“Richard and I have talked so long about Martha and George,” said Elizabeth Taylor, “that sometimes we feel like we’ve become them.”
It is precisely this passionate identification of the actors with the characters they played in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which gives the film, released in June 1966, its enduring appeal.
George and Martha’s taunts, challenges, and challenges and what Philip Gefter, in his well-researched book, calls “a series of escalating antagonisms” seem to enshrine Burton and Taylor’s real-life relationship.
Because Edward Albee’s play, which opened to great acclaim on Broadway in October 1962 and ran for 644 sold-out performances, is a study in the ugly reality of marriage: too much proximity, too much mutual self-knowledge, too much discord.
Love, as Albee describes it, involves considerable hatred, bitterness, sadomasochism, and intermittent loneliness. When George begins to lament some of this, Martha interrupts him: ‘Can’t you stand it? That’s why you married me!
Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton after winning the Oscar for the film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Elizabeth as Martha and Richard as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, released in June 1966.
The European theatrical release was directed by Ingmar Bergman, who had been married five times and whose subsequent television series Scenes From A Marriage is greatly indebted to Albee.
Albee’s intention was to create a drama that was sardonically opposed to the insipid romantic comedies of Doris Day or the strident farce of Lucille Ball. He wanted to break with sentimental illusions and his origins were clearly homosexual. As one of Albee’s partners, Terrence McNally, said, “We were drunk all the time.” We had a lot of fun. And we had many fights. And a lot of sex.
Therefore, it is perfectly possible to see Martha as a man dressed as a woman (one of her lines is: “I’m loud and vulgar, and I wear pants in this house because someone has to”) and Taylor, in the 1960s , had become a great country pimp.
She is always on the move like Martha, always moving forward, munching on a chicken thigh or crushing ice cubes. She never lets herself be intimidated or broken, she is full of strength, she never subordinates herself. Taylor earned a stone and a half for playing the role and spent two hours every day putting on makeup, becoming “a frustrated, middle-aged, unhappy” or man-eating woman.
Warner Brothers paid Albee the current equivalent of $4 million for the film rights, with the intention of casting either Bette Davis as Martha and James Mason or (oddly enough) Peter Sellers as George.
However, commercial considerations steered the studio toward Burton and Taylor, who after Cleopatra were bigger than Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Cuban missiles. The producer and screenwriter was Ernest Lehman, responsible for North By Northwest and Hitchcock’s The Sound Of Music.
He is the unsung hero of this story, keeping the peace and doing his best to control the “wildly indulgent whims” of his cast. He soon began taking tranquilizers and amphetamines, while Taylor continued to harass him for trinkets.
Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolf? is a film about the horrible reality of marriage: too much proximity, too much mutual self-knowledge, and too much discord.
“I have no intention of spending my own money on an actress who receives a million dollars for her performance,” he stated boldly. Lehman relented and gave her an antique turquoise and gold pendant at the farewell party. Lehman also had to endure the whims of Mike Nichols, who, although a lauded director of Neil Simon comedies on the stage, had never made a film.
Nichols considered himself “an undeniable genius” and claimed to share with Albee “a feeling of alienation and unhappiness” about life in general.
Nichols, a German Jewish refugee with alopecia (Taylor advised him on wigs), was very married, raised Arabian horses, and lived on the former Cole Porter estate in Hollywood.
“Luxury was certainly to his liking,” says Gefter. He appreciated invitations to big parties: she bragged to Lehman about dinners with Julie Andrews or Andre Previn. He was moody and neurotic. “Your rage and anger make me uncomfortable,” Lehman finally had to tell him.
The Burtons arrived a fortnight late and rehearsals finally began on July 6, 1965. The dressing rooms were palatial: suites with kitchens and grand pianos. Taylor’s was yellow and white; Burton’s wood paneling “with an old English feel.”
Floral arrangements and Dom Perignon cases abounded, as did a host of the Burtons’ personal press agents, lawyers, dressers, secretaries, and costume designers. There were bodyguards and additional security. ‘Elizabeth and I are quite well-known. If we burp, they photograph it,” Burton explained. As with royalty, studio staff were not to address the stars unless they initiated a greeting first.
Burton’s main concern on set was insisting that a cinematographer and a makeup artist successfully conceal his pockmarked skin. “He can’t perform to the best of his ability unless he feels absolutely confident in it,” Lehman noted.
The first cameraman, Harry Stradling, was fired and replaced by Haskell Wexler, who won an Oscar for his deep-toned black-and-white lighting. Once the cameras started rolling, Burton remained skeptical and disenchanted. ‘The truth is that this movie is going to be a real failure anyway. It is poorly written. It is badly acted. It’s misdirected.’
He was somewhat drunk when he publicly uttered those words. Taylor also drank too much, which increased his irritability and increased tension. However, Burton and Taylor were always found in a drunken state and in extreme states.
On display in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Therefore, as the characters search for each other, it is the delirium of her: emotions ranging from loyalty to betrayal, tenderness to unbridled contempt, consideration to rejection.
On and off screen, Taylor and Burton can be seen “returning to their favorite pastimes, fighting and having sex.” Or have sex and fight. Burton actually once said, “I love arguing with Elizabeth, except when she’s naked.” And as Taylor said, “I was the happy recipient of her reputation as a man who knew how to please a woman.”
With a contractual debt of $100,000 for each week of production that went over schedule, Taylor easily ensured that he went over schedule and over budget, which reached $70 million in today’s figures, for a film with a small set and no scenes. of action.
The Burtons didn’t arrive until ten, had lunch until five, and finished at six with Bloody Marys. “Mike, old friend, sorry I’m late,” said Burton, who with Taylor had been entertaining the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Taylor also had days off due to menstrual cramps and a tooth abscess.
Although the National Catholic Film Office objected to the 11 ‘damns’, seven ‘b******s’, five ‘sons of bitches’ and assorted ‘fuck you’ and ‘fuck you’ , Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She earned 13 Oscar nominations.
Taylor rightfully won Best Actress. (Although Gefter says that she had “never played such a psychologically complex role,” I vehemently disagree; perhaps her beauty had blinded people to how good she always was, going back to National Velvet.) Burton was robbed of the Best Actor statuette by Paul Scofield for A Man for All Seasons.
I was fascinated to learn that Burton, at that time in Camelot, had been offered the role of George in the original New York stage production, but was already on his way to Rome to play Antony in Cleopatra and make his date with destiny.
Roger Lewis’s Erotic Vagrancy: All About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, published by Riverrun, is available now.