Giant Elizabeth Taylor Interview

join you back place in the Sun and it's just telling a little bit about how it was what that was like and you know I don't want to put the words in that you were oh yes okay but maybe starting by just saying you see we're at MGM and the idea of doing a Place in the Sun and how old you were well obviously experience yeah I was 16 and I was invited to go to Paramount to meet your father and Montgomery Clift and I was absolutely terrified because Monte first of all was you know the New York stage actor and I felt very much the inadequate teenage Hollywood sort of puppet that had just worn pretty clothes and hadn't really acted except with horses and dogs and your father absolutely intimidated me he had that wonderful sort of stoic granite-like face there any occasion he cracked into a smile and when it did it was like mop Rushmore breaking and splitting it was those wonderful smile because it hit his eyes and everything sort of sparkled and twinkled but when he wanted to be mean those eyes were granite and it was like little but I was very impressed I'd never seen anybody any director certainly at MGM work out the plan of you know the scenes in well in in drawings scene by scene the sets the costumes with Edith Head almost frame by frame he'd worked it out I'd never ever seen that and I was I was so impressed scared but impressed because I realized that this was a man of whom the likes I'd never worked to it and I was very lucky because I was his pet on that film and as you know he could have people the were his pets and people that were his peeves I found that out later and it was certainly nicer to be one of his pets it was you portrayed something really beyond your years and experience in that film didn't you oh yes as I said you know my leading men were horses and dogs it was the first time I played a so-called adult role it was the first time I'd really kind of acted because in National Velvet and all the other films I was playing myself and it was the first time I kissed on screen and George encouraged me so because he didn't make me feel like a puppet he was an insinuating director he gave indications of what he wanted but didn't tell you specifically what to do or how to move he would just say no stop that's not quite right and make you get it from your insides and do it again until it was the way he wanted it do you have any remembrance at all of the shooting of the scene which is now one of your most famous scenes and actually one of the movies most love scene with Monte the dancing going out on the porch well I remember when we were doing the dance scene and Monte says I love you and my instinct was to look up into his eyes and your father said no don't just slightly widen your eyes and have some expression on your face of whatever it is you're feeling but don't look up because that is the conventional thing to do let's just take a little break that's that's great opinion do you remember this was a couple years ago when we ran a place in the Sun and the AFI in Washington and you came and we saw the film and he talked afterwards I don't even remember what you said but now I tell you had you not know it seen the film you talked abut you had a wonderful reaction you said we were all so young then and you talked about your children I mean I was hoping you remember because no I can't let's talk about his you've Newt and also you might be better to refer to George rather than your father oh yeah George okay moving along from A Place in the Sun the next time you work together was in giant yeah and he had he changed in the intervening five years I mean you you obviously have talked about an evolution in his character his nature as you thought well yes he had and I was no longer a teenager and I no longer had anybody on the set to protect me and that's when I first found out the other side of George which was the side I didn't want to be on because he he could be really quite cold and it seemed at times he would deliberately I've often wondered afterwards whether he didn't do it in a conniving way to make the actor react to a scene although I don't find that necessary myself but I remember in one scene I was supposed to be upset it was at my sister's wedding and Rock Hudson and I had been separated and he walks in and we look at each other and it's like tears in the eyes and then we embrace and go back together well I don't need an artificial stimulant to project that kind of emotion but something happened that day that was quite extraordinary we all went out and had lunch Big Boy's a hamburger I came back and natural Adam wasn't wearing my costume I went into my trailer and everybody was busy so I laid down took a nap and I woke up I don't know how much longer maybe an hour or whatever it was not a sound on the style a soundstage there was no one around there was no hairdresser there was no makeup man there was no assistant director and I was in a robe and I walked out onto the set it was all dark and there was 75 extras in the scene it was George sitting in his chair and the cameraman and I could see like my makeup man and hairdresser sort of standing in a corner looking very worried I said what's going on and George looked at me and said who the hell do you think you are you are no better than any of those other people who have been standing up there for an hour and a half waiting for you I said what but nobody called me I was sound asleep I didn't know nobody had called me and there was six assistant directors not one person knocked on my dressing room door and I was so upset I started to cry and then the people that was supposed to get me dressed and ready I sort of took me and took me to the trailer and put me together and had to I had to read to my makeup get rid of the tears and all that and I came back out and it was dead silence again and they put the lights on and these poor people are all been waiting around totally unbeknownst to me I promise you and we did the scene and I was just a quivering mess of jelly and when I had to turn around and look at rock I mean the tears just went really because I've been holding it in and I often wondered afterward if he hadn't done that deliberately to make me show a sort of pent-up nervous emotion and then let it when I had the chance to release the tears on film to really let them sort of