7: Elizabeth Taylor, Ash Wednesday, & Dunne's Hollywood Exit

Done & Dunne

Hemlock Creatives

History, True Crime

4.7 • 630 Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this Done and Dunne episode, Alicia talks about the lynchpin in Dominick's First Act Hollywood downfall, occurring during the filming of Ash Wednesday, starring the legendary Elizabeth Taylor. Dunne profiles Elizabeth for Vanity Fair in December 1985's "The Red Queen". Theirs is a tale of friendship, respect, and recovery and an excellent example of the kind of information Dominick is able to solicit in his pieces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Dun & Dunn. I'm Alicia, your hostess on this journey All Things Dominic Dunn.
0:06.8	In this episode, I am delighted to weave a tale for you about Elizabeth Taylor and her influence and impact on our man Dominic Dunn.
0:16.4	They know each other from the Hollywood days and have a long history together. Elizabeth Taylor will be
0:21.8	portrayed in Dunn's fiction work in a character named Fay Converse, most notably in an
0:28.7	inconvenient woman, and another city, not my own. Elizabeth Taylor is a legend, y'all, and there is a
0:35.3	whole other narrative about the time that she and Nick spin
0:38.9	together. Much of this occurs in Dominic Dunn's last produced film, Ash Wednesday, which stars
0:45.4	Elizabeth Taylor. Today we're going to talk about that film, their enduring friendship,
0:50.7	how Dominic Dunn gets ousted from Hollywood because of that film and the legend that Elizabeth
0:57.3	Taylor is. Let's investigate. Let's back up the timeline just a little bit and remember that Dominic and Lenny separate in the late 1960s.
1:20.9	Their divorce is done by 1969.
1:23.9	And Dominic Dunn will have a number of years to descend into the depths of his addiction in Hollywood
1:29.7	before he takes off for that Oregon hideaway recovery cabin in 1978.
1:36.4	There's almost a decade that he has.
1:39.2	Filled with some successes and a lot of failures.
1:42.4	He's awkward with his kids.
1:46.0	He's having fallouts with his family.
1:53.0	He is struggling with his own sexuality and a looming drug and alcohol addiction that is deepening by the day.
2:04.3	Nick knows he's going downhill. And he will talk much later in his career about how he writes assholes so well. He says it's because he was one.
2:11.6	He was a climber. He was a master, self-described at acquiring people. People liked him, and he liked people, especially if you were rich or famous. He says he was always putting up a front, covering all of
2:19.0	his insecurities about the failure of his marriage, and manifesting that into a lot of drugs and
2:26.9	a lot of seedy adventures. He would come home alone and drink late into the night. He's not only drinking during this time, he is also producing.
	...

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