Cinema: Big Dig

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(5 of 6)

For months there was nobody quite like Glenn. Even Prince Philip, whom Elizabeth met in London, could not undo the gift-wrapping on her heart. "English girls think he's so good-looking," hummed Elizabeth. "I guess our standards are just different."

Suddenly it was all over and Glenn was gone, deftly recovering his fumbled gold football. It seemed to friends of the family that Elizabeth's mother felt no pain.

Mother is paid to watch things closely. To fortify her natural inclinations to protect her child, M-G-M pays Sara Taylor $250 a month (the usual fee for "movie mothers") to guard its property, which one M-G-Magnate has spaciously valued at "$50,000,000, maybe even $100,000,000." Elizabeth herself makes only $1,000 a week, which is raisins to the plums she should soon be getting. Next year her salary goes up to $1,500 under the present contract, which has three years to run. Bonuses may add to her take.

Mother goes to work with Elizabeth every day, sits quietly in a corner of the sound stage and instructs her daughter with nods and hand signals. Says she: "Elizabeth and I are so close, we practically think as one person. Elizabeth is now mature enough to make any important decisions herself, and I want her to do so, and when she does make a decision I always find it's the same thing I would have done . . . We always seem to agree on everything."

Bill Instructs. Mother & daughter agreed on William D. Pawley Jr., the 28-year-old son of the transit magnate and former ambassador to Brazil. Elizabeth met Bill last March in Miami while she and Glenn were still doing their gossip-column hitch. Every afternoon for a week Bill gave her driving lessons, every night he took her to a party. During the Easter holidays he flew to the Coast. Last June, after school was out, mother & daughter flew to Miami to stay at the Pawleys'. There Elizabeth and Bill announced their engagement.

Back in Hollywood, Elizabeth has refused to let a little thing like a continent come between them. She writes Bill every day and has little long-distance chats with him almost as often. Cost of one recent call: $145. At first they vowed to have no other dates, but Elizabeth felt like such a wallflower at one of Cobina Wright's parties she had that rule made a little more flexible.

Elizabeth says she is quite certain that she and Bill will be married—someday. She refuses to be depressed by the fact that he is the vice president of a bus line in Florida, while her career is in Hollywood. They have not decided where to live, she says, but Bill is looking for a house in Miami, while she is scouting around California. "I've seen several houses," she chirps, "and they're all just the darlingest things." Mother smiles, and watches.

"Oh, Brother!" The day is coming soon, say some Hollywood seers, when Elizabeth may get fed up with being watched. They already see signs that she is trying her wings: she is tired of her Cadillac and wants another; she wants a mink stole; in Paris last winter she went on a clothes-buying spree and overdrew her checking account; in London she snapped back at her teacher, "Wouldn't it be nice if Miss Anderson dropped right through the floor!"