Elizabeth Taylor's Nine Lives

Years ago, when a million dollars could last you a very comfortable lifetime, a mega-major literary agent offered to get me a million dollars for a biography of Elizabeth Taylor. It was an offer I knew he could back up and in all likelihood already had. He was, he professed, enamored with her. I wasn’t. I had just come back from a distant trip with her that felt even longer than it was; had weathered and survived the traveling circus that was Elizabeth and Co., the center ring steadily drawing in fast-shrinking concentric circles of fans and gawkers who threatened to suffocate us in every airport, hotel lobby and public space we entered; and I was refreshing myself in the anonymous air of my New York. In one of those lucid moments when your life passes before you, in this case the future, I couldn’t see myself spending the time on her life it would take to write a book about her. Still, my lunch host had just put a million dollar offer on the table at, where else?, the Russian Tea Room. I told him I’d been invited to be her house guest in L.A. next week and said, “I’ll ask her.”

I related the agent’s offer to Elizabeth, thinking she’d have visions of sugarplum-shaped diamonds dancing in her head and foresee many more lavender dresses and shawls hanging in her vast dress closet. After musing momentarily about it, she said, “I don’t think I’ve lived my life yet.” I laughed and said, “The way I see it, you’ve lived at least eight of them.”

It was a relief for me to come up with an alternate plan. I had come to know Elizabeth as a wonderful story teller. After we were both injured in a car accident and consequently relegated to gorging ourselves on marzipan in the presidential suite at The Tel Aviv Hilton while we recovered, I managed, with simple prompting, to get her to tell me what seemed like every story she had in her. Our afternoons were like biopics: in addition to The Mike Todd Story, The Richard Burton Story and The (briefer) Eddie Fisher Story, her cast of characters and foibles included her friendships with Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, royalty and roués and, get this, Anwar Sadat. Telling her I was concerned about her inevitably losing track of pertinent details of her truly singular stories, I suggested she tell me any that occurred to her I hadn’t yet heard and I would write them up. We would keep them in a drawer in her house until the time came when she was ready to tell The Elizabeth Taylor Story. She welcomed the idea. Unfortunately, her life in L.A. and mine in N.Y. being what they were, we never got to another story.

In her ninth life, she befriended Michael Jackson and stuck by him when he most needed a friend. She distinguished herself by becoming an early and leading advocate and fund-raiser for AIDS research. A genuinely good person, she used her celebrity to become an effective activist wherever she believed she could help.

Wherever she is, I’m confident she’s already embarking on life number ten.

Comments

The Internet has given the word “comments” new meaning. “Comments” are giving this blog new meaning.

As anyone can see (below), anyone is free to post anything on “Son of the Cucumber King.” Most blogsites screen comments before they post them. Unlike them, I don’t force people to check off a loyalty-oath box or copy an infernal, sometimes unreadable combination of five twisted letters and numbers—“to prove you're human,” they explain. Subsequently, various messages inform you there will be a delay while your comment is reviewed for “appropriate” content, and management reserves the right etc.

This blog, laissez-faire, is drawing frequent debates, and while I disagree with many of the comments, I welcome all of them. I marvel at their diversity and wonder at the extent people go to in order to air their views.

In the matter of Melia Obama wearing a T-shirt displaying a peace symbol [“Seeing Them For What They Are”], Steve says, “At 11 years old Melia knows as much about Peace as Miss America knows about quarks!” To which Lauren [full (proud) disclosure: my daughter] replies, “my 6 1/2 year old nephew has been able to identify the peace symbol since he was 3 and when asked back then what it meant he said, ‘no more fights.’"

In the matter of Michael Jackson [“Securing Michael Jackson” and “Recalling Michael Jackson”], Participant says, “I don't know what to think about this whole thing (about the man himself - the Peter Pan). Your blog has given me another side - good perspective.” To which James Patrick Updike responds, “…a great entertainer, but as far as I'm concerned he was a pedophile and deserves no mourning.”

Tough crowd. Let me eschew looking at “both sides now” and share a few random zingers with you. The most brazenly callous comment appeared in conjunction with “Free Roxana,” my appeal on behalf of the young journalist imprisoned in Iran. Posted by Anonymous (The cowardly tend to conceal themselves.), it stated, “I have a feeling Iran is going to milk this for all its worth to get whatever concessions it can from the U.S. all because this incredibly STUPID woman didn't know when to leave town! I hope she rots!” The wittiest may have been from Jacopo, who said, “W is writing a memoir? Ha! I'll believe it's his only if the first draft is written entirely in crayon…”

The dramatic street demonstrations following the elections in Iran produced two of the most notable comments: the most concisely profound one from betty fussell, “The Iranian government? The Iranian people? These are short-hand rhetorical constructs far different from the complex realities of both. … Let's talk less and learn more.”; the most evocative and perhaps touching from Paul Evans, “I remember listening (on a short wave radio) to the Hungarians' call for help - "For God's sake, help us." - just before the Russian army put an end to their revolution. Better fortune to the Iranian people.”

The last word (for now) belongs to the sanity and sagacity of James van Maanen, who has his own site, “TrustMovies,” in reaction to the exchanges my last entry, “Seeing Them For What They Are,” produced:

"My goodness, Ray: This post seems to have brought out the "extremists" like no other you've published. I don't know whether to say, "Keep it up" or "Move on, fast." I guess we do need to be reminded of the whack jobs out there. They are a shrinking minority, all right. But as we do learn occasionally and to our horror, it only takes one finger to pull a trigger."

