever since Larry quit his job. Surrounded by a multimillionaire’s luxuries, he’d seen no point in knocking himself out driving a Caterpillar. “I was kind of hurt when he stopped,” Elizabeth said. Idle in the lap of luxury, he started drinking beer again.
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For a while, she ran around Bel Air trying to scare up odd jobs for him. Nancy Reagan hired Larry to build some shelves for her and the former President. But Larry preferred lying abed, or watching TV in his bathrobe all day. Afraid of losing him, desperate to make life more diverting for him in Bel Air, Elizabeth had a private den and a basketball court built for his amusement.

Like Auntie Mame, who hoped world travel would be broadening for her young ward, Elizabeth took Larry overseas. “I got such a kick out of taking him to places that I have never gone to, so that I wouldn’t have an advantage over him and we could share the newness together,” she recalled. She took him to Thailand, where they were guests of the royal family. Everywhere they went, a motorcycle escort was provided, and all roads were cleared of traffic. Larry assumed that everyone who went abroad received salutes from the police. Foreign travel bored him, and he wouldn’t eat the food. “He wanted to go to McDonald’s wherever we were,” she said.
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What had been intended by Elizabeth as a romantic excursion to Paris was a disappointment for both. She wanted to share her favorite places with him, but he remained in the hotel, refusing to go out. Even the mountain air of Gstaad failed to enliven him, and he was not pleased to discover that she’d rung the staff at Chalet Ariel before their arrival and ordered them to remove the satellite dish. “She wanted his undivided attention,” said Matzinger. Inevitably, he felt “smothered.”
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Back in Los Angeles, he began to ignore her completely. As in her previous marriages, Elizabeth attempted to hold her husband hostage. “Liz didn’t want him out of her sight,” Matzinger said. Even when he was busy in an adjoining room, she would call and harass him on the intercom.
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On a trip to New York, while staying at the Plaza, she fell asleep and Larry went down to the desk and rented a room for himself. In Bel Air, they maintained separate bedrooms, but her obsessive focus on him, according to Matzinger, made him feel like a slave who had to be in constant attendance. He fell into a depression and began sleeping until mid-afternoon, remaining in his dressing gown all day. According to Matzinger, “He was happiest hanging out at her Bel Air house . . . talking on the phone to his friends.” All efforts to get him to go out with her were rebuffed because, if he so much as smiled at another woman, she lectured him, and her jealousy became unbearably cloying. “I’m not like your other husbands,” he said, according to Matzinger. “You’re not going to push me around.” His threat stunned her, and she backed off, but Larry closed his door to her, putting a damper on their sex life. One day a female assistant wearing nothing but a longish T-shirt came into the breakfast room where he was eating. Suspecting that Elizabeth had set up the situation to test his fidelity, he controlled himself and later rang his sister, asking for advice. She wisely told him to shun anyone who wasn’t wearing panties.
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