Dropped Names (30 page)

SUSANNAH YORK

S
he was sitting alone at a corner table in a restaurant bar close to a theater in the south of England, having just attended a performance of a play in which I was appearing opposite Joan Collins. The play was entitled
Moon over Buffalo,
on tour in preparation for a London run. The production was tacky, on the cheap, and a calamity for all involved. Not exactly a toe-tapper, it shuffled into town in 2002, presumptuously played the Old Vic, disintegrated, and dissolved into a compost heap out of which nothing remotely positive blossomed. To be sure, it was, as an experience, no bed of roses.

In 1969, Susannah York had been nominated for an Oscar for
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
but refused to attend the ceremony because she said she hadn't been asked if she wanted to be nominated in the first place. A misguided young starlet at the time, clearly never going to be a Hollywood player. But she was so luminous a screen presence that she managed to share the early 1960s with that other staggeringly pretty English rose, Julie Christie, before joining the pile of former film beauties no longer young men's fantasies.

This once lovely English girl lifted her head when she saw me, reached out her hand, and said: “Oh, Mr. Langella, I so enjoyed your comic timing.” It was as warm and sincere a compliment as she could muster; a sweet and gallant effort to find something positive to say. And I was instantly drawn to her sad, sad eyes and fragile demeanor.

She had been escorted to the performance by my friend the English producer Duncan Weldon, who had asked me to join them for supper. He was nowhere to be seen at the moment, most likely somewhere being insincere to my costar. So I slipped in next to her and said: “Thank you, but I'm afraid there's no hope for this one.” She gave me an enigmatic tentative smile and looked down at her hands.

Thirty-three years after
Horses
, now in her early sixties, her hair unkempt and grayish, she was instantly heartbreaking. The same lost-lamb expression was still there. But gone the voluptuous beauty, the young, firm body, and the promise that awaited in her sensuous mouth and clear blue eyes. Now, her thin, bony fingers were wrapped around my hand as she graciously and sincerely held forth on the things she thought positive and fixable about the production.

Duncan, who had indeed been chatting up Joan, joined us, and we ordered a light supper. I don't recall her drinking or even eating very much. She seemed a broken and sad woman who in no way was trying to maintain the ravishing beauty that had once been; and not asking, either, for any homage to be paid. At least ten years younger and looking ten years older than Joan, she seemed grateful for a night out and a friendly talk. A generous, curious, and nurturing dinner companion.

I learned of her death while watching a 2011 awards ceremony. Sweeping across the stage came an actress also once voluptuously beautiful and precisely Susannah's age at the time of her passing. “Doesn't she look great?” my companion said. But as the camera closed in on her stretched-to-the-breaking point features, self-consciously styled and dyed hairdo, false breasts, and magnificently gowned seventy-two-year-old body, I saw a flash of her aged hands as she opened the envelope. I remembered with sadness Susannah York's equally aged hands in mine; but also with deep respect the fact that she had allowed herself to remain, after all, still recognizably a woman.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR

N
ever mind that the President of the United States was going to be placing a medal around her neck the next evening as a Kennedy Center honoree. And never mind that her fellow honorees were at their tables, happily surrounded by family and friends. Elizabeth Taylor was sitting glumly at a State Dinner in Washington, D.C., in 2002 accompanied by what appeared to be a professional handler.

I watched closely as she sat disinterested in and disassociated from her surroundings.

The ceremony that evening was to be hosted by then Secretary of State Colin Powell. Before it began Elizabeth got up and moved slowly out of the dining room. As she walked tentatively through a vast empty space toward the restrooms, I decided to get up and follow her. She was leaning heavily on a cane, her handler holding her other elbow as she took very small, almost baby-like steps. I came up beside her.

“Hello, Elizabeth. It's Frank.”

“Oh, hi, baby.”

“How are you?”

“I can't wait for this shit to be over!”

I
t was finally over for Elizabeth in March 2011. On the morning of her death I went searching for and found the pashmina scarf she'd given me on our last night together almost exactly ten years earlier. It was approximately six feet in length, a deep rust color, with gold trim, and had embroidered on one corner in minute gold thread the maker's mark: AS1893. Elizabeth's mark on me, however, would be far more indelible.

It was impossible to get the better of Elizabeth Taylor. She could be slowed down, thrown off course for a bit, even brought to tears, but she could not, ultimately, be bested in the arena where it really counts—the courage of one's convictions. Doubt played no part in her psyche. She was exceptionally certain of herself and no outward setbacks—weight gains, garish dress, bad performances, ill health, sublime to ridiculous husbands—could slow her train. There was nothing modest about Elizabeth. She had a divine arrogance and would not take “No” for an answer even if the word were spoken directly into her face. She heard it only as “Not at the moment.”

