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Still, by the time they married on March 15, 1964, most of their friends and family were exhausted by the continual ups and downs of their tempestuous romance.
To begin with, Elizabeth all but gave up her career for Burton, though they went on to make several more films together, including the acclaimed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which they starred as a warring husband and wife. Their roles in this movie, it must be said, were not far removed from reality. ‘Even our fights are fun — nothing placidly bovine about us,’ she recalled.
‘Richard loses his temper with true enjoyment. It’s beautiful to watch. Our fights are delightful screaming matches, and Richard is rather like a small atom bomb going off — sparks fly, walls shake, floors vibrate.’
At Christmas that year, which they spent in Gstaad, Switzerland, Richard met a willowy blonde English divorcee called Suzy Hunt. She was only 27, but he callously informed his wife that he was going to pursue her
Others recall their exchanges as rather more venomous. One woman who witnessed an off-set row saw Elizabeth hurl a vase at Burton in his dressing-room. When he ducked, she grabbed a jug and threw that, too, yelling: ‘You b******!’
Fifteen minutes later, the Burtons emerged holding hands.
The rocket fuel for those incendiary rows was always alcohol. Burton would have cognac in the morning, vodka in the afternoon and Scotch and vodka at night — and Elizabeth wasn’t lagging far behind. In addition, she was increasingly dependent on painkillers because of back problems.
As the Sixties flew by, their lifestyle became increasingly extravagant, with butlers, maids and Rolls-Royces — not to mention the extraordinary jewels, such as the 33.19 carat Krupp diamond, that Burton regularly lavished on his wife.
To pay the bills, they both made a series of mediocre films unworthy of their talent. However, many decades later, Elizabeth Taylor would look back on this time with nostalgia.
‘I’m glad that I knew the wildness, glamour and excitement when I was in my prime: the parties, the yachts, and the private jets and the jewellery. It was a great time to be young, alive and attractive and to have all those goodies.’
Iconic: Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton in Cleoptra. He was the love of her life and she was to marry him twice
There were growing problems, nonetheless. Richard clearly hated the Hollywood ethos that Elizabeth represented as one of its biggest stars, yet was growing increasingly depressed at his failure to land an Oscar. He also had problems with fame, feeling that people were staring at them ‘as if we are prize animals’.
Moreover, the couple’s drinking was now even more seriously out of control, leading to frequent temper tantrums. Typically, one would demand something of the other, not get it and then throw a fit, maybe a fist, and, at the very least, a glass of liquor. Once, Burton even damaged his wife’s eardrum after punching her in the head.
In truth, there were so many levels of psychological chaos at work within Burton that he would have needed to be married to a psychiatrist, not a movie star, to have been understood fully.
Finally, on July 4, 1973, Elizabeth announced that they had decided to separate. ‘Maybe we loved each other too much — I never believed such a thing was possible,’ she said in an emotional statement that ended: ‘Pray for us.’
At the same time, Richard held a press conference in New York, while drinking from a bottle of vodka.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘when two very volatile people keep hacking constantly at each other with fierce oratory, and then occasionally engage in a go of it with physical force, well, it’s like I said: it’s bound to happen.’
Elizabeth defiantly found herself a new boyfriend — a handsome used-car salesman called Henry Wynberg — and flaunted their affair. Not long after it started, though, she was taken to a Californian hospital with agonising stomach pains and told she might well have cancer.
She immediately called Burton — then filming in Italy — to tell him tearfully: ‘I don’t want to die alone. Please, can I come home?’
Within days, Wynberg had been turfed out, Elizabeth had a new 38-carat heart-shaped diamond necklace and the Burton/Taylor melodrama was back on with a vengeance. But not for long: they spent their tenth anniversary fighting and drinking, and soon afterwards decided to divorce.
Elizabeth went back to the long-suffering Wynberg, but still continued to talk to Burton on the phone at least two or three times a week. Then, when the ink was barely dry on the divorce papers, she saw him again at a dinner party in Switzerland.
Elizabeth, never one to hide her feelings, rushed straight into Burton’s arms, her face awash with tears. The next day, Wynberg was on a plane back to the United States, clutching a ‘retirement’ present of $50,000 and a gold watch.
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Richard would later recall: ‘Then, for two days, [Elizabeth and I] circled each other — very wary, very polite. On the third day, we had a fight. Then we knew we were ourselves again.’
Two months later, on October 10, 1975, Elizabeth went through her sixth marriage — to her fifth husband.
Burton was sober at the time, but his skin had turned a terrible shade of yellow and his health was clearly beginning to fail.
‘I didn’t think then that their second marriage would last ten minutes,’ recalled their personal bodyguard Brian Haynes. ‘But I could also see that they seemed to need each other. When he was there, she seemed to hate him. When he was away, she couldn’t bear to be without him.’
At Christmas that year, which they spent in Gstaad, Switzerland, Richard met a willowy blonde English divorcee called Suzy Hunt. She was only 27, but he callously informed his wife that he was going to pursue her.
This decision, while unutterably cruel, may actually have saved his life. Elizabeth was by then drinking enough for the two of them, while Suzy was determined to keep her new lover off the booze and nurse him back to health.
Coming face-to-face one day with her rival, Elizabeth told her in a world-weary tone: ‘My dear, you’ll last only six months with Richard. That I can guarantee.’
It wasn’t so much a threat as a prediction based on years of experience. She was too exhausted to be mad at a mere girl who didn’t have a clue about what she was getting herself into with a man old enough to be her father.
‘Well, perhaps you’re right,’ said Suzy. ‘But, my, what a six months it shall be.’
Elizabeth forced a smile before responding: ‘Oh, certainly, dear — for all of us
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When Burton left Switzerland for New York to begin rehearsals for the play Equus, he asked Suzy Hunt to join him. He also told friends that now he was sober, he couldn’t imagine why he’d decided to remarry Elizabeth.
His wife, for her part, tried to exact revenge by seducing a 37-year-old advertising man called Peter Darmanin at a Swiss disco called The Cave.
She’d sashayed over to him, swaying to the music, and apparently decided, ‘This one will do just fine.’ Then, without interrupting her dance of seduction, she’d kissed him, before taking him home to her lair.
She obviously wasn’t over Burton, though, and still spoke to him constantly on the phone. Finally, he summoned her over to see him, and told her bluntly that the marriage was over.
On July 29, 1976, less than ten months after they’d wed for a second time, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were granted their second divorce.
‘I love Richard with every fibre of my soul,’ she said, before delivering one of the great understatements of her life. ‘But we can’t be together. We’re too mutually self-destructive.’
Her obsession with the Welsh actor would continue, however, through two more marriages to other men. It would lead to heartbreak and personal humiliation.
But never once did she waver from the belief that ‘Dick & Liz’ had been — in her words — ‘the greatest goddamned couple of all time’.
Extracted from Elizabeth by J. Randy Taraborrelli, published by Pan at £8.99. © 2006 J Randy Taraborrelli
