By Joe O'Shea
Friday Mar 25 2011

It has been said of Liz Taylor that her real-life loves and heartbreaks would have made one hell of a Hollywood movie.

But the screenplay for the many marriages of Ms Taylor would have had too much melodrama, passion, tragedy, betrayal and farce for even the wildest imaginings of Jack Warner or Louis B Mayer.

Married eight times but only to seven men. One husband dies in a plane crash (his plane is called the Lucky Liz) and his body is later dug up by Chicago mafia types who believe he was buried with a 10-carat diamond ring.

Her first husband, whom she marries at 17, is a physically abusive drunk who beats her on their honeymoon. She meets her last in rehab.

Already divorced, remarried and a mother before her 21st birthday, she becomes a widow before her 24th.

Her baby daughter with husband number three is born five months later.

Husband number four arrives via the greatest scandal of the 1950s and is left, for the great love of her life, in the biggest scandal of the 1960s (the Vatican condemned her infamous affair with Richard Burton for "erotic vagrancy").

And somehow, between all the husbands, scandals and wedding planners, she finds the time to star in some of the biggest, most acclaimed movies of the late golden-era of Hollywood.

Through all of the off-screen drama, she remains the highest-paid Hollywood star of her time, loved, loathed, scandalous, glamorous and totally unapologetic.

"What do you expect me to do?" Taylor once asked. "Sleep alone?"

Those famous violet eyes entranced millions of men, she married seven and they were:

1 Conrad 'Nicky' Hilton Jnr

(May 1950-January 1951)

Conrad Hilton Jnr was the heir to the great family hotel fortune (and the great-uncle of Paris and Nicky Hilton).

Taylor married him when she was just 17 (there had been an earlier engagement to a man called William Pawley but this turned out to be a studio publicity stunt, Mr Pawley remains the one who got away).

Hilton and Taylor were considered the golden couple of their time. But even as they set out for their European honeymoon aboard the ocean line the Queen Mary, Taylor found out that her husband was a violent abusive drunk.

Their marriage lasted just nine months.

Hilton had an unhappy, scandalous life. The young heir to a vast fortune slept with his own stepmother, the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, while she was still married to his father. And talked publicly about it.

He later dated the actresses Natalie Wood and Joan Collins and died of a heart attack at the age of 42 in 1969.

2 Michael Wilding (February 1952-January 1957)

The British actor Michael Wilding was 20 years older than Taylor when they wed and the actress later admitted that she was looking for a kinder, gentler, almost father figure after the trauma of their first marriage.

They had two sons together, Michael and Christopher, before their marriage ended in divorce. Wilding died at his home in England in 1979.

3 Michael Todd (February 1957-March 1958)

The film-producer Michael Todd was the only husband Liz Taylor did not divorce -- he died tragically in 1958 when his private plane, the Lucky Liz, crashed in New Mexico in March 1958.

Before the flight, Todd had rang around some friends, including Kirk Douglas, in a bid to persuade them to take the trip with him.

When one friend questioned the safety of travelling in a small plane, he told them; "It's a good, safe plane. I wouldn't let it crash. I'm taking along a picture of Elizabeth, and I wouldn't let anything happen to her."

Todd and Taylor had been very happy during their brief marriage. The movie star later said that Michael Todd and Richard Burton were the only true loves of her life.

4 Eddie Fisher (May 1959-March 1964)

When Todd tragically died, his best friend, the singer and actor Eddie Fisher, was on hand to console the widow Taylor.

It was a very difficult situation for the young actress, she gave birth to a daughter (Elizabeth Frances) five months after her husband died.

Fisher and Taylor fell for each other, but there was a problem.

Fisher was married at the time to "America's Sweetheart", the singer and actress Debbie Fisher.

When it became public that Eddie Fisher was leaving his wife for Taylor, the mother of all scandals broke out. Fisher did get to marry Taylor, but his career went into steep decline. Taylor, on the other hand, showed a happy knack for turning scandal into increased star power.

5 Richard Burton (March 1964-June 1974)

Forget Brad and Angelina. There has never been a celebrity couple as glamorous, talented, tempestuous, scandalous and dangerously passionate for each other as Richard Burton and Liz Taylor.

They first met at a pool party in Los Angeles when Burton was making his first visit to Hollywood, but really got together on the set of Cleopatra in Rome in 1961.

Both her husband and his wife were dispatched from Rome in short order as Burton and Taylor set off on a scorching love affair.

Burton later said they were like "two stars in each other's orbit" -- he showered her with extravagant gifts, paintings by Monet and Picasso and the 33-carat Krupp diamond (later followed by the 69-carat Cartier diamond, now known as the Burton-Taylor Diamond).

They drank, loved and fought their way across the most glamorous back-drops of the 1960s jet-set.

The brooding Burton seemed to almost resent the power Taylor had over him and could be cutting, remarking once that "this most beautiful woman in the world stuff is absolute nonsense. She has wonderful eyes, but she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest, and she's rather short in the leg".

She later said that loving him was like living on the edge of a volcano. But last year, 25 years after Burton's death, she was asked if she would marry Burton again if she could. Her reply? In a heartbeat.

6 Richard Burton

(October 1975-July 1976)

The second time around was even more tempestuous than the first.

Married in a mud-hut in Botswana (he was there filming an action movie) they separated again in short order.

Burton said of her: "She was lavish. She was a dark unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much."

7 John Warner (December 1976-November 1982)

After Burton, the world's most glamorous woman tried to be the wife and home-maker of a politician, US Senator John Warner.

However, life in Washington and her self-enforced absence from the movie industry bored her and led to heavy drinking, which in turn led to a spell in the Betty Ford Clinic. They divorced in 1982.

8 Larry Fortensky (October 1991 - October 1996)

Where do you go after you have scorched across three continents with Richard Burton?

To a be-mulleted construction worker called Larry, of course.

Taylor and Larry Lee Fortensky met during her stay at the Betty Ford Clinic and were married at the home of her good friend Michael Jackson, the Neverland Ranch.

They divorced in 1996 and Larry used his settlement to buy a house in California.

However, he has struggled financially, despite occasional help from his ex-wife (she reportedly gave him $50,000 in 2009).

Just last week, as Taylor was sick in hospital, Fortensky was facing a court order of eviction.

- Joe O'Shea

Irish Independent

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