Elizabeth Taylor endured the scandal of the century when she fell in love with Richard Burton.
News of their affair brought personal attacks from everyone from the Pope to Taylor’s own father, the late star reveals in newly unearthed interviews featured in Nanette Burstein’s documentary Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (now streaming on Max).
“My father called me a whore,” reveals the two-time Oscar winner in one of the taped conversations, recorded from 1964 through 1965, with the late journalist Richard Meryman.
“I met such opposition from everyone,” she says, when it came to deciding to leave her fourth husband, Eddie Fisher, for Burton — who was also married, to Sybil Christopher. Among those disapproving were Taylor’s parents, Francis Taylor and Sara Sothern, and lifelong friend and Lassie Come Home costar Roddy McDowall, she says.
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Taylor met Burton on the set of her much-delayed historical blockbuster Cleopatra, in which she played the title role and he played Mark Antony. When press coverage broke in 1962 of their on-set love affair — following Fisher’s 1959 separation from Debbie Reynolds to marry Taylor, which many saw as scandalous — the lovebirds were met with a then-unprecedented amount of public criticism.
“The Vatican newspaper had come out with an item saying that I was so despicable,” recalls Taylor in The Lost Tapes, “that my own children should be taken away from me, an attack that really — well, it made me vomit.”
In what she calls “really a horrendous week,” the star adds, threats of violence ensued. “Somebody was at the studio trying to blow me up with a bomb. So the Italian FBI were out there for five days.”
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When Meryman asks Taylor whether she feels guilt about leaving Fisher for Burton and causing such mayhem, she responds, “Oh, yes. Especially about Richard’s children. We both do, having inflicted such awful pain.” Burton shared two daughters, Kate and Jessica, with Christopher, and he and Taylor adopted Maria McKeown. Taylor also shared sons Michael Howard and Christopher Edward with second husband Michael Wilding, plus daughter Liza Frances with third husband Mike Todd.
Asked whether she worries about divine retribution for her actions, Taylor is heard asking whether Meryman means being “punished in hell.” She says, “I think we must pay on this earth. We should do our penance now.”
Following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes is now available to watch on Max and HBO.
