Jacko, His Rise and Fall: The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson (48 page)

In the 80s, Michael was enjoying-or else detesting-the same kind of
scandalous fame she'd experienced during her love affair with her Cleopatra
costar, Richard Burton, in Rome. But now, instead of her escapades, it was
Michael's adventures-real or imagined-that dominated the headlines.

With the onset of age-Elizabeth was now fifty-two-her beauty was fading, although she still made a stunning presence.

Michael had even more money than she did, a reported $300 million in his
coffers, most of it from his hit album, Thriller. He was only twenty-six years
old. In spite of Elizabeth's long and successful career, she estimated, "I can
scare up only $80 million, if that."

When a maid in her Bel Air home announced that "Mr. Michael Jackson
is on the phone," the megastar was skeptical. "Why would Michael Jackson
be calling little of me?" she asked the maid, not expecting an answer. "A duet,
maybe? Tell him to call Diana Ross." The maid returned to the phone, but
came back soon. "No, it's really Mr. Jackson," she said. "I'd recognize that
girlie-man voice anywhere." Still thinking one of her friends was playing a
joke on her, Elizabeth got up to answer the phone.

But even after talking to Michael, she still wasn't convinced. Some of her
friends delivered great impersonations. But when fourteen tickets to Michael's
concert at Dodger Stadium on February 27 arrived, she was convinced that
she'd been talking to the star himself. "A perfect gift for Christopher," she told
her maid, "and I didn't have to pay a cent for it. He can invite all his young
friends."

When the concert began, Elizabeth was extremely disappointed with her
seats. Even though given the VIP box, she did not have a good view. After
twenty minutes, she rose to her feet and left.

When news of her walkout reached Michael backstage, he was devastated. He called her the next day and, as Elizabeth remembered, "We talked for
three hours. About everything. Mostly about having to go into the business
without having a chance to grow up first. We truly identified with each other.
I found him sweet and sensitive, not at all bizarre like the stories I've read in
the tabloids. Not that I read tabloids, of course, but stories-most often outright lies-are written about him. As you know, I've been a tabloid scandal for
years, so I know what he feels like. I told Michael that reporters must have
slept under my bed to write the crap they do."

In his biography, Moonwalk, Michael summed up his relationship with
Elizabeth this way: "I'm inspired by her bravery. She had been through so much and she is a survivor. I identify with her very strongly because of her
experiences as a child star. When we first started to talk on the phone, she told
me she felt like she had known me for years. I felt the same way."

Michael and Elizabeth were so compatible over the phone that they agreed
to meet in person. He invited her to the set of Captain EO. Later, she told her
friend, Roddy McDowall, "Being with Michael brings back memories of
Monty." She was referring, of course, to her loving relationship with her longtime companion, the homosexual actor, Montgomery Clift, with whom she'd
appeared in the 1951 A Place in the Sun.

On the set of Captain EO, Elizabeth seemed to revert to childhood herself.
She joined Michael and Little Jonathan in their messy food fights in his trailer.

A few weeks later, she invited Michael to her home, where he showed up
with a "date," Bubbles. "I find Michael very dear," Elizabeth later recalled.
"He was very childlike. Not childish. Childlike. I could identify with that. He
took me back to the days when I was shooting National Velvet with Mickey
Rooney. The only difference is that Mickey was sexually aggressive. I didn't
know at the time any details of Michael's private life, but he came across as
very asexual. In other words, I didn't think he was going to rape me. With
Rooney, you could never be sure."

If Michael were indeed gay, as rumors had it, he could find no more supportive friend and champion than Elizabeth herself. She had always been the
most gay-friendly actress in Hollywood, and in time she'd become an AIDS
activist.

In the months to come, Michael was seen frequently at Elizabeth's Bel Air
home, talking with her for hours at a time. He even established a "hot line" to
her manse so that they could talk at any hour of the day or night without going
through staff members.

