Liz by Heymann

8/7/2019 Liz by Heymann

1/13


2/13

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


3/13

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


4/13

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


5/13

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


6/13

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


7/13

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


8/13

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


9/13

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.


10/13

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-


11/13

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,


12/13

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


13/13

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.

Date post:	08-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	atria-books
View:	221 times
Download:	0 times

Liz by Heymann

Documents