flow he was told later on that day they're not one of the six assistant directors that knocked on my door and he never apologized he never said I'm sorry or I believe you or anything and of course I cried all night long I never could figure that out whether it was a genuine mistake or whether and his kind of Machiavellian way he was trying to get some deep emotion out of me and for the scene with you with the men downstairs when they're they're all sitting around talking politics and you keep trying to come into the conversation would you have any recollection of that scene or they mean that that's a scene that really has a attitude about life and women it can't very naturally to me I didn't eat much direction in that it was is it a scene that pleases you today when you see it well yeah it's more or less me interrupting man trying to get my word in edgeways er eh you know it's it came it came real easy I haven't seen the film in so long well they did in the very beginning and I think George respected Jimmy a great deal but toward the end of the film it became more and more difficult for George to express his admiration for Jimmy although I think he still felt it and the night that Jimmy was killed is the night that I won't ever forget we were in the projection room watching the rushes and George turned the sound the lights off and I was sitting next to him he said ladies and gentlemen I have an announcement to make Jimmy Dean is dead it was like everybody went No and well I couldn't accept her and the Texas boy that's Bertold him is dialect and I wonder on the studio until 9 o'clock at night calling the morgue hospitals newspapers trying to find out whether it was true or not because he was so alive he was so vital was only 24 and it seemed impossible I'd just been with him that day driving around the studio in his Porsche I couldn't believe that he was dead there are nine o'clock ofany was told the news that he was I had to accept it got into my car I was getting into my car and I saw the sort of dark shadowy figure in the night getting into his car and it was George and I walked over to George and I said I can't believe that Jimmy is dead and George said he had it coming too I said what do you mean he said the way he drove it was inevitable and that made my stomach for several feet and I drove over the canyon to my home about a hundred miles an hour in rage and I think it was maybe George's way of expressing his own particular kind of grief that it was inevitable hot it was a hundred and twenty in the shade and it was in the summer August I think in September it was boiling but we were like a very tightly knit family because Marfa Texas had a population of two mm I think so we were like the real margins and we really kind of had to stick together and we'd go to the movies at night time and go to the diner and have dinner together and we all had a little tiny houses it was sort of across the road from each other and sometimes Jimmy and I would sit up until like 3 o'clock in the morning talking and he would tell me about his past life some of the grief and unhappiness in his life and some of his loves and tragedies and the next day on the set I'd say hi Jimmy and it was almost as if he didn't want to sort of recognize that he had revealed so much of himself the night before and it would just be a cursory nod of the head and it would take maybe a day or two for him to become my friend again well the great white father he had the stoic almost Indian like maintenance of his demeanor not always temper and when he released his affection and his sense of fun it was like on the warpath kind of fun I mean we stopped on the train going to Texas and the two of us went running out over the desert and started picking yorkers and put them in the back of the raker observation part of the year train and of course when we went through another state they were all removed because it was against the law and you know but it was playing guitar isn't drinking tequila and he was totally different he was just a different man than the stern supervisor of the set could he switch from one to the other quickly yes I think at times to put you off guard I think at times it was quite natural just go through a change of mood it was very drove very dry and a lot of times you could not discern that he was being humorous except through the twinkle in his eye and then when his face would crack into a grin it was a very droll sense of humor very good did he talk about his child no not much to me did he talk about his feelings about the characters and a Place in the Sun Russian he Marlys left me alone on that it was amazing he trusted my instincts and he sort of brought them out and let me sort of do my own thing with his guidance and I trusted him absolutely and totally which gave me a freedom to experiment that I never felt before did he work that way with most doctors well no he didn't he worked differently with every actors and mostly at different periods on each film I mean there were some scenes with Shelley and Monty where I couldn't believe why he was so cross with him this seemed to be a note of her reason and you know when he sort of spoiled me there seemed to be no apparent reason for that either I adored it mind you I really had a case of hero worship for George okay um would you describe him as a happy man I would describe him as a very complex man that had moments of deep Gray's blacks and great heights and moments of great joy and exuberance especially through his work and his family I believe so yeah I just thought of one more thing you were talking about shooting up at the lake the Sun Oh Lake Tahoe in November when it's already started to snow and they had to wash down the snow on the sandy parts and off the tops of some of the trees that were in the obvious close-ups and Monte and I had to go swimming and Lake Tahoe is a glacial lake and it was just miserable now George was out there with his big boots on and ear mufflers and gloves and made his do take after take after take I think I wanted to kill him and everybody else got to have a brandy but I was 16 so I got a couple hot tea and I didn't think that was fair

Channel: jeffsabu

Views: 11,951

Rating: 4.9038463 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: pV2HaQtqy4M

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 22 2019