We had several visits after that before I went on a visit to New York and she whirled off on a trip to Moscow. When we were both back in Hollywood again, she was another creature entirely, out most nights instead of resting and restoring herself to health for her next stab at Cleopatra, in Rome this time.
Champagne was ruled out during her convalescence, so she drank beer. She’d send her chauffeur down to Dave Chasen’s restaurant to pick up two quarts of chile, which she’d eat to accompany the beer. When she left for Italy, she was too fat to fit any of her costumes. Her doctor had to be flown out from Hollywood to put her on a crash diet so she could be photographed as the Serpent of the Nile in the most balled-up motion-picture production of all time.
She won her Academy Award not for Butterfield 8 but for nearly dying. And her studio joined in by putting on a terrific public-relations campaign against Debbie—with planted stories in fan magazines and loaded interviews for the newspapers—to clinch sympathy for Liz.
* * * * *
She has become Cleopatra to the life now, and the world is her oyster. What she wants, she takes, come hell or high water—and this includes Richard Burton. In the huge Roman villa which she made her home during Cleopatra’s making, she reigned like an empress, reclining on a chaise, summoning Eddie to bring guests up to her for an audience. The honored guest would sit on one side of her with Eddie on the other; Liz would delicately place a hand on her breast before she spoke a regal word of greeting.
In the old days the scandal of the past four years would have killed her professionally. In these changed times it seems only to help her reputation. The million dollars and more which her Cleopatra contract gave her was doled out, at her insistence, in installments on every morning of shooting. She consented to work only after the day’s check for $9000, drawn on a United States bank, lay snugly in her hand. While he lasted, Eddie drew $1500 a week for getting his wife to the set on time. Yet she spends money faster than she makes it. If Twentieth Century-Fox had gotten ruined, putting more than $35,000,000 into the picture before there was any hope of completing it, she didn’t give a damn.
At Liz’s say-so, Eddie had adopted Liza Todd, though Michael Wilding wouldn’t let him take over the two boys. Even after he knew what was going on in Rome, Eddie hung on. Allegedly, he’s the one who told Richard Burton’s wife, Sybil, the truth and drew the Welshman’s question: “Now why did you have to go and spoil everything?”
Eddie wasn’t his smiling self when he flew to Rome to try to quash the news of the romance. Liz was in the hospital again; the newspapers said “food poisoning,” but the real diagnosis was too many sleeping pills. Even after he landed back in New York, he was still declaring the marriage to be a happy one—until Liz spelled it out for him in three words over the telephone.
At last she finished the picture and gave herself the asp, and I predict that Burton will turn his back on her, after every woman in the world blamed her once again for taking somebody else’s husband. But Burton didn’t have to submit in the first place.
Can you picture him passing up Liz and simultaneously collecting more publicity than ever Mark Antony and Caesar combined received in their prime? He started the romance with Liz just as Eddie did in his day, when he was sitting at her feet before Mike Todd was dead.