Both Michael and Elizabeth liked ice cream and sampled various flavors.
He told her that he was considering manufacturing his own brand of ice cream
which "will be the tastiest on the market because of a secret ingredient."

"What secret ingredient? Mother's breast milk?" she asked facetiously.

"Something even more startling," he told her. "An ingredient I learned
about in Africa. The saliva of a rhinoceros."

When she received an invitation from President Nelson Mandela to join
Michael on his tour of South Africa, she gracefully declined, speaking to
Mandela personally. After putting down the phone with Mandela, Elizabeth
asked friends, "Why do famous people want to meet only famous people?"

When Michael returned from the tour, he resumed his friendship with
Elizabeth. Her staff often reported seeing him cuddled in her arms on a sofa
watching TV.

"It was hardly a love affair, as some tabloids have suggested," said Bert
Overfield, who covered this burgeoning friendship. "No sex. But lots of love.
Michael himself spoke publicly about Elizabeth. `She's my Wendy."' Michael
was referring to Wendy Darling, one of the characters in Sir James M. Barrie's
Peter Pan.

Michael believed so strongly in the Barrie story that he once confided a
secret to Elizabeth. "We can fly, you know. We just don't think the right
thoughts to levitate ourselves. I'm studying with these two gurus."

"Don't take me with you," she warned him. "I'm too much of a blimp to
get airborne. And don't jump off the Empire State Building, thinking you're
Superman. You might come crashing down to Earth."

In talks with Michael, Elizabeth learned of "deeper, darker secrets." He
claimed that he had the power to foresee his own death, "just knowing" that it
would come in the year 1998 when he turned forty. So confident was he in this
myth that he started to sign his name, "M.J., 1998." Recipients of his notes did
not know what the "1998" stood for, and rumors spread among Michael's fans
that the world was going to end that year.

Elizabeth, who did not turn out to be a prophet, told him, "With my history of ill health, I fear my world will come crashing down on me long before
1998."

During their long hours of conversation, he shared with her his fascination
with sideshow freaks of nature, those unfortunate souls who used to be showcased in circuses. He was especially intrigued with the lives of Siamese twins
and how they lived together. He was also fascinated with bearded ladies, and
he once showed her a picture of a two-headed baby. She found it grotesque.
"Sometimes I feel like a freak too," he said.

In spite of all these oddities, Elizabeth would one day announce to the
press, "He's the sanest person I know. There is nothing weird about him."

In describing his friendship with Elizabeth to friends, Michael claimed
that she was "a combination of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana in the
same body." At one point he even compared Elizabeth (the actress, not the
queen) to Mother Teresa.

When she heard that remark, Elizabeth said, "Michael had better check
with Teresa herself before making a comparison like that. I've been called
Jezebel, the Whore of Babylon, and a home-wrecker, but never Mother Teresa.
How can he compare me with that prune-faced Mother Teresa?"

When a rail-thin and much-altered Michael flew to London in March of
1985, he attended Madame Tussaud's to unveil his wax model. Elizabeth
turned down the invitation to accompany him. It was his first public visit to
England since the Jacksons toured there in 1979.

One member of the ever-cynical London press, noting a photograph of Michael displayed beside his wax figure, wrote, "I can't tell which one is the
dummy."

That wasn't all. Michael began to look whiter in all his photographs. The
press speculated that he was using Porcelana, a skin-bleaching cream. Several
writers for magazines commented on his "new, feminine look." One reporter
claimed, "Michael Jackson was never the most masculine of men. Now with
all the tweezing of the eyebrows, all that makeup, that heavy lipstick, I could
swear he's transgendered. I'm going to follow him to the toilet, assuming he
still uses the men's loo. I bet he'll go in a booth and squat to pee. Stay tuned,
dear readers."

Back in Los Angeles, Frank DiLeo referred to claims that Michael had
had his skin lightened by chemical, even surgical, means as "preposterous."

