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8/7/2019 Liz by Heymann
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8/7/2019 Liz by Heymann
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A Division o Simon & Schuster, Inc.1230 Avenue o the AmericasNew York, NY 10020
Copyright 1995, 2011 by C. David Heymann
Originally published in 1995 by Carol Publishing Group
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book orportions thereo in any orm whatsoever. For inormation, addressAtria Books Subsidiary Rights Department,1230 Avenue o the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Atria Paperback edition April 2011
and colophon are trademarks o Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For inormation about special discounts or bulk purchases,please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authorsto your live event. For more inormation or to book an event,contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Manuactured in the United States o America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4391-9188-0ISBN 978-1-4391-9190-3 (ebook)
ATRIA PAPERBACK
P
ATRIA PAPERBACK
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C h a p t e r 1
E liabeth Taylors eyes surveyed the surroundings o white tile andporcelain inside the main residential unit at the Betty Ford Centeror drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Set on ourteen acres in a desert
bowl ringed by jagged mountains, the institution at Rancho Mirage,
Caliornia, had been ounded in 1981 as part o the Eisenhower Medi-
cal Center by Leonard Firestone, ormer United States ambassador to
Belgium and a recovering alcoholic, and by ormer President Gerald
Fords wie, Betty, ater her recovery rom drug and alcohol abuse.
Eliabeth Taylor, a victim o decades o multiple addictions to alcohol
and narcotic drugs, had entered the acility o her own volition on
December 5, 1983.
The decision to commit hersel to treatment had come about whilethe then ty-one-year-old Taylor languished in a bed at St. Johns
Hospital in Santa Monica, Caliornia, ostensibly because o a bowel
obstruction. While she lay there, her children, her brother and sister-
in-law, and her closest riend, actor Roddy McDowall, visited her to
initiate what has become known as a amily intervention.
I was assured o their love while at the same time I was told how
my behavior had altered them, and o their real ears that I was kill-ing mysel, the actress later wrote in Elizabeth Takes Off, an autobio-
graphical meditation on weight loss and sel-awareness. I listened in
total silence, she continued. I remember being shocked. I couldnt
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2 C. David Heymann
believe what I had become. At the end, they said reservations had been
made or me at the Betty Ford Center and they wanted me to go.
She went and soon ound hersel involved in a program as strict and
rigorous as it was ascetic. They assigned her to a small bedroom withtwo single beds, two desks, two high-intensity desk lamps, two chairs,
two dressers, and one emale roommate. She wasnt pleased.
When she entered the institution, Eliabeth thought she would
receive special treatment, said Barnaby Conrad, a proessor o English
literature at the University o Caliornia at Santa Barbara and a patient
at the Betty Ford Center. When they told her she had to share a room
with another woman, she said, Ive never in my lie shared a room with
another woman, and Im not about to start. The powers that be at the
center quickly cut her down to sie. They made her spend the next
night or two in the swampa room shared not by two but by our
women. Finally, they agreed to let her room with just one woman.
The boot-camp mentality o the Betty Ford Center did not exempt
Taylor. Patients were barred rom leaving the hospital grounds except
under the direct supervision o a clinic-appointed chaperone. Use o
telephones was prohibited during the rst week o a patients stay;
thereater patients were permitted a maximum o ten minutes on the
telephone each evening. Visitors were banned during the rst ve days
and were then permitted or only our hours each Sunday. Attendance
was required at all meals, at evening lectures (the center sponsored
an extensive drug-and-alcohol-education program), as well as at grouptherapy sessions in which participants were expected to coness to their
aultsand to any wrongs they had done to others while under the
infuence. For good reason, Eliabeth described her initial reaction to
the regime as one o dread and loathing.
Theyd never had a celebrity beore, she subsequently inormed
an interviewer at Vanity Fair. The counselors told me later, they
didnt know what to do with me, whether they should treat me like anordinary patient or whether they should give me sort o special isolated
treatment. They decided to lump me in with everyone else, which o
course was the only way to do it. (At the time o Eliabeth Taylors
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L I z 3
1983 stay at Betty Ford, the center housed orty-ve patients divided
among three glass-and-mortar residential units. Patients in one unit
were not allowed to raternie with patients rom another.)
