Elizabeth Taylor gave Michael Jackson an elephant as a thank-you present: assistant
Elizabeth Taylor was notorious for receiving extravagant gifts from her seven husbands, but the Hollywood icon didn’t hesitate to spoil her pals.
The screen legend and AIDS activist, one of the last icons of Hollywood’s golden era, passed away in 2011 at age 79. Her estate has participated in two new documentaries exploring her life and legacy, titled "Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes" for HBO and "Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar," which was produced by Kim Kardashian. The estate also launched an apparel line.
Tim Mendelson, her longtime executive assistant and pal, told Fox News Digital that his boss liked to go big with gift-giving.
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"In 1991, she got married to a man she met at the Betty Ford Center, which you’re not supposed to do, but they fell in love," said Mendelson, referring to Taylor’s last husband, Larry Fortensky.
"They married at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch," Mendelson shared. "As a thank-you gift, she gave him an elephant named Gypsy."
"Sure, she got people cars, but she presented that elephant to Michael Jackson at Neverland Ranch as a surprise," Mendelson chuckled.
In return, Taylor received a titanium elephant purse.
When it came to her family, Taylor loved spoiling them, too. And if they inherited her dazzling eyes, they got a special collection from her.
"She had these amazing blue eyes that people always said were violet," Mendelson explained. "Both her sons and her brother Howard had these dazzling turquoise blue eyes. She would always buy them the best cashmere sweaters to match their eyes. And they needed to be the softest cashmere sweaters. They must have had a whole shelf in their closet full of that color because of their eyes."
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"She wasn’t afraid to push the pocketbook to give someone the perfect gift that would only come from her," he shared. "If someone lost a dog, she was the first to get them a new pet. Dog, cat, whatever animal they wanted – she would give them one."
If anyone wanted to impress the movie star, they simply had to give her jewels. Mendelson recalled how one of Taylor’s favorite pastimes was to have him fetch her boxes containing her various diamonds, just to look at them.
"She had a jewelry closet," Mendelson recalled. "She was like a little girl admiring her gifts. And she absolutely had beautiful pieces, especially from the two great loves of her life – Mike Todd and Richard Burton."
"She had a lot of sentimental pieces from [Burton],’" Mendelson added about the man Taylor married twice.
According to Taylor’s website, Burton showered her with "just because" presents over the years. During their affair in Rome, while bringing the 1963 film "Cleopatra" to life, he often took her shopping for emeralds and diamonds.
"I can’t deny that Richard gave me some spectacular gifts on birthdays and Christmas, but in truth, he was so romantic that he’d use any excuse to give me a piece of jewelry," Taylor recalled in her book, "My Love Affair with Jewelry."
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"He’d give me ‘It’s Tuesday, I love you’ presents," Taylor wrote. "’It’s a beautiful day’ presents. ‘Let’s go for a walk. I want to buy you something’ presents. Over the years, I’ve come to think of these as my, ‘It’s Tuesday, I love you’ jewelry. And I never knew when he would come up with the most extraordinary ring or something very sweet and simple."
It was also Burton who bought her several of her magnificent jewels, including the pear-shaped 69-carat diamond that came to be called the Burton-Taylor Diamond. She later auctioned it off to fund a hospital in Botswana.
Taylor would go on to possess one of the most important private collections of jewelry in America, Vanity Fair reported. It featured rare pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds. Many of Taylor’s prized pieces were put on the auction block by Christie’s.
Taylor didn’t discriminate when it came to jewels, said Mendelson.
"When I first started working for her, it was her 60th birthday," Mendelson recalled. "I saw these earrings that looked like something she would like. They had amethyst and they were sparkly. They weren’t expensive – like a hundred dollars. She was so impressed that I got those for her because they looked like her style. She appreciated them so much. It just made her feel so excited, to be thought of."
When Taylor received damehood in 2000, she returned the favor.
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"I remember I wanted this watch, which was called The Black Watch, and I thought it was so cool," said Mendelson. "I didn’t ask her for it. But while she was watching for jewelry, she bought two and said she was going to give them to her sons. We got back to LA, and we were just goofing around. She then turned around and gave me the watch. She said, ‘This was always going to be for you.’"
"The thing is, the Black Watchmen are the men that guard the queen," said Mendelson. "She gave the other watch to another dear friend of hers, Jose, her hairdresser. She felt, ‘These are the guys that watch over me, just like the Black Watchmen watch over the Queen of England.'"
Kyle MacLachlan, Taylor's co-star in the 1994 film "The Flintstones," recently claimed that the actress "had to have a gift every day" while bringing the live-action version of the cartoon to life.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the "Dinner's on Me" podcast, exclaimed, "Wait, wait, stop. She had to have a gift?"
"A gift every day," the "Sex and the City" alum repeated.
"And in the dressing room, the trailer, she had to have greenery around her. And I said those are going right into my contract… A gift every day."
MacLachlan, 65, gave the example of "jewelry" as the kind of gift the "National Velvet" star would expect.
"This is secondhand now," he added, saying he had heard the story from producer Bruce Cohen. "Bruce probably told me and said, 'Don't ever tell anybody that.' I’m like too late. It's too late."
"The Flintstones" marked Taylor’s final film, although she continued to do TV, including the TV movie "These Old Broads" in 2001.
In "The Flintstones," Taylor played Wilma Flintstone’s mother, Pearl Slaghoople.
After she died in 2011, "The Flintstones" producer Bruce Cohen told The Hollywood Reporter, "The moment she said yes, we wanted to make it a special experience for her."
"Lavender was her favorite color, so we made lavender stairs up to her trailer, and we filled the trailer with lavender flowers for her first day of work. I had also been told it was a tradition that you gave her lavish gifts for the first day of production, so we wanted to do that as well."
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Cohen said when he went to her house for a wardrobe fitting before production started, she whispered to him, "‘Darling, you know that I like gifts on the first day of photography.’ I said, ‘Yes, I’ve heard of this tradition.’ And then she whispered, ‘I like Cartier, darling.’"
"We didn’t have an Elizabeth Taylor gift allotment in the budget, so I went to Mr. Spielberg, who was the executive producer, and I said, ‘Steven, I need you to write me a personal check, so I can go shopping for Elizabeth Taylor.’ He loved that idea and understood why we couldn’t put it in the budget."