How Liz and Richard brought Hollywood to dull old Dublin
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Saturday Mar 26 2011
It was 1965 and the Gresham had never seen anything like it before. The landmark Dublin hotel was the place for movie stars to stay, but it had hosted none as glamorous -- or wild -- as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Dublin was a drab, depressed place but here was Hollywood in all its glorious technicolour, nestled for 10 weeks right up at the end of O'Connell Street.
He was the chiselled matinee idol, gruff but charismatic, she was astoundingly beautiful, also tempestuous but kind and charming.
The couple came to town because Burton was filming scenes from John Le Carré's best-selling Cold War novel The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
Smithfield was deemed to be the perfect backdrop for a director who wanted to portray the depths of misery in post-war East Germany.
Sparks flew immediately.
Within minutes of arriving at the O'Connell Street landmark, the first thing the newly-married couple complained about was the size of the bed in their luxury suite: it was too small and would cramp their style.
A new bed was duly ordered by the scandalised management, which over the following 10 weeks saw to the couple's every need, including the feeding of Taylor's pet monkey, which spent much of the stay hiding in a bathroom.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton first met in 1963 on the set of Twentieth Century Fox's historical epic, Cleopatra, at $40m then the most expensive movie ever made. It was pretty much love, or perhaps lust, at first sight.
Burton was a notorious womaniser who was said to have hit on every one of his leading ladies.
When he first met Taylor he is supposed to have delivered that most hackneyed of pick up lines: "Has anyone ever told you that you're a very pretty girl?" According to American film critic and author Hollis Alpert's biography of Burton, Elizabeth later recalled, "I said to myself, 'Oy gevalt, here's the great lover, the great wit, the great intellectual of Wales, and he comes out with a line like that.'"
Their affair was so blatant it caused a huge scandal in Italy. The Vatican was outraged by their behaviour and accused the couple of "erotic vagrancy", and Burton's wife Sybil Williams, with whom he had two daughters, was so thoroughly humiliated she had to flee the set and Italy.
Taylor's husband, the popular crooner Eddie Fisher, who numbered amongst his No 1 hits the saccharine 'Oh My Pa-Pa' and, perhaps presciently, 'Games That Lovers Play', had remained in California. He was himself said to be having an affair. He divorced Elizabeth the following year.
Nine days after the divorce from Eddie Fisher was final, the couple married in Montreal at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in March 1964.
Acknowledging the catalyst of their love, a report said "the beaming bride, her hair braided with white Roman hyacinths, wore a gown of yellow chiffon designed by Irene Sharaff", who designed her costumes for Cleopatra.
In Dublin for filming, American director Martin Ritt, fresh from the solid hit Hud starring Paul Newman, went through the scenes with Burton as Taylor, huddled in a big coat, watched. After, the pair drank Guinness in local pubs.
The arrival of the golden couple in the spring of 1965 certainly didn't get the banner headlines it would today, with no paparazzi or gossip columnists following their every move.
Today, the Gresham Hotel has a two-bedroom suite named after Taylor in honour of the two visits she and Burton spent there. The Elizabeth Taylor Suite is 136 square metres of luxury and comes with a huge 7ft 3in wide four-poster bed and French windows leading to a spacious terrace that overlooks the Dublin skyline.
Italian film and opera director Franco Zefferelli , who was to direct the couple in the Shakespearian comedy The Taming of the Shrew the following year, recalls flying to Dublin to meet the couple to discuss the movie. He walked into a scene of utter chaos.
"Liz had somehow acquired a Bush Baby (a small African primate), which had not taken to its luxurious imprisonment and had set about rearranging the decor. It had knocked over vases and lights, ripped the curtains and had, by the time I arrived, taken refuge near the ceiling of the bathroom, where it was clinging, wide-eyed with fear, to one of the water pipes.
"Liz's maid had withdrawn with a scratched face, Richard was angrily trying to get everybody to shut up, and Liz could clearly think of nothing but the rescue of the poor little animal.
"As I entered, the two great stars proceeded to have one of those magnificent rows that made them so alarmingly electric. I was nervous but utterly spellbound. Seeing me there, Liz broke off. 'Forget about this fricking Shakespeare,' she commanded, 'and come and help'."
Installed in the hotel for almost 10 weeks, Taylor and Burton took over a whole floor to accommodate their entourage of four children, including Maria, a three-year-old German girl they had adopted shortly after their wedding the previous year, a children's nurse and a maid.
The children ate at different times from the other hotel guests, and members of the kitchen brigade at the time remember their nurse coming down at 11.30am each day to supervise the preparation of their food.
The actress was a Hollywood A-lister in her own right but also humble. Some Dubliners who met Taylor in 1965 recalled a warm and generous person. On St Patrick's Day, two days after her first wedding anniversary to Burton, she gave all the staff in the Gresham a baby bottle of Power's whiskey and a green carnation. Others recalled gifts of bouquets for sick children.
Tragedy also struck the couple during their stay; on March 3, the chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce in which she was travelling struck and killed an elderly pedestrian, Alice Brian, on the Stillorgan Road.
A report at the time said: "Elizabeth Taylor, her husband Richard Burton and the French chauffeur Gaston Sanz, expressed their 'sincere and profound sympathy' to the family of (the deceased)."
The couple slipped quietly back to the Gresham two years later when Taylor gave evidence in the case concerning the death of Mrs Brian. It was her last visit to the city.
Originally published in
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