Part o being lumped in with the others entailed participation ina daily regimen that began at 6:00 a.m. with a meditation walk and
ended teen hours later with an evening meeting o Alcoholics Anony-
mous. More demanding still had to be the requirement that all patients
maintain and clean their own living quarters, including bathroom a-
cilities, public rooms, and outdoor areas. Denied the servants that had
always been such an integral part o her lie as a major star, Eliabeth
or once became her own maid, making her own bed, vacuuming her
own room, washing her own laundry, carrying out her own garbage,
sweeping and scrubbing, cleaning up sinks and hospital lounges.
At rst, Eliabeth and her bunkmates accepted their ate with ab-
ject resignation. But within a ew weeks o their projected ve-week
stay they began to register complaints about nearly everything, includ-
ing the act that their residential unit, North House, received but a
single copy o the daily newspaper and by the time it reached them
the paper would usually be crumpled beyond readability. Nor did they
enjoy having to ll out orms; yet within their rst week at Camp
Betty, they lled out nothing but orms. There were additional hard-
ships. They had been body-searched during their rst day and nally
had their mouthwash conscated because it contained an alcohol base.
Their aspirin had been taken away because Betty Ford personnel con-sidered it a mind-altering medication.
Used to having things her own way, Eliabeth bridled at the endless
list odonts: no television except on weekends; no smoking indoors;
no sunglasses or tinted lenses because patients were required to look
straight into each others eyes when talking; no meals or a patient
unless he or she took his or her turn waiting tables. Eliabeth, long
an enemy o regimentation, did not care or the three-times-per-daymeetings or the twice-a-day Truth Game sessions, in which partici-
pants recounted intimate and oten embarrassing details concerning
their private lives. She cared more or the arewell parties, at which
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4 C. David Heymann
those gathered had to make short speeches about what they thought
o the departing guest. It was almost always complimentary, or each
patient in turn would be exposed to the same procedure.
Another ritual Eliabeth eventually came to tolerate was the re-quently held chanting session, or which a group o patients would
gather, suddenly huddle, link arms, and chant, their voices vibrating
with emotion: No more drugs and no more booe, no more booe
and no more drugs. . . . In a daily journal the center required each
patient to keep, Eliabeth described these exercises as a kind o group
prayer meeting that helped her to sustain her resolve, at least or the
moment.
Eliabeths journal detailed her rst week o detoxication as one
o terric withdrawals. It continued: Nobody here wants anything
rom anybody else except to share and help. Its probably the rst time
since I was nine that nobody has wanted to exploit me. Now, the bad
news. I eel like hell. Im going through a withdrawal. My heart eels
big and pounding. I can eel the blood rush through my body. I can
almost see it, rushing like red water over the boulders in my pain-lled
neck and shoulders, then through my ears and into my pounding head.
My eyelids futter. Oh God, I am so, so tired.
Not until her second week could she admit to herseland to the
other patientswhat she had become: My name is Eliabeth Taylor.
I am an alcoholic and a drug abuser.
She later termed her conession, issued during a group therapy ses-sion, the most dicult lines Ive ever had to speak, then oered the
group a more detailed explanation: For thirty-ve years, I couldnt go
to sleep without at least two sleeping pills. Im a genuine insomniac.
And Id always taken a lot o medication or pain. Id had nineteen
major operations, and drugs had become a crutch. I wouldnt take
them only when I was in pain. I was taking a lot o Percodan. Id take
Percodan and a couple o drinks beore I would go out. I just elt I hadto get stoned to get over my shyness. I needed oblivion, escape.
Eliabeth Taylors mea culpa omitted ar more than it contained.
Her drug and alcohol problems were deeply rooted in a kaleidoscopic
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L I z 5
past lled with broken dreams and disillusionments, men and mar-
riages, and a lm career that had long beore lost its luster. In the words
o New York lm critic Daphne Davis, Eliabeth had become a relic
o her own past, a throwback, a veritable dinosaur. No producer inHollywood with a serious picture in mind will go near her, reported
William H. Stadiem, the screenwriter o one o Taylors latest major
fops, the ill-ated Young Toscanini, produced in 1988 but never re-
leased in the United States.