Quincy Jones commented publicly about Michael's "strangeness." He
said, "When you start in this business as young as he did, at age five, it's hard
to get a realistic point of view on life. Considering the background, and what
happened to him in recent years, he's surprisingly sane. I've seen dudes with
one record go absolutely nuts. You've got to have a strong center to handle it,
and I think Michael has that. I'd rather have a kid who's talking about the
Elephant Man's bones than one with a pound of cocaine. Any day!"

Michael called Barbara Walters to attack a 20/20 report that he was a
"plastic surgery addict." A hip, savvy news hen
like Walters wasn't fooled for a minute, but she
listened patiently as Michael explained that the
change in his looks was because of a change in
his diet.

MJ with his wax effigy

Later, Walters, or so it was rumored,
laughed off Michael's explanation, telling her
staff, "It's all those fruits and vegetables he
eats-the raisins, unsalted nuts. Or maybe it's
the popcorn. Yes, definitely. It's the popcorn
making him turn white."

In April of 1985, Michael also made the
news with another Elizabeth, this one the Queen
of England. Buckingham Palace announced that
the image of the Queen could not appear with
Michael Jackson on a stamp issued in the
British Virgin Islands. The statement claimed,
"The Queen will not appear on any stamp which
portrays a living person." It was suggested,
however, that if any image had to appear with
the Queen, William Shakespeare would be an acceptable candidate.

This rebuff was a great humiliation to Michael and a setback to him in one
of his desires. For years, he'd had a dream, as expressed to his aides, to have
Her Majesty confer British knighthood onto him. "No one deserves it more
than I do," Michael was alleged to have said.

The Queen had bestowed knighthood on such figures as Sir Winston
Churchill. And in the future, she'd elevate Michael's friend, Elizabeth Taylor,
to the status of Dame of the British Empire. Sources close to the Queen said
privately that Her Majesty appreciated the Jackson brothers performing before
her, but that she had no intention of granting him a British knighthood. If
reports are to be believed, the Queen found the whole idea "horrid."

Teaming with Lionel Richie, Michael composed a song for African
famine relief. With the help of Quincy Jones, Michael came up with the basic
music for "We Are the World." Demo cassettes of "We Are the World" were
sent to various artists who had agreed to participate in the recording. The initiative for the relief program was started by Bob Geldof with his "Band Aid"
in Britain. He spoke of seeing "120 people die slowly in front of you" after a
visit to Ethiopia.

To impress Richie with his A-list friends, Michael invited the star to join
him for dinner with Elizabeth Taylor. "We talked about isolation and what you
do when you're lonely," Richie later recalled. "Michael seemed amazed to
learn that Elizabeth often went out alone without security guards."

They told Richie that they sometimes disguised themselves and went to
see movies in Westwood. "We always sit in the back holding hands," Michael
said. "She's my new best girl." Richie wondered, but then rejected the possibility that Michael and Elizabeth were having a May-December affair.

From the very beginning of their relationship, Elizabeth had to be aware
of Michael's special friendships with young boys. She often saw Michael with
these children. Years later, in 1999, when she was asked about this, she didn't
really answer, but excused Michael by claiming, "He is magic. I've long
known that magical people, especially artists, have genuine eccentricity. That
is, perhaps, what drives them to create magic in media."

A friend of Elizabeth's, who did not want to be named, claimed, "Even if
Michael is nabbed as the King of Child Porn, Elizabeth will stick up for him
and make excuses. She's a gutsy broad, but also a very sweet woman and
fiercely loyal to her friends-take Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, and
James Dean, for example."

When Michael told Elizabeth he wanted to direct his next music video
himself, she called her friend Eddie Dmytryk "to show Michael the ropes." A
Ukrainian, the liberal director had made Crossfire in 1947. It had been one of
the first Hollywood pictures to decry anti-Semitism, for which he earned an Oscar nomination as best director. He later became a victim of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and an infamous member of the blacklisted
"Hollywood Ten."