How could I let the month of love pass without a post on the greatest love story of the 20th Century?

Liz and Dick.  Taylor and Burton.  The Battling Burtons.

Well, I just can’t.

And besides, yesterday was her birthday.  She turned 79!!!!

The first time Richard Burton met Elizabeth Taylor, he wasn’t impressed, and she thought he was “moody, sullen, and rude.”

He mentioned to a friend that night that he thought “she was so dark, she probably shaves.”

She told someone that his pock marked face added to his ruggedness, and he “could have been handsome.”

Could have been handsome?  Mildred Carson just rolled over in her grave.

Their second meeting was on a movie set in Rome.  They had been cast as the “most famous lovers of all time”, Marc Anthony and Cleopatra.

20th Century Fox had been after Taylor to play Cleo for years, time was a wastin’ and Fox knew if they were going to make the move with her, it had to be soon.

Elizabeth, married to Eddie Fisher at the time, was in Paris.  Spyrous Skouras, the head of Fox called once again, badgering Taylor to play the Queen of the Nile.  She didn’t want the part, and casually said, “Tell, him I’ll do it for a million dollars.”

He said yes.

The rest is history.

Fox went backrupt as the cost of Taylor’s salary rose to $7 million (equal to $47 million in today’s economy) due to production delays and other problems.  According to “Forbes Magazine” it remains most expensive movie ever made when adjusted for inflation.  Other publications and the like place it third.  If made today, it would cost over $300 million.

The major outcome of the film was the furious love affair of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  Both married to others at the onset, it was le scandale, the gossip columnists’ dream come true and it created the paparazzi.

I know, I’ve talked about all of this before.

Burton and Taylor started an affair while in Rome, Eddie got pissed and went back to New York, Sybil Burton played the wronged woman to the hilt, the Pope condemned them, calling Taylor “a sexual vagrant” and “an itinerant homewrecker”, and one US Congressman demanded that they be declared Persona Non Grata, and refused entry into the US.  She was from the who are you kidding not so scandal free state of Georgia.

Well, now, aren’t we judemental?

(Author hangs head in shame.)

But, it was a mess, and it was all anyone ever talked about!

Nevertheless, when Burton landed on the set, usually hung-over or still drunk from the night before, Taylor was the one made him hot coffee and got him ready for the shoot.

Their chemistry developed and the movie rushes were heating UP the screen. 

Taylor/Fisher marriage was still there, but the cracks in their relationship were showing.  Burton’s wife, Sybil was also an actor.  The romance of the century became the scandal of the year next 2 decades. 

There was always drama; Fisher once threatened Burton with a pistol and Taylor took an overdoes of sleeping pills. The paparazzi followed them everywhere.

Finally Sybil Burton consented to the divorce.

They married the first time, yes, the first time, on March 15, 1964.

Their marriage was passionate, played out in the press, and littered with continual drinking, quarrels and even physical fights.  Years of headline making gifts, trips, parties, art, films, and fights kept the tabloids in business.  They were easy targets, and they were a smorgasbord of news for gossip hungry readers.

They divorced on my 22nd birthday, June 26, 1974. 

I was crushed.

They remarried in October of 1975 somewhere in Africa.  But, alas, the greatest love affair of the 20th Century was not to be, they divorced again in July of 1976.

In the book Furious Love, the authors point out that neither of them realized during the romance and marriage just how unrealistic their lives were.  Taylor, while filming a scene set in Las Vegas grocery, was appalled at the price of meat, and asked, “How do other people eat?”

Burton died at 58.  That paparazzi hounded Elizabeth even to his gravesite.

The trips, the yachts, the furs, diamonds, travel, and lifestyle were all normal – to them.

Their passion – was most certainly not!

Dame Elizabeth, what’s not to love?

My lovely niece, Mackenzie has never asked me for a thing.  But her comment on yesterday’s post got me to thinking.

So, Mac, here goes.

First of all, Henry VII looked about as much like Eric Bana as I do.

Henry VIII was never meant to be king.  He was the second son, and his older brother Arthur was supposed to inherit the throne from their evil father, Henry VII.  

Arthur was married to Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, King and Queen of Spain.  Not willing to let Catherine’s dowry and the political ties and protection that came with a royal union between the two nations slip away, Henry VII conned the Pope into saying the marriage was never consummated, and that it wouldn’t be incest if Henry VIII and Catherine were married. 

More than likey, the marriage was never consummated.  Arthur was 15 years old when they married, and died a mere 20 weeks into the union.

So, Henry VIII had a bride.  The first of many. 

I doubt seriously that Henry VIII knew what love was.  He married six times, hell bent on a male heir.

After 20 years of marriage to Catherine and several affairs, he was smitten, some say bewitched by Anne Boleyn.  He’d already fathered a bastardhad a relationship with Anne’s sister Mary.  Once she became preggers, he cast her off, and Anne and Mary’s social climbing ambitious parents pushed Anne into the arena of Henry’s affections.  

Anne was no fool.  She knew that if Henry got ‘what he wanted’, she’d be done for.  So, she set her cap on being Queen.  Catherine would have to go. 

