Elizabeth Taylor vs.Tailored Truth

Legal test looms for TV docudramas based on the famous

Television's latest child is a bastard of sorts. Neither fiction nor straight documentary, the "docudrama" liberally tailors real people and events to fit the TV entertainment format. In recent weeks there have been two such shows based on the romance of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Earlier, Jaclyn Smith starred in a docudrama called Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. In the offing are pseudo biographies of Singer Rosemary Clooney, starring Sondra Locke, and of Grace Kelly, played by Cheryl Ladd. Some of the subjects have been paid or are more or less happy with the results. Others emphatically are not. Gloria Vanderbilt was none too pleased with Little Gloria . . . Happy at Last, a version of Barbara Goldsmith's book about the Vanderbilt custody trial shown on NBC last week. But what recourse do the famous have when their lives are tricked out in a scriptwriter's overly fervid imaginings? Elizabeth Taylor has decided to find out.

The actress has gone to court to try to block production of a TV movie based on her life. "This docudrama technique has gotten out of hand," said Taylor in announcing the suit against ABC and the producers, David Paradine Television. "It is simply a fancy new name for old-fashioned invasion of privacy, defamation, and violation of an actor's rights." Taylor chose her fighting ground carefully by bringing her suit under a New York State statute that gives anyone the right to protect her name and image from unauthorized commercial exploitation. That 1903 law, the most far-reaching in the U.S., does not proscribe an unauthorized but accurate biography. Thanks to the First Amendment, docudrama writers are probably entitled to invent some plausible dialogue and embellish events a bit. But at some point that free speech protection runs out. Says University of Michigan Law Professor Vincent Blasi: "When you dramatize for the sake of making her life more interesting than it is, then the courts are more likely to say you've gone too far."

Taylor's claim does not stand or fall on how flattering the portrayal is. In the leading New York precedent, for example, former Baseball Pitcher Warren Spahn was able to stop publication of a biography that falsely credited him with having won a Bronze Star and bent facts to make Spahn larger than life. The test, ruled New York's highest court in 1967, was whether the book was knowingly or recklessly "infected with material and substantial falsification." As Taylor puts it: "My livelihood depends on--and don't laugh--my acting, the way I look, the way I sound. If somebody else fictionalizes my life, that is taking away from me."

Kenneth Kulzick, a lawyer for ABC, argues: "She is a renowned public figure. From the time she was 13, she was not her own person. She is not her own commodity." That is probably true. Famous people do not own the exclusive rights to their lives, as Howard Hughes learned when he was unable to block unauthorized accounts of his life with lawsuits. But, says Allen Snyder, one of Taylor's lawyers, "this production invents incidents and manufactures dialogue." Claims Taylor: "It's completely fictionalized unless there was somebody under the carpet or under the bed during my 50 years."

There is apparently no final script for the show, and Taylor's attorneys may just be trying to persuade the network to sanitize its portrait of Liz. Because of the First Amendment's ban on prior restraint, she may not be able to persuade a court to stop the show beforehand. But if it is aired and strays too far from the truth, Taylor may be able to recover damages. In any event, experts believe that a court test would be healthy. "The law is in a state of great confusion," says New York Attorney Harriet Pilpel. Michigan's Blasi believes that Taylor's case could become a landmark that addresses the value of docudramas as an art form. Says Blasi: "Such a case might force us to decide as a society whether strict biography and fiction are enough, or whether this sort of hybrid is something that is essential to our understanding of the world."

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