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BY RANDY FITZGERALD
Former Richmonder Woody Bedell went me one better with his own Elizabeth Taylor story. I reported yesterday on this blog my story of seeing Miss Taylor up close about 55 years ago, but my friend Woody, who now lives with wife Joyce in Chicago, actually once got a kiss from the star.
He emailed me from Chicago with an account of time spent with Elizabeth when her then-husband John Warner was first running for the US Senate. Woody was responsible for the overall logistical management of Elizabeth’s comings and goings during the campaign, and as such, spent a fair amount of time with her, including a lunch here and there. Being young then, he chatted with her easily and asked whatever popped into his head. One question was about the love of her life, whom she identified as Mike Todd. Since her death, many friends have said her great love was surely Richard Burton. Woody allows that the scars of her off-again, on-again love affair and marriages to Burton may well have been too fresh when he knew her to allow her to be totally open.
Woody has a lot of Liz stories, but one incident, he says, tells much about her true character and charm.
“We were scheduled to go to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Richmond, and Elizabeth was running late, as usual. As we got into the car, she asked if there was anything she had to do except meet and greet.” Woody told her that the candidates’ appointed representatives would be the ones speaking and reassured her that her only responsibility would be to greet the congregation afterwards.
They got to the church about 35 minutes late, and already “the place was rocking with the sound and voices of gospel music, and it was packed. They ushered Elizabeth to the front pew with Mrs. Miller [the wife of Andrew P. Miller, Warner’s opponent], and I stayed in back. The music stopped, the church fell silent, and the senior pastor rose to the podium. In his booming voice, he said he was changing the agenda and that he wanted the candidates’ wives to speak for their husbands, instead of those who had been assigned to speak. And then he said, ‘Mrs. Warner, I would like for you to speak first.’”
Needless to say, Woody in the back of the church was trying to get as small as possible. “But Elizabeth walks up to the podium and in one sentence captures and begins to control the audience. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I do not know much about John’s politics. He and others are far more qualified to speak, but I do know John as a husband, a friend and a person of character and integrity … and let me talk to you about those characteristics.’
“From there, she just had the congregation in the palm of her hand. In that moment I saw the charm, command and ability that made her a national presence.”
Woody was not immune to that charm himself. When they parted for the last time at the end of the campaign, Elizabeth Taylor gave him a little Hollywood kiss. “I felt,” he recalls, “as if life was complete.”
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