Growing Up a Star
THE LEGEND: Achieving fame in “National Velvet” at the age of 12, Elizabeth Taylor–actress, celebrity and AIDS activist–recalls school on the MGM lot and the making of “Giant” with Rock Hudson and James Dean.
Going to school at MGM was a nightmare. No two kids were the same age. You couldn’t even cheat and look over someone’s shoulder. I was a total daydreamer, and I was constantly rapped on the knuckles: “Elizabeth, stop daydreaming!” I’d go into the bathroom and do my daydreaming there. My teacher would say, “Elizabeth, you were in the bathroom 15 minutes.” I would say, “Oh, Miss McDonald, if you don’t believe me, I suggest you go in and smell.”
I was 14 or 15. When you were not shooting, you went to school. They made you do dancing lessons, singing lessons–things that were supposed to improve you as a performer. And when you were shooting you did your [school] work in a little black felt room on the set between takes. You were given 10 minutes of dedicated concentration. Then they came and knocked on the school shack, and you’d do your acting. When you’d go home at night, you’d have homework and lines to work on for the movie. It was very crazy.
I’d known Rock before we made “Giant” [in 1956], but not very well. I hadn’t met Jimmy Dean [before]. I adored them both. But Jimmy and Rock didn’t get along. Jimmy was thoroughly “Method.” Rock was riddled with an inferior- ity complex.
On “Giant,” Rock felt he was in with the big boys. And he was brilliant in it. But his looks hurt him a lot. It was like being a beautiful woman in Hollywood. If you were considered pretty, you might as well have been a waitress trying to act–you were treated with no respect at all. If you were ugly as sin, people were taken seriously. It was pretty awful in those days.
Jimmy was very introspective. He was very shy. He was a very sweet, deep, intelligent and funny young man. And he had suffered so much in his life–a horrendous childhood. You just wanted to put your arms around his wounds, and kiss all the harm away.
He wouldn’t play with us, he would act for us. He did his little–his old vaudeville tricks–especially if there were a lot of friends around. If we walked into a room and there was a sofa, he’d say, “Oh, you know there’s a secret passage behind that sofa,” and he’d pull the sofa out and walk down behind it and just disappear. Or we’d be walking down a street, and he’d put his head around the corner, and have his own arm come around and strangle himself. In restaurants, he would do the dance of the bread rolls from “The Gold Rush” and of course all the tables would applaud. He would love to ask for blue trout. They boil the trout alive so it turns blue and it still looks alive when it’s brought on the plate. As soon as the plate was put down, he’d go, “Oh, Emma,“and pick up the trout and kiss it on the lips, and we’d all yell, “Oh, Daddy!”
