Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello, welcome to the show. Just a little heads up, there are a couple instances of marital violence in this episode as well as substance abuse.

So adults, you may want to preview this before you let the little ears in on it. We of course keep everything as PG as possible, but they're listening. That's up to you.

Also, we recorded the first two sections as tornadic storms were coming through the area. So in addition to our connection being dropped, you won't hear any of that, but it was.

There's a little audio difference between the two of us, which corrects itself in section three, but I just wanted to give you notice that yes, we're aware of it. There isn't anything we can do about it. And that's why it's there, but we're safe and sound and neither of us lost our power.

Okay, hello and welcome to the show today. We are going to go back in to the life of Elizabeth Taylor and we should probably give you a little recap, though we really recommend as always that you go back and listen to section one for you.

Listen to this episode, but in case you're driving or otherwise occupied and cannot go back, here's a little recap. Elizabeth Taylor hit the movie screen at age nine. It was an immediate superstar.

We followed her through her child acting years, her easy leap into adult roles. We've got her up to her second marriage, her first one very young, very fast marriage to Nikki Hilton, her second marriage to actor Michael Wilding. This one produced two children.

We've followed her career, which has not gone down at all. It just keeps soaring even higher and higher. And when we left Elizabeth last, she was mourning the death of her friend Jane's Dean in a car accident. And then she helped save Montgomery Cliffs life when he was in a car accident.

So Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson were able to leave their marks in concrete in the Gromans Chinese theater sidewalk. James Dean would have been there, but alas, he had perished in his car accident.

So Elizabeth Taylor's career was looking up. She was getting more and more offers. She was more and more in the limelight. Her public life was going gangbusters, but her private life was sort of falling apart.

About the same time that Elizabeth was getting her very first Academy Award nomination for her work on the movie Rain Tree County. That's the one she was working on with my Montgomery Clifft when he got into his car accident. Her marriage just dissolved.

She divorced Michael Wilding. That's husband number two. And that didn't seem to be any animosity at all. They had just been growing apart. Their interests were diverging. Like sometimes they do. In fact, she said the following of him. He was one of the nicest people I have ever known.

But I'm afraid I gave him rather a rough time. I sort of impact him and probably wasn't mature enough for him. You know what? Clear eyes are good to be back. They just party ways. They had children together. They would always be in each other's lives to some degree.

But by Acondios, Michael Wilding, husband number two and within an extremely short period of time, Elizabeth Taylor married producer. And I guess the word might be impressario.

Mike Todd, they were married by the mayor of Acapulco. Why not? You know what I think of when I think of the word Acapulco children of the seventies. Can you say it with me? The love.

They were always talking at Acapulco. I wanted to be a cruise director so bad because Julie's life just seems so exotic and fantastic and on the move and doing creative stuff and yeah.

The only reason I was allowed to see the love boat. I mean, I was too young to watch the love boat. But my parents were in the symphony. And the whatever night the love boat was on was a symphony performance night. And the babysitters always let me watch love book and fantasy.

I had another show I had no business watching.

Well, I watched them as I was getting ready to go out.

There you go. As I have a few years on you.

The day after her divorce from Michael Wilding was final. Mike Todd, who Elizabeth knew professionally, she knew him from Hollywood parties. One day he called her in for a meeting.

...