The ull truth regarding Eliabeth Taylors drug and alcohol ad-
dictions would emerge only in 1990 during a more than two-year in-
vestigation by John K. Van de Kamp, attorney general o the state o
Caliornia, who examined the prescription and pharmaceutical prac-
tices o three o Taylors personal physicians. The attorney generals
inquiry stated that over a period o less than ten years, the actress had
been given thousands o prescriptions or opiates, hypnotics, pain kill-
ers, tranquiliers, antidepressants, and stimulants in powder, pill, and
injection ormenough medication, insisted one investigator in the
attorney generals oce, to uel an army.
The volume and variety o drugs and medications exceed com-
monly accepted standards o saety. According to the attorney generals
charges, the list o drugs and pharmaceuticals given to Eliabeth Taylor
included the ollowing: Ativan, Dalmane, Darvocet-N, Demerol, Di-
laudid, Doriden, Empirin with codeine, Halcion, Hycodan, Lomotil,
methadone, morphine sulate, paregoric, Percocet, Percodan, Placidyl,Prelu-2, Ritalin, Seconal, Sublimae, Tuinal, Tylenol with codeine,
Valium, Xanax.
The details o Eliabeth Taylors medical history were oten dis-
maying. There were those who surmised that she must be distributing
the myriad medications either among riends or to gay men in Los
Angeles who were suering the pain o AIDS. Continuing its probe,
the attorney generals oce learned that in 1982, within one seven-teen-day stretch centered around a gala birthday bash or Eliabeth
Taylors riend Michael Jackson, Taylor had been prescribed at least
six hundred pills. In a period o less than a year, in 1981, she had been
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6 C. David Heymann
given more than three hundred individual prescriptionsnearly one a
dayand oten or as many as thirty pills per prescription.
Enjoying solid reputations among their peers, the three medical
practitioners who eventually became involved in the saga o EliabethTaylors sel-abuse and punishment, were Dr. William Skinner, di-
rector o the clinical dependency unit at Santa Monica Hospital; Dr.
Michael Gottlieb, a leading immunologist generally credited or diag-
nosing Americas rst case o AIDS; and Dr. Michael Roth, Eliabeths
personal physician or more than ten years and a prominent Calior-
nia-based internist with a list o high-prole patients.
According to the attorney general, Dr. William Skinner had writ-
ten out prescription ater prescription or the actress and then insisted
she sign hersel into the Betty Ford Center to break the habit he had
helped to encourage. As a means o increasing the overall eect o the
various medications he administered to his patient, Skinner recom-
mended she use compound syringes, a method considered dangerous
among certain physicians. Members o the actresss personal sta were
oten assigned to give their employer the injections.
The medical records reveal, according to the attorney general, that
even ater the decision had been made at St. Johns Hospital to send
Eliabeth to the Betty Ford Center, she received an unusually high
daily dosage o drugs, which included large doses o Demerol, Tuinal,
Valium, and Tylenol #4.
The physician who prescribed the drugs in all these instances wasDr. Michael Roth, according to the attorney general.
Although Eliabeth Taylor became the rst celebrity to enter the
portals o the Betty Ford Center, two others ollowed directly in her
wake: country-and-western singer Johnny Cash and actor Peter Law-
ord. Laword, a close riend o Eliabeths since their childhood days
together at M-G-M, checked into the acility on December 12, a week
ater Taylor.Patricia Seaton, niece o the late Hollywood producer George
Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) and Lawords last wie, had watched
the television news with Peter the day ater Eliabeths admission to the
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L I z 7
Betty Ford Center. The announcement o Eliabeth Taylors intern-
ment at the center gave Patricia Seaton a fash o inspiration. I decided
then and there, she said, that i this place could help Eliabeth, it
could also help Peter, whose addictions, i anything, were even moreacute than hers.
