Hmm, Eggbeater, Huh?
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Years ago in the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star, the famous actor, Robert Wagner, made a rather interesting comment, and I quote. “Some beautiful women are passive in the bedroom. Elizabeth Taylor was not one of those women. Being with her was like sticking an eggbeater in your brain.”
Aside from the mental images such a statement conjured up in the empty corridors of my mind, a few other random thoughts mysteriously appeared. For instance, just how long would the beater blades have to be and just where would be the point of entry? And what was the setting of the aforementioned appliance, blend or puree? As you can see I have a scientific mind.
Seriously though, what really did occur to me at the time was, ‘What did Elizabeth think of this rather intimate disclosure about her bedroom antics?’ Was she horrified that this bit of information was now out there for the world to see, or was she from the ‘there’s no advertising like free advertising’ school of thought? It is one thing to be known as one of the world’s great beauties, but did she really want her mother to know she was a tiger in bed? And what did her husband at the time think about this disclosure of his wife’s bedroom proclivities, especially if her eggbeater had been replaced by just the occasional stir with a wooden spoon?
I mean it isn’t like Liz was a modern day Vestal Virgin. She was married nine times (at last count) and Robert’s revelation suggests she may have had the odd romantic dalliance in between nuptials. I guess the least we can say is that our Liz was a busy girl.
We really shouldn’t judge the relationships of Hollywood and TV stars by our standards. They don’t seem to look on affairs the same way the rest of us do. The beautiful people have always been inclined to bed-hop from what we have been led to believe. Whether they really do or their publicity agents know it makes good copy is hard to say.
A few stars stayed clear of the kinky stuff, at least they did in the 50s. Debbie Reynolds married Eddie Fisher in 1955. They were both very young I remember. (I actually had Deb on a list of women I was going to call but I held back in case I was too much for her.) Debbie was one of the rare starlets who saved herself for marriage. When asked by some nosy reporter about her first experience in bed, she was quoted as saying, “It was quite pleasant.”
I’m sure it was, but in 1959 Eddie left her for Liz Taylor, which makes me wonder if Debbie shouldn’t have taken a hand blender to bed or a full-blown Cuisinart with all-wheel drive and ABS brakes and went at him.
What I started out to say before I got waylaid (poor choice of words there) by Debbie’s marital woes and Elizabeth’s romantic conquests, is that men and women have different outlooks when it comes to youthful romance. I’m not talking about extra-marital stuff, but this whole business of sleeping around when they were younger.
I have to be honest; I haven’t a clue how kids think today. I’m only an expert on geezers and not much of one at that. A man would have no problem over a couple of beers telling his male friends that his dear old dad was quite a man with the ladies before he met his mother. They would all snicker and say, “So was mine. Why one time, he . . .” But I don’t ever remember hearing one say his mother was the town tramp no matter how many beers he had. It’s that old double standard thing I suppose. Not too many young men would see the good humour in reading ‘for a good time call’ message on the wall of a public washroom and then realizing it was his sister’s phone number.
I don’t know what women talk about when they are discussing past romances – or for that matter if they discuss them at all. At what point in the conversation about past loves does it enter the off limits zone. It’s a long way from Debbie’s ‘quite pleasant’ comment to “I put Fred in the hospital last week. When he came out of the anaesthetic, he was mumbling something about an eggbeater and the top of his head had blown off. Maybe I should ease up a bit.”
“Oh, don’t do that, Felicity, because some day you might get your name in the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star.”
