Elizabeth Taylor’s New Romance

A few months ago Elizabeth Taylor took the stand in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County to file for divorce against Nicky Hilton, her husband of eight months.

She was extremely overwrought. When she spoke, her usually clear voice was an inaudible whisper, so low and lost, that the court’s shorthand reporter protested, “I can’t hear a single word.”

Judge Thurmond Clarke leaned over. “Please keep your voice up,” he asked. “Just make believe my reporter is a little hard of hearing.”

The spectators giggled, but Liz lowered her face into her gloved hands, and when she raised it a moment later, it was covered with tears.

“May I be permitted to ask some leading questions?” her lawyer inquired of the judge.

“It might be a good idea,” the judge suggested, “if you put the testimony into the record in your own words and had Miss Taylor confirm them.”

So Liz was saved the anguish of giving direct testimony. She merely confirmed her lawyer’s contentions.

According to. Liz’s lawyer, Nicky “spent most of the time away from her when they were in France on their honeymoon. He spent night after night at the Casino and remained away until five or six in the morning and forced her to take a cab back alone. This also was true after they returned to Los Angeles.”

Judge Clarke asked Liz if all this were correct, and she mumbled, “Yes, sir, it is.”

Attorney Berger then went on to tell how Nicky had been violent, abusive, indifferent, and argumentative towards his wife, and Liz confirmed it all.

After the divorce was granted, Liz; who had not asked for alimony, rushed into the arms of Jules Goldstone, her attorney. He helped escort her into the judge’s chambers. She stayed with the judge for an hour while a group of reporters waited outside. When she emerged, she had regained her composure. A reporter rushed up to question her.

“Any truth,” he asked, “about you being romantically interested in Stanley Donen?”

Liz fixed the reporter with a look she probably reserves for madmen. “That,” she stated flatly, “is absolutely absurd.”

Twenty-four hours later, Liz and Donen, her 26-year-old director—were dining out at Mocambo. Two tall lemonades were poised in front of them, but they went unnoticed. Stanley was gazing at Liz, and if she wasn’t dazzled by his ardent expression, she was giving a great performance.

The following night they were eating together at La Rue’s, with the same rapt expression in their eyes.

That week-end Liz drove down to Palm Springs with Barbara Thompson—her trial witness and Marshall Thompson’s wife. When asked if Stanley Donen would drive with them or whether she planned on meeting him at the winter resort, Liz’s answer was a quick, “Of course not.”

That weekend he and Liz were holding hands at the Doll House, a Palm Springs restaurant. Since then, they’ve been seen together everywhere. They were practically inseparable during the month of February. You could find them together at night clubs, restaurants, movies, on the sei, and there seemed to be an excitement about them that only romance can create.

Stanley says, “I’ve known Liz for years—eyer since she was a kid on the lot. I think she’s swell, a lot of fun, but all this talk about our being serious is a lot of bunk.

“Reporters say we fell in love while I directed her in Love Is Better Than Ever. Thats not true. Why do we spend a lot of time together?

“Well, we enjoy each other. Liz is good company and we have a lot in common. Her whole life’s been spent in show business and so has much of mine.

“I can’t talk about the future because I don’t know anything about it. Liz won’t be free until January, 1952: An awful lot ean happen in a year. Besides, I’m still married, at least technically.

“Why reporters keep trying to make a big romance out of us I don’t know. Right now, we’re seeing a lot of each other, sure. But that’s probably because we’ve both just been through a couple of unhappy marriages.”

Interest in Donen has risen since he’s been dating Liz, and people are naturally curious about his background. He is a protegé of Gene Kelly. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina, April 13, 1925, and was raised there, attending Columbia High School and spending a few months at the State University.

Deciding that college wasn’t for him, he headed for New York and with great luck, landed a job in the dancing chorus of Pal Joey.

Gene Kelly was the star of that show, and he took a liking to this tall, thin Southern boy with the dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. “You’ve got a lot of talent, kid,” he told Stanley one day. “Stick with this business and you’ll be a fine dancer.”

Stanley stuck. He got a job in Best Foot Forward, a Broadway show in which June Allyson had a bit part.

When Best Foot moved to Hollywood via an MGM purchase, Stanley came along. “I danced in the chorus,” he recalls, “and then stayed on, acting as an assistant dance director to Chuck Walters, Jack Donohue, and Don Loper. I used to see Liz Taylor around the lot—she was only 11 at the time. I was only 20 or so, and we used to say ‘Hello,’ which is about all you can say to an ll-year-old girl.”

Fortunately for Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly was employed by MGM, too, so that in Gene he had his number-one booster. Gene kept going around the lot day after day telling producers to give Stanley a chance as a director.

“Give him a chance yourself,” an executive told Kelly one day. “I’m too tired.”

When Columbia borrowed Kelly to stage the dances for Cover Girl, he brought Stanley Donen with him. Stanley was so good an assistant that Columbia held onto him for two years, and MGM brought him back to collaborate with Gene as dance director on Anchors Aweigh.

Stanley then served as a dance director on ten more Metro pictures, while Liz Taylor was growing up and dating Glenn Davis, Bill Pawley, and several others.

Donen’s love life seemed limited to work until he met Jean Coyne, a young dancer who’d first taken dancing lessons from Gene Kelly in his cellar studio in Pittsburgh. Jean had come to Hollywood and was working with Stanley as a dancer. “The next thing you know,” Donen says, “we got married.

“It was in April of ’48, and the marriage lasted a year. Jean and I’ve been separated almost a year now.”

In fact, Stanley Donen and his wife decided to take separate paths just a few weeks before Liz Taylor married Nicky Hilton at the Church of the Good Shepherd.

While Stanley’s domestic affairs were falling apart, his career was blooming. He and Gene were handed the directorial reins of On The Town, and when that picture made a fortune, Donen was given the full directorship of Royal Wedding.

Fred Astaire, who starred in that with Jane Powell, praised him highly and MGM assigned him to Love Is Better Than Ever.

When Liz Taylor reported to Stanley for work on this film, she knew that her marriage to Hilton had been a failure. Stanley Donen knew the same thing about his marriage to Jean Coyne—so that at the outset these two had something in common.

It may seem strange, but this particular mutuality—the end served as the basis of more second marriages than any other one factor in Hollywood.

This is not to say that Liz Taylor will become Mrs. Stanley Donen when her divorce becomes final. But it does mean that Stanley understands her problems, her situation, her frame of mind at this moment better than anyone else.

All during the making of the movie, Liz was upset. She’d left Hilton, she’d moved out of her mother’s house, she was living in her stand-in’s apartment, and yet Donen got her to act as if she were sublimely ecstatic.

Love Is Better Than Ever was finished on January 12th. Liz Taylor obtained her divorce on January 29th. The very next day Liz and Sian started going out together publicly.

A week later, Stan’s wife, Jean Coyne, decided to leave New York where she’s been living, come to Hollywood and discuss divorce with him.

By the time you read this, the chances are that Stanley Donen may be free to marry again.

Liz Taylor says that her thoughts these days are concentrated exclusively on her career, that marriage and men are farthest from her mind.

That may be true during the daytime, but in the evening it’s a different story.

Liz, if anything, has always been the kind of girl who’s been in love with love. Everytime she’s dated a boy, he’s become her steady. A manless life for her, for any period of time, no matter how short, would not be of her choosing.

She may say, “There’s absolutely nothing between Stanley Donen and me. Were just colleagues who work together.” But the truth is that with a little luck Stanley Donen may come to occupy a very large part of her heart.

THE END

—BY MARSHA SAUNDERS

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE MAY 1951