Elizabeth Taylor’s New York
Taylor Elizabeth New York City Cultural Affairs Local History Manhattan _top story
James Barron David W. Dunlap
From Gloria Wandrous to Passion to a ride in a fire truck, her relationship with the city was long and eventful.
City Room
In the theatrical trailer for “Butterfield 8,” the deep-voiced announcer declared: “She’s not like anyone. That’s for sure.”

He was talking about the character Gloria Wandrous, but the same seven words could describe the actress who played Gloria, Elizabeth Taylor, who died on Wednesday at 79. After all, both were larger-than-life types whose Manhattan was stylish, and filled with not a little drama. But Gloria Wandrous’s New York was not Elizabeth Taylor’s New York.

Consider some of Ms. Taylor’s most notable Manhattan moments:

She was named as a defendant in a Manhattan court in a $50 million lawsuit over “Cleopatra,” the movie she made after “Butterfield 8.”

She and Shirley MacLaine played hostess in 1976 at a $100-a-person birthday supper for Bella Abzug, the Manhattan congresswoman who was campaigning for the Senate. She appeared in an “I Love New York” commercial in 1982, the same year she held a wedding reception for her adopted daughter at the Helmsley Palace Hotel. There was talk that she charged it to room service.

She starred in “The Little Foxes” on Broadway, also in the 1980s. It was said when she opened in the play that her dressing room had been done over at a cost of more than $20,000, nearly $50,000 in today’s dollars. The color was described as lavender.

“Butterfield 8” was filmed in a faux New York that was in New York — in two studios, one in Manhattan, the other in the Bronx. There were a few shots from Connecticut and Rockland County, but on those open-sided sets the carpenters built Gloria’s New York: an expensive-looking Fifth Avenue store, a dark Greenwich Village apartment, the 10-room Fifth Avenue place with a mirror big enough to write “No Sale” in lipstick.

In Ms. Taylor’s New York, she did the things New Yorkers do and shared the preoccupations New Yorkers share. Even in 1960, real estate was at the top of the list. When she was filming “Butterfield 8” and married to Eddie Fisher, she said: “We’re house-hunting New Yorkers. Our home is here now, not in Hollywood.”

Later on she had to deal with the obstacles New Yorkers face, like getting reservations for a sold-out performance.

She tried, in 1981, when she and Rock Hudson wanted to see the singer Barbara Cook at the Cafe Carlyle. Ms. Cook was to appear at 10 p.m. and at midnight. The Carlyle said it could not squeeze in anyone else — not even Ms. Taylor and Mr. Hudson.

Other New Yorkers would go on a different night and wonder if that woman off to the side who looked like Liza Minnelli really was Liza Minnelli. But doors opened for Ms. Taylor and Mr. Hudson: the Carlyle’s doors. It scheduled a third performance, at 1:15 a.m.

At times, she created obstacles for other New Yorkers — traffic tie-ups and mob scenes. When Mr. Burton was starring in “Hamlet” soon after they were married the first time, crowds filled West 46th Street every night. The New York Times quoted the astonished stage doorman at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater as saying, “Not even John Barrymore could draw crowds like this every night.”

She and Mr. Burton needed a dozen or so police officers to set up barricades and see them to their Cadillac limousine, a contrast to Gloria Wandrous, who died at the wheel of a sporty little roadster in a movie in which she had declared, “I had more fun in the back of a ’39 Ford than I could ever have in a vault at the Chase National Bank.”

Ms. Taylor did not get around in a ’39 Ford. Most of the time she came and went by limousine. But once, after a performance of “The Little Foxes” in August 1981, her ride was a fire truck.

“There was kind of a big crowd” outside the Martin Beck Theater (now the Al Hirschfeld), she said, “and I was getting a bit squished. Because the production is coming to a close, the crowds have been getting bigger every night.”

The firefighters of Engine Company 54 spotted this jam during a routine restaurant inspection on West 45th Street. They came to the rescue after Senator John W. Warner of Virginia — her husband at the time — asked for help. (At least, that was their story.) Against Fire Department regulations, 54 Truck gave Ms. Taylor, her dog, Mr. Warner and their bodyguard a lift to the Pierre Hotel, where they were staying.

“It was a bit scary,” she said of the ride uptown. “I think my dog almost had cardiac arrest. It’s not your everyday way of traveling.