We few rom Los Angeles to Palm Springs, Caliornia, the near-
est airport to the center. Peter drank twenty o those miniature bottles
o vodka they serve aboard airplanes. By the time we landed, he was
sloshed, and when the white station wagon with the words betty ford
centerembossed on its side pulled up on the tarmac, Peter thought
the car belonged to the ormer First Lady. Are we going to visit her?
he asked. Ive always liked Betty.
I imagine each patient who enters a detox center must undergo a
similar shock o discoverylike, This is it. Ive sunk as ar as I can in
lie. This is the bottom o the well. And the initial reaction is invari-
ably one o anger and resentment. Look at what theyve done to me.
Theyve stuck me out here like a jackrabbit in the middle o nowhere
to dry out in the desert with the cactuses and coyotes.
Im certain Eliabeth Taylor elt the same as Peter. They were both
terrible patients. As soon as I returned home to Los Angeles, I learned
Peter had made an attempt to escape into the desert to nd a liquor
store.
While still at Betty Ford, he managed to contact a drug dealer who
regularly supplied him with whatever he needed. The dealer leased ahelicopter and landed near the center. Peter would sneak o, meet his
contact behind the center in the desert, do a ew lines o cocaine, then
sneak back into the acility. He would charge the drugs on his Ameri-
can Express card.
On one o Lawords rst days at Betty Ford, he spied Eliabeth
Taylor in an exercise group scattered about the outdoor swimming
pool. Racing to her side, Laword was intercepted by a pair o well-muscled hospital attendants who dutiully inormed him o the cen-
ters restrictions against raterniation.
But Ive known this girl my entire lie, Laword protested.
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8 C. David Heymann
Unimpressed, the hospital workers hauled him away.
Laword and Taylor shared an aversion to almost every chore they
were asked to perorm at the Betty Ford Center. The only activity
Peter perormed with any relish at all was vacuum cleaning, notedPatricia Seaton. Hed never operated a vacuum cleaner beore, and
the appliance intrigued him. He would vacuum or hours, even ater
he let the hospital and returned home. But while at Betty Ford, he
reused to do anything else. When he learned Eliabeth wouldnt do
the swimming-pool exercises required o all patients, he, too, began to
balk. I she doesnt do them, I dont do them, Laword told his in-
structor. Shes only a Hollywood actress, but Im the ormer brother-
in-law o President John F. Kennedy. (Lawords marriage to Patrica
Kennedy ended in divorce in 1966.)
Whenever I visited Peter at Betty Ford, reported Patricia Seaton,
he would hand me a shopping listor read it to me over the tele-
phone beore I arrived. Hed say, Li wants you to stop at the Rexall
Drug Store in Palm Springs. She wants pancake makeup and deep
olive eyeliner by Max Factor and two cartons o Salem.
Deep olive eyelinerthat cant be right, I said. Thats not her
color. Its too dark or her.
So when I reached Rexall I ound a telephone booth and called
Eliabeth at Betty Ford, and she conrmed the color. In act, she loves
to look the vamp. She has abysmal taste.
Victor Luna, the Mexican lawyer whom Eliabeth was dating atthis stage, used to visit her at the center the same days I visited Peter.
So, Victor and I soon became riends. He struck me as a perect gentle-
man. He never uttered a negative word about Eliabeth, though he,
too, must have wondered about all that dark eye makeup. I think he
had the eeling, though he never admitted it, that or all the drug coun-
selors, medics, and psychiatrists, nobody really got cured at the center.
You cant reverse a lietime o sel-abuse with a ew weeks o grouptherapy and a lot o hand-holding.
Several weeks ater the admission o Eliabeth Taylor and Peter
Laword to the Betty Ford Center, Patricia Seaton participated in a bi-
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L I z 9
arre scheme to sneak an acquaintance o hers, British journalist Tony
Brenna, into the center. Brenna wanted to write a story on the two
stars or the National Enquirer.
The Enquirer paid Peter Laword $4,000 or so to sneak me inthere, recalled Brenna. Peter told everybody, including Eliabeth,
that he and I were cousins. He needed the money, but he also wanted
to dispel tabloid rumors that a romance between them had sprung up
at Betty Ford.
