Elizabeth Taylor by Kate Andersen Brower

Author:Kate Andersen Brower
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The End and a New Beginning, 1973–1976

The tug of love is over and we are one once more. I’m happy, I hope you are.

—“Six Days in October,” a letter that Elizabeth wrote to herself about Richard

In May 1973, Elizabeth started working on Ash Wednesday, which was filmed in the ski resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo in northern Italy. The film tells the story of a middle-aged woman who decides to get drastic plastic surgery to win her cheating husband back. It was another case of life imitating art; Elizabeth was forty-one years old and she was trying to hold on to Richard, who accompanied her but who was miserable.

Dominick Dunne was a producer on the film and remembered suggesting that they have dinner one night with Andy Warhol. Elizabeth initially scoffed at the idea. “That man made millions off of me!” she said, referring to Warhol’s iconic silk screens using her image without her permission. She resented that they had helped transform him into a celebrity. (He eventually gave her a small lithograph, which was not one of the originals, and which she hung in the living room of her Bel Air home.) Finally, she agreed to see him.

Their booze-soaked dinner went fine, until after dessert when Elizabeth rose to go to the ladies’ room. As she got up off the red leather banquette she felt something hard under her sable coat. Warhol had secretly placed a tape recorder there.

“You’ve been recording me while I’m drunk?!” she screamed. It was another invasion of privacy that made her feel violated. Warhol handed her the tape recorder, but they did not speak another word to each other that night.

Her relationship with Richard had gotten so bad by then that it had descended into name-calling on set. In one scene Elizabeth’s character is supposed to be playing bridge. She did not play the game and she got confused and asked, “Four of what? What am I supposed to be saying here?”

Richard, whose drinking was getting more and more out of control, was standing off camera. “You stupid cow!” he yelled. “Just show your big tits!” He even called Elizabeth a “cunt” in front of her children.

From the hotel, Richard wrote during filming: “My beauty girl, woman, member of the opposite sex, will not accept the fact that she is stumbling into middle-age. I’m not surprised. It took me quite a time too.”

Dunne thought Ash Wednesday was the final blow to their already crumbling marriage. In 1973 Elizabeth wrote:

Richard

Please try.

You can.

Don’t be so bloody predictable

Give us a shock . . .

She was exhausted by his alcohol-fueled outbursts and while she loved the jewelry, she was sick of his expensive apologies. She wrote him an undated letter on tear-stained TWA stationery thanking him for the “Tuesday diamonds and the Friday emeralds,” but begging him to show his love less lavishly and more genuinely.

All I need is your back to warm up against, your hand to hold when I’m afraid or cold inside. To talk to you when the lights are out.

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