Recalling Michael Jackson

Continuing Moshe Alon’s recollections of Michael Jackson [please see the previous entry if you haven’t]:

Moshe never heard Michael Jackson raise his voice or give a command. “He was very shy,” he says, confirming widely held perceptions. At an event where Moshe wore a black tux, he heard Michael whispering softly from behind him. When he realized the words were for him, he heard Michael trying to tell him, “There’s something on your shoulder.” Had he been facing Moshe, he probably would have been silent rather than helpful.

Shy as he was offstage, when Michael Jackson was anywhere near a stage, according to Moshe, “He controlled everything. He was a showman,” says Moshe unstintingly, as if in admiration of an amalgam of P.T. Barnum and Al Jolson. During performances of super-stellar clients, Moshe is on the front line protecting them from fans who rush the stage. But Jackson selectively discouraged him from stopping them. “He let fans run onto the stage. He knew what they wanted.”

He was shy, he was savvy. He was in control or out of control.

“Other than his music and concerts, kids meant the most to him. He would take them to record stores, clothing stores, where they’d buy them up… anything they wanted.” On Jackson’s credit cards.

The kids Moshe had in mind traveled with them to Taiwan and Israel. “Kids ran around with bodyguards like kings and queens.” Moshe is critical of the parents who sent their kids unaccompanied—but for Jackson and his bodyguards—for three months. “Kids didn’t recognize their parents after that.”

As for the man whose care they were under, “He was like a child. He loved games”—so much, he had pinball games around the stage. Moshe recalled when Jackson was in group therapy. “His job was to vacuum-clean, but he didn’t know how to use a vacuum! My men had to teach him how. He went around vacuuming… vacuuming everything. He had such a good time.”

“He was not comfortable around adults. He was comfortable around Elizabeth Taylor. She understood… she was a child star too.” And the kids around him, I asked? Moshe’s answer was unequivocal. “I don’t believe he did anything wrong.”

“He trusted people.” And according to Moshe, they all took advantage of him. Not only the kids, but older people who were supposed to be friends. Not only them, but “managers and agents… anyone… everyone ripped him off.”

Moshe rented a helicopter for him for $10,000. Jackson’s representatives said, “No, Moshe, it’s $100,000.” Moshe corrected them, but they repeated the price was $100,000. Moshe told them he wouldn’t go along with them, he didn’t do things that way. They said his cut would be $20- or $30,000. When Moshe said no to them again, they said it doesn’t matter what you say, his cost is still going to be $100,000.

He said it was the same with Jackson’s doctor bills. Inflated. The same with his credit cards—they’d load charges for their own purchases on them. Those so-called friends of Jackson’s would get pills in their names to supply him with. Getting pain killers for him in places like Mexico was much easier, he added. I asked what they gained from it. “Power. And loads of money.”

Moshe says he has nothing against stars. But the people around them—“they make you sick.”

Moshe’s credibility? Elizabeth Taylor told him, “I’m never gonna ask you how I look because you tell me the truth.”

Securing Michael Jackson

I never dreamed I’d be writing about Michael Jackson on this blog (or anywhere else).

I had an elderly aunt who, in the early days of television, complained that she wanted a new TV because the “old” set handed down to her only played old films. As I walked away from our kitchen TV grumbling about the round-the-clock media marathon Jackson’s death had become, I thought of Aunt Ida. Maybe I needed a new TV.

Then I thought of an old friend, Moshe Alon, a first-rate security agent who has worked with the biggest of stars and VIPs, including Michael Jackson. Based on having seen him in action, I believe Moshe is the best security man in the country, probably any country. He doesn’t wait for trouble, he anticipates and prevents it. He uses his head instead of his muscles, and I’ve never seen him with a weapon. He’s wise and sensible, ethical and unassuming. Only the most qualified security personnel are employed by his company, PSC, Professional Security Consultants, but it is Moshe who is always in demand.

Moshe and I met in Israel when I was traveling with Elizabeth Taylor and he was engaged to provide her security. He was so impressive, Elizabeth invited him to come to America to work for her. That was 27 years ago, and while his services to her were never exclusive, his loyalty to her has never flagged, so the few times she asked him as a favor to her to help Michael Jackson, he did. [That’s Moshe between them in the above photo.] And when, not as a favor but as a friend, I asked him about Jackson, he readily reminisced.

Jackson watchers will remember that when he was in rehab, he disappeared for a month. It started with Elizabeth Taylor and Moshe going to Mexico for him. Moshe detailed how he had to scramble to get Jackson’s passport from the superstar’s own security people, who were withholding it from him. Then, using the first of many decoys, Moshe put an African-American who resembled Jackson in a car headed in one direction while he and Elizabeth spirited him away in another and put him on a private plane to Iceland.

While “everyone” was looking for him, they escorted Jackson to London, where he hid more or less in plain sight, and then to Switzerland, while Moshe dispatched look-alikes “all over the place.” Jackson’s own management offered Moshe “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to tell them where Jackson was, but he wouldn’t take it.

“When he [Jackson] came back to America, he was clear in his head,” says Moshe with satisfaction.

To be continued: personal recollections of the private Michael Jackson.