I
stepped into her ring with the full knowledge that one or the other of us might land on the ropes occasionally. But how foolish of me to assume this titled heavyweight was ever going to hit the mat.

We met secretly. It was 2001. I had just ended a five-year relationship and she was free of her last husband, Larry Fortensky. “I think you will like each other,” a mutual friend said to me at dinner in New York. “She is lonely, needs someone who won't be afraid of her.”

“What exactly is it I would be afraid of?” I asked.

“Oh, you know, that she's Elizabeth Taylor.”

“Is that all?”

I would be working in L.A. starting the following week and a dinner was arranged. “Just the two of us,” I said. “Just her, no bodyguard, no assistant, and no dog.”

Elizabeth agreed. Eight o'clock. Quiet place on the Strip.

“And she can't be late.” Which was like asking Stevie Wonder not to be blind.

My instincts for self-preservation were by this point in my life well honed, and I asked our friend to let me know on my cell phone when he and Elizabeth would be pulling into the driveway of the restaurant.

“Elizabeth has a favorite booth. They're holding it for us. They'll take you to it.”

“Nope, call me when you're in the driveway.”

“All right.”

At ten minutes to ten, my cell phone rang.

“Frank, where are you? Elizabeth's in the booth. She's waiting.”

“How long has she been there?”

“At least ten minutes.”

“I'll be right in.”

Why I thought riding around or sitting in my car for an hour and forty-five minutes was better than sitting in a restaurant for that length of time I don't know, but it felt as though it would give me some measure of control over her. Exactly what Siegfried's Roy must have thought about that tiger.

“Elizabeth, Frank. Frank, Elizabeth,” said my friend. She raised those violet eyes, gave me a broad smile, took my hand, and pulled me down into the booth, as our mutual friend discreetly departed.

Not much of our first conversation stays with me. It was the usual first-date stuff. But a small incident gave me a clue into the modus operandi of a woman who had pretty much ruled the world and the men in it since she became a star at twelve years of age.

We were seated unobtrusively in one corner. The restaurant was dark and near empty. A man sitting alone across the way got up to leave and saw her. He came up to the table and began an obsequious tribute; not pushy, impolite, or even gushing. But he was vociferous in his praise and rather loquacious.

Elizabeth was charming to him, smiling and warm, but at the moment he'd gone around and passed Go once too often, she slowly moved her hand over to mine and, putting her thumb into its center, gripped it with enormous strength. It was the gesture of someone saying, “Help me, please. I'm not sure I can survive another moment of this.” And it brought out the Tarzan in me. The Big Bad Tiger was going to eat my poor little Jane and I had to protect her.

I nicely shut the guy down and he moved away, whereupon she turned to me with a “My hero” expression that could have brought her a sixth Oscar nomination.

Round 1—Elizabeth.

O
utside on the street, standing next to her open car door, she moved into me, took both my hands, looked up, and said:

“We will see each other again.” I would defy anyone hearing her speak that sentence to categorize it either as a question or a declaration.

I rode back to my hotel, thinking what a great dinner companion she'd been; funny, curious, immediate, and unpretentious. And she really loved dirty jokes. They couldn't be vulgar enough for her. I liked her very much. I liked her regular everyday girlishness. She's probably mellowed, I thought, and just needs a friend. I can handle that, on my terms.

Round 2—Frank.

M
y phone was ringing as I opened my hotel room door.

“Hello?”

“Is this my little angel?”

I told her at dinner that my name at one time had an apostrophe as in L'angella. Meaning little angel.

“Hi Elizabeth.”

“Would you like to come over to watch the Oscars at my house next week? There'll be lots of people here you'll know.”

And I heard myself say, “Yes. Thanks.”

Round 3—a draw.

I
arrived on time for Oscar night, but it seemed the guests had been there for a while already. José Eber, her hairdresser, a man I instantly liked, and who I knew genuinely loved and cared about Elizabeth, was the only person in the room I recognized. It looked as if someone had called Central Casting and said, “Send me two dozen people who don't belong at an A or even B list Hollywood party.” They were a motley crew of friends of her housekeeper, someone's cousin, some agent's secretary. All obviously lured there in order to be able to say they'd watched the Oscars at Elizabeth Taylor's house. None of them appeared to know each other and were hanging out in little groups of twos and threes, holding their buffet plates and talking quietly as if they all had just viewed the deceased.

Two large comfortable chairs were set in front of a giant television in the living room. I was told one of them was mine and I sat down in it. The rest of the seats were scattered about significantly behind. The others took their places and for the next two hours we watched in silence. Not a sound from the gathered mourners. There was the occasional trip to the buffet table to reload and José would disappear upstairs during commercials, but for the most part it was some thirty people waiting for Godot.

