“Do you play the accompaniment?” I asked. “I can’t.”
“No, but she can sing without any. Elizabeth!”
It struck me as a terrifying thing to ask a little child to do for a stranger. But in a quivering voice, half swooning with fright, this lovely, shy creature with enormous violet eyes piped her way through her song. It was one of the most painful ordeals I’ve ever witnessed.
I remembered seeing the four-room cottage—simple to the point where water had to be heated on the kitchen stove—in which Elizabeth was born. Little Swallows was its name, and it sat in the woods of her godfather, Victor Cazelet; his English estate, Great Swifts, was in Kent. She had a pony there and grew to love animals like her chipmunk, “Nibbles,” which ran up my bare arm when she brought it around on a visit one day. I screamed like a banshee, but Elizabeth was as patronizing as only a schoolgirl can be.
“It’s only a chipmunk; it won’t hurt you,” she promised scornfully.
You couldn’t have wished for a sweeter child. She would certainly have been happier leading that simple life close to woods and wild things to be tamed, maybe through all her years. But her mother had been bitten by the Broadway bug, and few women recover from that.
Once the family was settled in Hollywood, Mrs. Taylor maneuvered the support of J. Cheaver Cowden, a big stockholder in Universal Pictures, to get a contract for her daughter at that studio. Elizabeth was there for one year, but studio chieftains always resent anybody who’s brought in over their heads through front-office influence. They made sure the girl got nowhere fast. Her mother tried everything to find her another job, but it was her father who happened to land her at MGM through a chance remark he made to producer Sam Marx when they were patrolling their beat together as fellow air-raid wardens. She was given a bit in Lassie Come Home, then blossomed in National Velvet with Mickey Rooney.
I remember the day she cinched in her belt, which showed her charms to perfection, and Mickey turned to me and said: “Why, she is a woman.”
“She is fourteen,” I replied. He started toward her. I caught him by the seat of the pants. “Lay a hand on her, and you will have to answer to me. She is a child.”
He looked hard at me and said, “I believe you would beat me up.”