Her plan was for Henry to divorce Catherine.  An idea way ahead of its time, there was seemingly no way out of the marriage.

But Henry, once the “Defender of the Faith” against Martin Luther, cast Catherine aside, broke with the Pope, and married an already knocked UP pregnant Anne.

It didn’t go well.  Her first child wasn’t the longed for male, it was Elizabeth.  I’m sure had Henry known what a great Queen she would make, things would have gone better for Anne.  But his pleasure turned to displeasure with the stillborn and miscarried males in her womb. 

Anne had to go.  Charges were trumped UP, Anne was branded an adulteress, which was treason…really, we can have no bastards on the throne…and she, her brother and a few other men met a gruesome death on the chopping block.

Henry had already fallen for Jane Seymour, the sister of another social climbing ambitious aristocratic family.  Some say Henry may have loved Jane, but again, I find it unlikely that he had a clue as to what love really was. 

Henry was riding with Jane when the French swordsman took Anne’s head off in the tower courtyard.

She too was pregnant.  Henry’s swimmers were quite healthy, dispite the syphillis coursing through his body. 

Not willing to be alone, and with only one sickly male heir, Henry cast his net for another bride. 

He decided to go Royal again.

Enter Anne of Cleves.   There is no accurate likeness of Anne of Cleves.  She was butt ugly, and Henry, UPon seeing her, said, “…she pleases me not…”  but the marriage took place anyway.  After the wedding night, Henry told Thomas Cramner, the Archbishop of London, ”I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse”.   Henry wanted to have the man who found her and pushed her UPon him executed, but no one could find an English law prohibiting “hook-UPs with ugly chicks”.  Other charges were found, and Cromwell, Henry’s friend and advisor for years, met his death at the chopping block.   Anne of Cleves, being nobody’s fool, agreed to an chesney/zelwegger annulment, high-tailed it to the country estate Henry generously gave her and nodded and smiled when she was referred to as “the royal sister”. 

I sUPpose that country life is better than no life at all.

Of course, Henry wanting not to be alone, again started looking. 

Enter Catherine Howard, the cousin of Anne Boleyn, and the daughter of yet another social climbing ambitious family…er practically the same family as the Boleyns, she was Elizabeth Howard’s niece, Elizabeth was Anne Boleyn’s mother.  

She married Henry a quick three weeks after his annulment to Anne of Cleves was final.  Rumor had it she was knocked UP bearing a royal heir, and all the court was a twitter with the news.  Catherine was 16, Henry was almost 50, and sported a 52 inch waist.

The once handsome king was now a complete troll.

Ok. this one really was a slut.  She had her first sexual relationship in 1536, at the age of TWELVE!  He was her music teacher, and when she became Queen, he came with her as a musician in her household.  

She also made the beast with two backs with Frances Dereham, a secretary in the employ of her step-grandmother, the Duchess of Norfolk.   It is most probable that she had romantic liasons while Queen, which would be treason.  She never admitted to adultery, but did admit that her “behavior as a young girl was unbecoming her rank, and unbecoming to a Queen of England.”

Ya think?

Francis I of France, who kept not one, but TWO mistresses, wrote UPon hearing of her death, in a letter to Henry that he regretted “the lewd and naughty behaviour of the Queen”.  He went on to add the advice that ”The lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men”.

When Sir William Paget told Francis of Catherine’s misconduct, he exclaimed “She hath done wondrous naughty!”

Well, I sUPpose.

Catherine was found guilty of adultery and treason – big surprise – and executed with one single stroke of the axe.  She’s burried near Anne Boleyn. 

And then there’s the lucky one, Catherine Parr. 

She outlived Henry.  She was Henry’s sixth wife, the fourth commoner to be married to him, and she was married before.   Twice!   And after Henry, she married again.    But, she almost didn’t make it through to widowhood.  England remained decidedly Catholic even after the break with Rome;  it’s just there was no Pope, only Henry, the head of the church, the spiritual-syphilitic scion of the synod.  Catherine’s ardent Protestantism was anathema to many.  Charges were trumped against her, but she and Henry worked everything out, and the warrant for her arrest was never signed.  She was also the most political savvy of Henry’s wives.  

She married her old love, Thomas Seymour, brother-in-law of Henry, brother of his 3rd wife Jane, and BTW, uncle to the new King, Edward VI.  The step-son/nephew/King had to give his permission for the marriage.  He did, and when the news broke, it was no small scandal.  Henry had been dead for six months.  Well, people didn’t live all that long back then, and no one wanted to waste anytime. 

 Seymour was an old boyfriend of Queen Catherine’s, they got married, she got pregnant for the first time at 35, and died a few days after giving birth to her daughter, Mary, named for her step-daughter, Mary Tudor, Henry’s first child.

Henry had at least four other children, all bastards, 2 boys, 2 girls. 

Oddly enough, via legitimate relationships, Henry and all six of his wives were descendants of the same man, King Edward I, a.k.a Edward Longshanks, King of England. 

Not much of a love story…but one heck of a story at any rate.