92 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JUNE 2018
REAR VIEW
TAYLOR & BURTON:
ROMANCE OF THE CENTURY
By ANNIE WILKINSON
It started in January 1962 on the
set of Cleopatra. Two stars acted
out their scene, sparks ignited,
and all thoughts of marital fidelity
vanished. As Vanity Fair reported,
“There was more going on than just
electricity.”
They were already famous.
Elizabeth Taylor, she of the violet
eyes and raven hair, the child actress
who blossomed into the most
beautiful woman in the world and
won multiple Academy Awards and
Golden Globes, played the seductive
Egyptian queen. Cast as dashing
Roman General Marc Antony,
Richard Burton was a braggartly
sexy Welshman and Shakespearean
actor with perfect elocution and a
philandering heart.
In 1962, divorce meant disgrace
and affairs were taboo. The newly
invented birth control pill was
outlawed in many states, the media
was not celebrity-obsessed, and
the internet was science fiction. In
that prudish atmosphere, the stars
poked a hornet’s nest of public
attitudes as cameras focused on
their Manhattan, Europe, Africa,
and Long Island romance.
HELL BREAKS LOOSE
Like the real Cleopatra and
Antony, Taylor and Burton littered
their path with broken alliances.
Taylor, 29, many times married,
was branded a homewrecker for
stealing crooner Eddie Fisher away
from her best friend, actress Debbie
Reynolds, in 1958. Debbie and
Eddie had the perfect marriage with
two kids (including actress Carrie
Fisher) and were dubbed “America’s
Sweethearts.” Taylor persisted,
though, marrying Eddie Fisher in
1959. They vacationed off Fire Island
on their yacht, but things soured by
1961. Enter Burton.
“From those first moments in
Rome we were always madly and
powerfully in love,” Taylor said,
in Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor,
Richard Burton, and the Marriage
of the Century.
After their scene, Burton boasted
that he would bed Taylor within
two days. It reportedly took five
days. He bragged to others about his
conquest.
Burton, 34, had won a Tony Award
for his portrayal of King Arthur in
Broadway’s Camelot. He had been
married for 12 years to actress Sybil
WIlliams but had casual affairs.
Beguiled by Taylor, he fell into an
un-casual romance.
All hell broke loose: The scandal
was leaked in February 1962 and
Fisher fled. Sybil Burton found out
and fled. Twentieth-Century Fox
halted production for days at a daily
cost of $100,000.
Then-U.S. Rep. Michael A. Feighan
(D-Ohio), calling the tryst “a public
outrage,” lobbied to revoke Burton’s
visa, saying Burton’s presence would
be “detrimental to the morals of
the youth of the nation.” An “open
letter” from the Vatican accused
Taylor of “erotic vagrancy.” Pursued
by paparazzi, vilified by the Vatican,
Taylor divorced Fisher and married
Burton in Montreal in March 1964.
LONG ISLAND IDYLL
The couple retreated to LI. In 1964,
she and Burton honeymooned for a
weekend at a waterside guesthouse
at Pembroke, a since-demolished
Glen Cove estate.
They made 11 movies together
including Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf in 1966, for which Taylor won
the Best Actress Oscar. They were
observed dining at Rothmann’s
in East Norwich and having a bite
with a local liquor store owner while
sitting on stools at the Quogue
Fountain of Youth soda shop.
They stayed in a Quogue carriage
house at the Shinnecock Road estate
of Aaron Frosch, their attorney
and business manager. They visited
Hamptons galleries and played
tennis at the Quogue Field Club
during the summer of 1967. Taylor
shopped at the A&P on Montauk
Highway.
“Quogies were dazzled by the couple
at the height of their stardom,”
reported the Quogue Blogue.
THE BATTLING
BURTONS
Neighbors heard the couple arguing,
over Burton’s temper, or alcoholism,
or cheating, or Taylor’s anger,
drug addiction, alcoholism. They
battered one another emotionally
and physically.
They divorced in June 1974, then
remarried in 1975. Their final
divorce was in July 1976. In Quogue,
Burton insisted they weren’t
separated. Taylor partied at Calvin
Klein’s Fire Island waterfront home,
where she reportedly left towels
stained with lipstick and makeup.
In the late 1990s, she vacationed at
Andy Warhol’s Montauk summer
estate. Taylor and Burton married
again—but not each other.
On Aug. 5, 1984, Burton died at
age 58 of a cerebral hemorrhage; he
rests in Wales. Taylor died 27 years
later at age 79 in 2011. Many say that
Burton’s love letter written three
days before dying was buried with
Taylor in Forest Lawn Cemetery in
California. Burton’s last wife, Sally
Hay Burton, disputes that, saying
that her lawyer was told by other
lawyers that there was no letter.
The truth rests with Taylor and
Burton.
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra.