Switzerland: Liz and Dick called out for Erotic Vagrancy by Pope

TWO

Intoxicated with post-coital bliss, Taylor and Burton head for a pool surrounded by cypress trees at a crumbling Italian villa near the sea. Alone, they jump into the pool completely naked and are startled by the appearance of dozens of paparazzi taking pictures of them from the trees. Taylor, furious, screams at the photographers, railing that politicians are ruining the world, children are starving, and “spaceships are circling the planet.” Huh? She then turns her back on the paparazzi and—wait for it—moons them.

While it’s the only time she bares her bottom for photographers, Taylor screams and carries on a lot throughout the script, in fact. So much so that it’s difficult to remain sympathetic toward Taylor at times. After Taylor and Burton are snubbed by society for their illicit romance, she screams at everyone at the Café Royale, calling them “hypocrites” and laying into an old man dining with his much younger lover. At another point, jealous that Burton will film The V.I.P.s with Sophia Loren, she screams at director Anthony Asquith on the phone until he drops Loren (“Sophia? Have you heard her mangle English?”) from the film and hires her instead.

THREE

Realizing that she can never have Burton for herself, his wife Sybil attempts suicide, and Burton rushes to her side, later trying to break it off with Taylor when he sees the effect their affair is having on his family. But after Burton tells her this news, Taylor then tries to kill herself, washing town an entire vial of pills with a bottle of vodka. “I’m removing myself,” Taylor slurs. “I don’t want to be ‘a responsibility.’” It’s all very melodramatic, particularly as Burton rushes her to the hospital, carrying her through the corridor and banging her head on a door in the process. But when they return to work on Cleopatra, it’s almost as though neither suicide attempt had occurred.

FOUR

The Vatican makes a pronouncement against Burton and Taylor’s extramarital affair, with the pope declaring them to be guilty of “erotic vagrancy” and further that their relationship is “a danger to the very institution of marriage.” While it’s played up here as a backseat conversation between the two lovers when Burton sees the news in a paper, the condemnation did actually occur in real life. Even more unbelievable but equally true: a member of Congress tried to have them banned from returning to the United States.

The pope’s public condemnation of the stars’ affair finally led to Taylor formally dissolving her marriage to Eddie Fisher. The script depicts Taylor making one final demand before she signed the divorce papers: she wants Fisher prohibited from continuing to perform “Cleo the Nympho of The Nile” in his act and further states that he can’t write a word about their marriage for twenty years.