The World of the Cinema — Elizabeth Taylor, Idol of the Crowds

Months have passed since Elizabeth Taylor's marriage to Mike Todd — and this marriage is not her first, nor even her second. So let us cast a fleeting glance at Liz's position at the present moment, and at whether this marriage of hers has brought her true happiness.

The fact is that Liz herself cannot pronounce on the matter. She is incapable of defining the word "happiness" and grasping its essence... for since her earliest years she has lived in an emotional whirlpool that knows no rest... changing her emotional stance at every wink of her bewitching green eye! She herself is perplexed about herself and about her heart, which has learned to shift and change and fly from branch to branch! As for "love and happiness," they are two words she has mastered only in acting them on the screen — and as the director wills, not as she wills! Can Liz be blamed, then, for taking this wavering, unsteady stand toward herself and toward the truth of her own happiness??

There is one thing her marriage to Mike Todd has not yet managed to achieve, and that is the calming of her nerves and her appearing with an air of assurance and stability. All her life, as a child and as a young woman, she has been used to the tumultuous life between the studio, the home, and society; it is no easy thing for her to adapt herself so quickly to playing the part of "Madame Todd" and accompanying her husband in his whirlwind working life — being the gracious hostess to the hundreds of his guests and friends, and the merry, high-spirited companion on his long, swift journeys!!

Yet Liz seems certain of one thing. She recently declared to the press that she longs for a life of stability and quiet, far from the din of work, to be only... a wife and a mother... Can this great star realize this wish — even if she pays a heavy price for it, the final renunciation of acting and of the glittering life of the screen? And yet, even if she gives up acting, she will never win quiet and stability so long as she is Michael Todd's wife and companion...

This inquiry into Elizabeth Taylor's happiness draws us on to her health. Was her health ever of that soundness and vitality which would enable her to adapt herself to any life and any way of living, be it soft or tumultuous? It is worth mentioning that the whispers of the press have begun to point to an indisposition that struck her toward the end of the honeymoon and kept her in bed — and even in the hospital!... The whispers go further still, and say: Liz's indispositions always come as the result of her unhappiness... The journalists observe that during her quarrel with her former husband Michael Wilding — the quarrel that led to her divorce — she multiplied her comings and goings to and from the hospital; so much so that she delayed the film "Giant" several weeks, all the while insisting on denying that her life with Wilding was on the verge of its setting! The rumors of that time affirmed that Liz was not suffering from any bodily illness, and that the matter went no further than a nervous crisis —

Hence the journalists came to recognize any emotional crisis touching the happiness of the pampered, beautiful star, which lays her in bed... and there she is, ill — or feigning illness. Might this latest illness of hers be of the same kind? That is what people have been asking of late, ever since word spread about Liz that she invents illness to escape some particular situation she has no wish to enter or to wade into...

The doctors support Liz's position in this affair, affirming that the true cause of her latest illness is a "disc," a pain in her spinal column resulting from a fall six years ago while she was water-skiing; and these pains are painful indeed, Liz affirms... Women know from their own experience that this condition in particular has its problems and its complications during pregnancy, and it is therefore expected that her delivery this time will be attended by pains in the back such as Liz had not known in her two previous confinements.

There is another matter that occupies Liz's mind and possesses her thoughts since the marriage — her children, Chris and Mike, both at the age when little ones most need their mother's tenderness and attention. How can the mother assure them of that, when she scarcely sees them for the number of her journeys and her movings-about? It is true that in the past she was absorbed in her work; but in those days she would return, between one film and the next, to her home, and settle down for a few months of the year, giving herself over to the affairs of the house and to meeting the wishes of husband and children. But now, whence is she to find that quiet, settled interval, being the wife of Todd, who does not allow her a minute's rest if she means to be his wife and companion in earnest! What is beyond doubt is that Todd needs a wife who is entirely his and at his disposal, with nothing to distract her from him. He wants a wife who has no one in the world but him, and who can sacrifice everything for the sake of dissolving into his life! And that is asking a great deal of Liz; for though by nature she inclines to marry the man who can shower her with material plenty and abundant tenderness, she remains that spoiled child who lives by her own opinion and by nothing else... She is stubborn and tenacious; she has declared more than once that she has the mind of a child in the body of a woman!

Liz has been accustomed, ever since she began her life on the screen as a child, to having the man meet all her burdens and demands without question or objection... so it will not be easy to train her afresh. Yet this may not prove too hard for Todd; for with his conquering will he may perhaps be able to help his wife to grow, and thence to a life of stability and calm. But before that, great changes must first take place in Liz's nature, if she is at last to become the wife Todd hopes for!