TRAGIC LOVE: How split with Richard Burton drove Elizabeth Taylor down a spiral of drugs and pain
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Elizabeth Taylor was one of the popular stars in classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s who later became a serious victim of alcoholism and substance abuse in her life. Christopher Wilding, her son from her second marriage with British actor Michael Wilding, wrote about his mother's habits in his autobiography. Christopher revealed an incident that happened while he stayed with his mother in a Washington, DC mansion she shared with her sixth husband, John Warner, a senator from Virginia.
He said that the house's intercom had buzzed one day in the 1970s and recalled, "She asked if I would please come upstairs to her bedroom to help her with something," revealing in a new biography of his late mother. "She was already pretty f***ed up on something ... she pointed to a spot on her thigh and asked if I would administer the shot for her," he added. Christopher had witnessed his mother getting addicted to drugs and becoming a victim of "serious" alcoholism while she was in her late 40s.
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He said that he knew that injecting his addicted mother with drugs would be a step too far. "Being confronted with this scenario sucked all the air out of me and I told her that I was sorry — but that I absolutely could not help her with this," he said. Christopher could not bear to watch his mother's deteriorating condition anymore and fled home to California. He said that Taylor looked at him with "deadened yet disappointed eyes," steadied her hand and injected in the needle herself. This is just one of the many shocking details revealed in 'Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit And Glamour Of An Icon', her first authorised biography.
Writer Kate Andersen Brower was given access to family and friends 11 years after the death of one of Hollywood’s greatest screen icons. They never spoke publicly about Taylor's addiction problems and Brower also got access to the late actress' private letters and diaries. She was married eight times to seven men and had collected one of the world’s most valuable collections of jewellery. She also never travelled with fewer than 25 pieces of luggage.
"Her motto was always 'more is more,'" Brower concedes for the 'Cleopatra' famed star remains as one of the overpaid actresses in Hollywood history in terms of vulgarity and self-infatuation. It will be a difficult task to paint her as a saint. Unlike her reported rival Marilyn Monroe, Taylor was described as a feminist icon who fought Hollywood’s entrenched misogyny, rather than becoming its victim.
Brower also credited Taylor for raising more than $270 million as a tireless campaigner for people living with HIV at the height of the Aids epidemic in the 1980s. At a time when society was far less accepting of homosexuals, gay actors such as Montgomery Clift and Rock Hudson were among her closest friends. However, the biography's biggest revelation discusses Taylor’s monumental drug abuse which stints in the Betty Ford rehab clinic, her loved ones now confirm, she never managed to cope with.
Taylor and Richard Burton met on the set of the 1963 film 'Cleopatra', where the former played the title role, while the latter inhabited Mark Antony. Burton, who was known for his relentless drinking, hated drugs and was married to Taylor twice, from 1964 to 1974 and then again from October 1975 to July 1976. She was completely engrossed into drugs only after he had finally left her. There was always a bit of tension between the actress and Burton. Although both cheated one another, many claim that Burton cheated way more than Taylor. In 1976, Burton started seeing the much younger former wife of driver James Hunt after his divorce and seperation from Taylor in 1975.
"I get an orgasm just listening to that voice of his," Taylor once said, before her divorce with Burton. The Welsh actor appeared to be a man of her dreams- a person who is possessive, domineering and violent to her when drunk. Their marriage consisted of endless cycle of ‘make-up sex’ and expensive gifts and their diehard fans would book hotel rooms below theirs just so they could listen to their screamings through the ceiling.
Between 1983 and 1988 alone, 1000 prescriptions for 28 drugs were prescribed to her and three of Taylor's doctors stood blamed for over-prescribing addictive drugs. Son Christopher said she would "give Oscar-worthy performances on the phone with her doctors, pleading in an anguished, tearful whisper" for higher dosages. Taylor once hired a pharmacist as her publicist, her friends told Brower, so she could easily help the actress get hold of prescription drugs.
"She’d go to bed stoned, unfocused, unable to walk straight, [speaking in a] baby voice," recalled Christopher, according to Daily Mail. Taylor would guzzle sleeping pills and painkillers with whisky, vodka and champagne, but she also liked to get high on cocaine, cannabis and amyl nitrate. Apparently it was during her marriage from 1976 to 1982 that her drug abuse spiralled into dependency.
Many of Taylor's later affairs and marriages also went on to be with violent men. According to Brower, there were also "rumors" that Francis Lenn Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor's father, may have been secretly gay. He also said that this could have been the reason why she would go on to befriend so many homosexual actors. She married hotel heir Conrad Hilton when she was just 18 after her mother took her to a doctor to check if she was still a virgin. His drunken violence caused her to miscarry during their eight-month marriage. When she was 20, she married her second husband, 40-year-old British actor Michael Wilding.