In the third hour, José came into the living room and said to no one in particular, “She's coming down.” And moments later, Elizabeth appeared just as someone on the television was saying, “And the winner is . . .” She was in a beautiful floor-length caftan, hair black and big, jewelry costume-gaudy, and lips a flame red. She came directly toward me, took both my hands in hers, put her face up for a kiss, looked deeply into my eyes, and said:

“Will you be my date tonight?”

A can of Red Bull was placed on a table next to her chair and she sat down, faced the TV, reached across the tiny divide, and took my hand. She never once looked at or acknowledged her other guests, or paid much attention to the television set. No one behind us spoke after her arrival. Not a word. Like a group of supernumeraries on a film set, they remained stony silent as if in fear of possible expulsion, no doubt.

For the remaining hour or more of the ceremony, Elizabeth would be handed a phone to take calls from, it seemed, an hysterical woman, locked in a family crisis. She soothed and calmed and said clearly,

“Put him on.”

Then came a five-minute stream of full-voiced vitriol from a male voice, threatening and hateful. Elizabeth sat looking at her nails, sipping Red Bull, and listening. And at one point saying in a voice of deep and lethal surety:

“Oh, no, you won't.”

The voice shouted something like:

“Yes, I will!”

And again Elizabeth said calmly:

“No, you won't. Because I control the money.”

She then hung up, turned to me, and said: “Have you had anything to eat, baby?”

Somebody won something and the TV was turned off. Elizabeth remained in her seat, a plate on her lap, as the guests moved around and past her to the front door. She acknowledged no one's presence but mine, and in less than five minutes we were alone in the living room as people were clearing the buffet table in the dining room. José left after double kisses to us both. No doubt he would be relieved to go home, doff the cowboy hat, and kick off his boots.

Elizabeth and I sat and talked and once more I had a wonderful time with her. She was very funny about some of the people who had crossed the screen, totally unaware of any of the films or actors nominated and amusedly resigned to her family drama.

It was close to 1 a.m.

“I better go.”

“Would you like to see the house?”

“Okay.”

A brief tour ending in a walk toward the stairway, her hand tightly in mine.

“Come on up, baby, and put me to sleep.”

She grabbed hold of the caftan and preceded me up the steps in bare feet; her slippers left by her chair in the living room. With each step she grew more and more hysterical, tripping on her hem, reaching for the banister, and, at one point, leaning forward and placing her hands on the steps in front of her.

“Oh baby, I'm not gonna make it,” she said, howling in mock agony, like a woman trying to climb an icy hill and continuing to slide backward.

“Yes, you can,” I said, placing both my hands on her fulsome cheeks and pushing. She dissolved in laughter, managed two or three steps, and collapsed on the landing. And we sat there while she caught her breath. A happy, giggly little girl.

“Come on in, baby.”

Round 4—Elizabeth.

D
own a hallway, first into her bathroom, where she removed her jewelry and dropped it on a mirrored tray. The room was all girl and, it would seem, open for business. On every surface bowls of everything from Q-tips to cotton balls, to eyebrow pencils to emery boards—not a dozen, not two dozen of anything but seemingly hundreds. The cabinet doors were opened and there, neatly lined, in rows three deep, were large bottles of witch hazel. Dozens and dozens of bottles of witch hazel—a supply not possible to exhaust in her lifetime. When I asked her why she had so much, she said:

“It's in my contract.”

“You'll never ever use it all,” I said.

“Baby. It's in my contract.”

There were giant closets filled to the brim. Shoes, bags, scarves, hats, jewelry, gowns, dresses, caftans, belts all in overflow. Create a movie set of a movie star bathroom like this and the designer would be accused of parody.

Then into the bedroom. Not quite Norma Desmond, but certainly not without its air of yesterday. Brightly lit, feminine colors, smelling heavily of her trademark perfume; not immense, but spacious enough and inviting. There were a few items of clothing tossed on a chair and on the floor next to the bed, a nightdress.

The bed itself was unmade and crowded. At its foot another large television. Across it, a hospital-like table on wheels that could be raised, lowered, or pushed aside. On it stood a famous photo of Elizabeth, Mike Todd, and their baby. Next to it, another of her and Richard Burton. And on the bed, a large box of open chocolates, picked through and half-eaten. Magazines, a remote, nail files, prescription bottles. She poured herself a glass of water, took two pills, dropped the caftan, slipped on the nightdress, and climbed in. Turning on her side and curling up spoon fashion, she put her hand out behind her and said:

“Stay a little while baby.”

I took her hand and sat on the bed. Her eyes were closed, her black hair smashed against the pillows, and her deep red lips slightly smudged.