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8. Taking on “Hollywood Babylon”
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| 191 8 Taking on “Hollywood Babylon” In January 1962, the filming of 20th Century-Fox’s costly Cleopatra (1963) resumed in Rome, with scenes of Elizabeth Taylor as “the temptressqueen ” and Richard Burton as the Roman general Marc Antony together for the first time. Their tumultuous affair soon began and became known to the production crew, their respective spouses (Eddie Fisher and Sybil Burton), the international press, and the wider public. “The rumors are flying again,” Hedda Hopper reported in March. “Heigh-ho!”1 Once again, she and her readers expressed strong opinions about the latest Hollywood sex scandal. They had little sympathy for the cuckolded Fisher—“When you leave home and hearth, you can expect the worst”—and great concern for Sybil Burton. “I feel so sad for Sybil Burton,” wrote one reader. “I think she has a sweet face but it does cover a multitude of grief.”2 Richard Burton came in for his share of clobbering. In Hopper’s column, she referred to him as “Wicked Richard ” and less publicly as “an absolute louse.” But it was Taylor who received the brunt of the outrage from Hopper and others. “She has done more to degrade the women of this world,” Hopper argued, “than any mistress of any king.” The Vatican’s weekly newspaper also weighed in, warning that “the sultry actress was headed for ‘erotic vagrancy.’”3 Connecting personal and international affairs, Georgia congresswoman Iris F. Blitch averred in May that Taylor “lowered the prestige of American women abroad, and damaged goodwill in foreign countries, particularly Italy.” Although her efforts came to naught, Blitch called on the U.S. attorney general “in the name of American womanhood” to “determine whether or not Miss Taylor and Mr. Burton are ineligible for re-entry into the United States on grounds of undesirability.”4 For Hopper, her readers, and other commentators, Taylor’s current starring role fit with her scandalous love life. “I have no desire to see the picture if I was given the best seat in the house,” a San Francisco reader contended in light of the Taylor-Burton affair. “I have never thought Cleo was much of a character in history. She could not get and keep her own man either.”5 Cleopatra ’s producers, however, hoped the connection between actress and histori- 192 | Taking on “Hollywood Babylon” cal figure would attract audiences. “Any similarities between the personality of our Cleopatra and Miss Taylor are coincidental,” claimed one producer. “Although,” he added happily, “there are parallels obviously.” Less circumspect was 20th Century-Fox’s chief Peter Levathes: “She’s above material; she IS Cleopatra.”6 Hopper dedicated an entire Sunday column in August 1962 demonstrating that the role of Cleopatra, “queen of the Nile” and “ancient glamour girl,” was “tailor-made for Elizabeth.” Like the actress playing her, Cleopatra had “terrific magnetism” and was “a born wheeler-dealer” but also had an “insecure” childhood and several children fathered by different men. Although at the end of the film Cleopatra kills herself by allowing herself to be stung by an asp, Hopper predicted that Taylor would come out of the film and the scandal unscathed. “I wonder who’ll get the asp?” she quoted in her column. “I wager it won’t be Elizabeth.” Indeed, the following year Hopper argued of Taylor: “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.”7 Like other sex scandals in the movie capital, Hopper and her readers’ commentaries about the Taylor-Burton affair went beyond the personal morality, lives, and actions of the principal figures. They pointed out the implications for national and international politics—“it is injuring the country,” wrote one reader—but it was the faults and failures of the U.S. motion picture industry that dominated their writings.8 Over the 1940s and 1950s, Hopper’s respondents increasingly targeted Hollywood as the source of scandal, but it was in the 1960s in the wake of Taylor’s latest public affair—coming just four years after the Liz-Debbie-Eddie incident—that Hopper joined them in blaming the industry. “In the old days the scandal of the past four years would have killed her professionally,” Hopper noted. “In these changed times it seems only to help her reputation.” Indeed, in the 1960s, Taylor “became the most important woman, with the most financial clout, in Hollywood.”9 The $1 million...