When Liz & Dick Came to Oroville
Almost exactly 50 years ago, a tiny California town was excited to play host to a big-budget movie with big-name stars. It did not go well.
Just over 50 years ago in February of 1974, a $5 million Hollywood production rolled into the tiny Northern California town of Oroville, California. The town (population 8,000) was abuzz.
As one local newspaper put it, “There hasn’t been this much excitement here since the Oroville Dam was built [in 1968].”
Oroville might have hoped for glitz and glamor, but what it got was little more than cheap spectacle. I grew up about 20 miles northwest of Oroville in a slightly larger town called Chico. I was too young when all this went down, but I do recall my parents discussing what happened for years afterward, much of it going over my head. I was always fascinated and full of questions they couldn’t always answer. But one thing my parents knew for sure, and it was my primary takeaway: Hollywood’s allure is superficial at best, and movie stars can and do behave very badly.
Looking back, things seemed off from the get-go.
First of all, by any measure, the film itself sounded utterly awful. Called The Klansman, it centered on violent racial conflict in a racist Southern town. Production notes shamelessly listed “three rapes, one castration, two lusty bedroom sequences and an all-out race riot.”
Second, it starred Richard Burton, who, at age 48 was already a has-been, a notorious drunk hell-bent on withering away an acting career that had once held all the promise of greatness.
But Oroville was too excited to pay attention to any red flags. The high-wattage star power alone was dizzying. Directed by Terence Young, who’d helmed a trio of Bond films in the mid-60s, The Klansman brought to town a bevy of stars, including not just Burton but also Lee Marvin, Lola Falana and (then-popular) football star O.J. Simpson, making his film debut.
But by far the most thrilling person setting foot on Oroville soil was Burton’s fiery and impossibly glamorous bride of ten years, Elizabeth Taylor, who’d decided to grace the entire enterprise by coming along for the ride.
At 41, Taylor was still considered among the most beautiful women in the world, her career and love-life the stuff of legend. For most of the 1960s, she and Burton were the most famous couple on the planet, their every move documented by a frenzied international press. Though people eventually wearied of their boozy, tumultuous relationship, many couldn’t turn away from the relentless tabloid coverage of its feverish ups and downs.
When production began, a kind of circus atmosphere accordingly prevailed, with crowds gathering daily to watch the shooting. Taylor made occasional appearances at the edge of the action, but she ended up spending much of her time at a rented home several miles away just outside Chico. This meant Burton was free to follow his own proclivities, which by all accounts meant drinking like a fish.
“He was…drinking three quarts a day,” the film’s executive producer would later say. “He didn’t know what town he was in, let alone in what film.” Co-star Lee Marvin would claim Burton was usually too drunk to stand for his scenes and was typically filmed sitting or lying down.
One afternoon, Burton spotted an 18-year-old coffee-shop waitress named Kim Dinucci walking past an outdoor set near the old county jail. He called her over and after a get-to-know-you chat invited her to sit in his chair while he filmed. Later, he took her out for lunch with a few cast and crew members and eventually swung by her place of employment, a coffee shop called Sambo’s, where he ate ham and eggs as her co-workers looked on agog.
Then a few things happened in fairly quick succession.
That same day, Burton and Dinucci were spotted at a local jewelry shop, where he spontaneously bought her a $450 ruby-and-diamond ring.
Taylor, famous for her jealous rages, suddenly packed up and left town in her private jet.
Dinucci, who’d told everyone she was marrying a ranch hand named Deny Daniels the following June, announced she’d broken off the engagement.
Gossip mongers around the world found the salacious implications irresistible, some brazenly connecting the dots and reporting that Burton’s relationship with Dinucci had triggered Taylor’s departure.
Bolstering such a narrative was the fact that Dinucci was blonde and lovely. She was even a kind of beauty queen, having just been named Miss Pepsi of Butte County.
Dinucci was overwhelmed and distressed by all the attention, calling out the press for “twisting everything I say” and stressing that “he’s just a friend, and I feel excited, thrilled and honored that I was able to meet him.”
“Do you think that I would play around with children?” an exasperated Burton asked the press. “She reminds me of my eldest daughter, Kate.”
While an affair between these two seems highly unlikely, the story persisted, leaving behind a stench of scandal that remained even after cast and crew had packed up and gone.
Other stenches would linger as well.
Later that year, locals learned that Taylor and Burton had trashed the house that Klansman producers had rented out for them during filming.
This five-bedroom home, located near Chico at the foot of a sloping mountain thoroughfare called the Skyway, was no ordinary structure. Designed by its owner, it was a kind of 1970s dream house, with brick floors, wide archways, a koi pond, wood-beamed ceilings, hand-carved doors and wide picture windows overlooking Butte Creek Canyon. It was the owners’ pride and joy.
But apparently none of that meant much to Liz and Dick. In fact, the damage was so extensive that in November 1974 the owners filed a suit asking for nearly $3,000 in damages and attorney fees. The complaint accused the tenants of ruining “carpeting, bedspreads, mattresses and other items.” One of the owners told the Sacramento Bee that the Burtons’ three dogs and cats “were not trained” and that when the couple left, the floors needed to be “hosed down and disinfected.”
But even this paled beside the mess that was the final film. Released November 13, 1974, it was a real stinker, to say the least.
The New York Times called The Klansman “thoroughly clumsy.” “A perfect example of screen trash that almost invites derision,” said Variety. The L.A. Times declared the film "one of those sleazy, exploitative, incompetent pieces of motion picture waste which makes you suddenly unsure that film reviewing is a fit occupation for a grown man...If any frame of the film carried a convincing sense of the real tensions, fears, hatreds and tempers of the rural American South you might be able to forgive some of the rest. But the acting is so amateurish in the lesser roles as to be comical and the dialogue in the major roles is unplayable." Gene Siskel gave it one star.
Honestly, if I’d had to sit through that film, I’d want to be hosed down and disinfected.
Oroville, of course, survived the whole ridiculous episode, its citizens armed with enough stories and gossip for a lifetime. But Burton almost did not. His health, already imperiled by his drinking, declined sharply during filming, and the day after he wrapped, he was admitted to a hospital in Southern California. His marriage was also a casualty. On April 25, less than two weeks after Burton was hospitalized, Burton and Taylor announced their divorce.
The couple would famously retie the knot a year later in 1975, divorcing again the following year, this time for good. Naturally, gossip columnists went wild.
But whether the good folks of Oroville cared any more at that point is anyone’s guess.
NOTE: Please check out my short story inspired by these events! You can buy it for 99 cents here.