Peter didnt really care about the rumors, but he knew that the
stories about the two o them annoyed Li because o her involvement
at the time with Victor Luna.
The main purpose o this assignment had to do with convincing
Eliabeth Taylor to talk. So Peter brought me around to see her. In
addition, we had posted our photographers in the desert, about hal a
mile away, armed with high-powered telephoto lenses trained on me
while I spoke to Taylor. We needed proo o a meeting in the event she
tried to deny it. In truth, I ound her very obliging. We had met once
beore when she and Richard Burton married or a second time, and
during that encounter there had been an angry exchange between us.
Fortunately, she had no recollection o ever meeting me.
What Eliabeth had to do at the center was surrender all preten-
sions o being a big star, all pretensions o being a celebrity, as much
as she bloody hated doing it. At Betty Ford, Taylor had her daily as-
signments to do, just like any other person there, and they includedtoiling over kitchen sinks piled high with dirty dishes. She stuck to
the program or a while but nally lost interest and gave up. Had she
persevered, she might well have beaten drugs and alcohol her rst time
around.
Amy Porter, a bookkeeper rom Spokane, Washington, visited her
sister at Betty Ford during the period o Eliabeths stay and derived
an impression o the actress as a still glamorous but slowly adingsuperstar.
My sister had an acute drug problem and had been designated
a room only a ew doors down the corridor rom Eliabeth Taylor,
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10 C. David Heymann
remarked Porter. The problem with Eliabeth was her apparent
moodiness. One never knew what to expect rom her. Some morn-
ings, according to my sister, she would greet everyone with a broad,
toothy smile and a lot o riendly chatter; you would see her again inthe aternoon, and she would pretend she didnt know you. You never
knew which Eliabeth Taylor to expect, the gushy, riendly one or the
ice princess.
In addition, Eliabeth didnt look so well at the time. She still
had the luminous violet eyes, but otherwise she appeared a bit pudgy
and worn. The sight o her as an aging, overweight star reminded me
o that amous joke Joan Rivers liked to tell: Eliabeth Taylor used to
be the one woman in America every other woman wanted to look like,
and now we all do.
Eliabeth Taylors days at Betty Ford ended as abruptly and un-
ceremoniously as they began. Her doctors wanted her to stay or an
additional week, particularly Dr. William Skinner, who elt Eliabeth
needed more time to detoxiy.
According to journalist George Carpoi Jr., Li started screaming
at Dr. Skinner. She told the doctor she held him to blame or the act
that shed become dependent on so many pills. She added she had no
intention o staying any longer at the center than the ve weeks she had
already been there.
The late Roger Wall, Eliabeths longtime personal assistant, re-
called that a ew months ater Eliabeth let the center, she threw alavish party at her home in Bel Air, Caliornia, to which she invited all
her riends and acquaintances rom Betty Ford. She served everything
but alcohol.
She took her recovery very seriously at rst, said Wall. She went
on a crash diet and lost twenty-our pounds. She had some plastic sur-
gery. She held Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at her home and reg-
ularly attended meetings at other members homes. Then, suddenly,something went wrong.
By late 1984, less than a year ater her stay at Betty Ford, Eliabeth
Taylor resumed not only her drinking habit but also her daily regimen
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L I z 11
o pill and drug abuse. As documented by the Caliornia attorney gen-
erals oce, Eliabeths medical records revealed that as early as Oc-
tober 1984 she had begun consulting with Dr. Skinner again, and he
had prescribed large quantities o drugs such as Tylenol #4, Percodan,Hycodan, Demerol, Dilaudid, Prelu-2, morphine sulate, Halcion,
and codeineoten up to sixteen capsules or tablets o each per day.
I dont know why she suered a relapse, said Patricia Seaton. I
suspect it had more to do with her essentially unhappy and lonely lie,
coupled with the genuine pain she elt rom her various surgeries, than
with any real lack o willpower on her part.
Generally speaking, it was a dicult time or Eliabeth, and those
who knew her elt powerless in the ace o so much emotional and
physical pain. Eliabeths physicians probably reacted the same way.
Given Eliabeth Taylors superannuated position in the world, when
she told you she elt pain, you did what you could to help.