Furious Love By Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger Harper, 512 pages, $27.99 By Dave Shiflett In the grand tradition of marriage Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton hold a special place. Not only did they get hitched twice – the second time in Africa with a couple of hippos in attendance – but their stormy relationship gave full employment to legions of journalists, paparazzi , moralists and distillers. Sam Kashner, an editor at Vanity Fair and Nancy Schoenberger, who teaches at The College of William and Mary, provide an entertaining and thorough blow-by-blow that reminds us that matrimony’s not always holy. They met in 1953. He was 28, she was 21, and he was deeply smitten (she would later say she initially thought he was full of himself). Yet their paths would not cross again for another nine years, at which time she was on her third marriage (widowed once) and he was hitched to his long-suffering Sybil. Love, perhaps aided by significant lust, took its course and their blossoming romance became known as Le Scandale. While celebrity parasites were in deep clover the Vatican’s Osservatore della Domenica ran a letter citing Taylor’s “erotic vagrancy.” In the same spirit Rep. Iris Faircloth Blitch of Georgia wanted the two denied re-entry into the U.S. “on the grounds of undesirability.” The fun ended when Burton and Taylor married in March 1964, tying the knot in Montreal under the auspices of a Unitarian minister. The Burtons had several talents, including acting (she called Burton a “great actor “ and “the Frank Sinatra of Shakespeare” while dismissing herself as a mere “broad”) plus fighting and drinking. They were world-class lushes; Kashner and Schoenburger chronicle numerous bouts, including a session during which Burton downed 23 shots of tequila, washed down by a couple of beers. He was just warming up. He would eventually drink three bottles of vodka a day, which among other things rewarded him with a persistent hand tremor. Amazingly, drink never caused him to put on weight nor did it dull his memory. Not so with Taylor, who could drink Burton under the table, the authors tell us, but who also experienced significant weight fluctuations. In a memorable put-down a director told Taylor it “looks like you’ve got bags of dead mice under your arms.” She eventually augmented alcohol with various drugs, including seconal, which Burton would use to steady himself during attempts to stop drinking (he also substituted Valium for booze). The book includes looks at life on the sets of many of their movies, including “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?” and the less-ambitious “Bluebeard,” were Liz reportedly smacked a co-star for putting too much sex in her love scene with Burton. There’s no shortage of other saucy anecdotes, including Burton’s reported trysts with Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud (Burton later told Dick Cavett homosexuality “didn’t take).” There’s also reporting on Taylor’s bleeding hemorrhoids, which can almost make you forget about those beautiful eyes. Far more interesting are tales of life among the A-listers, none more riveting than a drunken melee during which Rachel Roberts abused husband Rex Harrison “sexually, morally, physically and in every other way,” Burton later wrote. As something of a grand finale she dropped to the floor and “masturbated her dog.” Guest Tennessee Williams, a decided non-prude, asked to leave. “Let’s face it,” Taylor once observed. “A lot of my life has lacked dignity.” The couple tried to keep up with a changing Hollywood in which films such as “Midnight Cowboy” overtook epics such as “Anthony and Cleopatra” and politics shifted as well. During one party Jane Fonda chatted them up about Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers and came “away with a donation of $6,000.” To silence grousing about the conspicuous consumption at one particularly lavish blow-out, Burton wrote a check for $45,000 and gave it to UNICEF. The fabled marriage lasted only nine years, after which both would graze in many pastures. Taylor hooked up with a used car salesmen and later an advertising executive while Burton played a wider field, including an apparent tumble with an 18-year-old waitress identified as “The former Miss Pepsi of Butte County” by the local paper. Yet true love, or something, brought them back together for a remarriage ceremony in Botswana in October 1975, performed by an official from a local tribe. Yet the second time around lasted only ten months. Burton would later marry model Suzy Hunt, which lasted five years, while Liz’s later conquests would include John Warner, whom she helped elect to the U.S. Senate. Burton died in 1984 at age 58 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Readers are likely to be left with a residual sadness. “All my life, I think that I have been secretly ashamed of being an actor,” he once observed, and he seems like yet another man who didn’t really like his job, drank too much, and died lonely. Taylor, to be sure, went on to many great things, including her fabled friendship to the late Michael Jackson. As mutual friends often observed, she was by far the tougher of the two.
