Furious Love (43 page)

Elizabeth's expensive mink coat and her million-dollar Cartier (“Burton-Taylor”) diamond inspired disapproval for their extravagance.

Home at last, aboard their private luxury yacht,
The Kalizma,
purchased for $192,000 and rechristened for their three daughters, Kate, Liza, and Maria. It included fourteen bedrooms and carried a crew of nine.

Elizabeth, Richard, and their chauffeur, Gaston Sanz, with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. “The beating
they
took by the press made us look like chopped chicken liver,” Elizabeth said about the Windsors. [from the Private Archives of Dame Elizabeth Taylor]

Elizabeth and Richard on shore leave in Monte Carlo. In the early 1970s, the Burtons sailed the Mediterranean aboard the
Kalizma.
[Keystone/Gamma-Rapho]

Richard, Lucille Ball, and Elizabeth in “Lucy Meets the Burtons,” an episode of
Here's Lucy
on CBS. Richard hated working with the comedienne, considering it the nadir of his acting career. September 14, 1970. [CBS/Landov]

Elizabeth and Richard with Peter O'Toole
(left)
in Dylan Thomas's
Under Milk Wood,
a labor of love for Richard, who greatly admired his fellow Welshman and poet, and a loving gesture from Elizabeth. [Rex USA/BEImages]

Elizabeth and Richard costumed for the Proust Ball, given by Baron and Baroness Guy de Rothschild at the Chateau de Ferrières, Seine-et-Marne, 1972. [Courtesy of the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby's]

Hollywood royalty: Richard flanked by Elizabeth and Princess Grace of Monaco, at a Red Cross gala in Monaco, August 1971. [Keystone/Hulton/Getty Images]

“Get that woman out of my bed!” Elizabeth demanded when she suspected Richard was having a fling with one of his
Bluebeard
co-stars, Nathalie Delon. Photographed on the set of
Bluebeard,
filmed in Budapest in 1972. [© Odile Montserrat/Sygma/Corbis]

Richard made amends with the Taj Mahal diamond, a gift for Elizabeth's fortieth birthday, which he showed off in a press conference in Budapest. Elizabeth celebrated her birthday with a gala at the Hotel Duna International. [A.P. Images]

The Burtons separated after filming
Bluebeard
and Elizabeth took up with Henry Wynberg, Beverly Hills roué. Richard could never get his name quite right. [Friedrich Rauch/Camera Press/Retna Ltd.]

Richard flew from Rome to Los Angeles, where Elizabeth was being treated at University Hospital in December 1973, to replace Henry Wynberg at her bedside. The Burtons photographed leaving the hospital in December 1973. [© Tony Korody/Sygma/Corbis]