Actresses: Our Eyes Have Fingers

From New York to Puerto Vallarta to Big Sur to Paris, LIFE Magazine Reporter Richard Meryman Jr. traveled with Elizabeth Taylor, tape-recording her story in automobiles, hotels, restaurants. From nearly 40 hours of tape came a 6,000-word first-person article, published last week in LIFE. Some passages from her apologia:

“I’m not a ‘sex queen’ or a ‘sex symbol,’ ” said Taylor. “I don’t think I want to be one. Sex symbol kind of suggests bathrooms in hotels or something. I do know I’m a movie star and I like being a woman, and I think sex is absolutely gorgeous. But as far as a sex goddess, I don’t worry myself that way . . . Richard is a very sexy man. He’s got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense . . . When we look at each other, it’s like our eyes have fingers and they grab ahold … I think I ended up being the scarlet woman because of my rather puritanical up bringing and beliefs. I couldn’t just have a romance. It had to be a marriage . . .”

First husband was Nicky Hilton: “I got married at barely 18. I really did think that being married would be like living in a little white cottage with a picket fence and roses.” No. 2 was Michael Wilding, “who was much older than I was.” No. 3 was Mike Todd, “a marvelous man. He had a joy, a vitality that was so contagious, so flamboyant. He was a real con artist. He could con the gold out of your teeth.” No. 4 was Eddie Fisher: “I really thought for some idiotic reason that Eddie needed me. It turned out all we had in common was Mike.”

Cleopatra produced No. 5. “The way I began falling in love with Richard was very funny, really . . . The first day we were to work together, I’ve never seen a gentleman so hung over in my whole life. He was kind of quivering from head to foot and there were grog blossoms—you know, from booze —all over his face. He ordered a cup of coffee to sort of still his trembling fits and I had to help it to his mouth, and that just endeared him so to me. I thought, well, he really is human. He was so vulnerable and sweet and shaky . . .

“It’s so hard to talk about all this,” Liz says near the end, “and I’m not sure I should. I have such an ingrained sense of privacy. It sounds like I’m trying to explain myself, justify myself, like most of us do when we make mistakes. And it’s so undignified … I have paid and Richard has paid through both of our hearts and our guts. Our brains have bled … I have learned, however, that there’s no deodorant like success.”