Elizabeth

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

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  Elizabeth

  Eddie was greeted at the door by the Todd housekeeper, who informed him Elizabeth would not be making the trip. Eddie pushed his way past the woman and climbed the stairs to Elizabeth’s bedroom—the door was open. She was sitting on the bed, fully dressed in black, staring off at nothing in particular. Fisher walked into her field of view and lifted a packed suitcase that sat nearby. She looked at him through dull eyes.

  “I thought I could do it,” she managed.

  “Well, you thought right,” he responded. He was surprisingly harsh with her.

  “No . . .”

  Minutes later, Elizabeth descended the stairs on the arm of Eddie Fisher. Not a word was spoken as they entered the waiting limousine.

  On the flight to Chicago, Howard Hughes had directed the crew to give the grieving passengers their privacy, so there was a palpable silence on the long trip. Elizabeth clung to Eddie for much of that flight, the turbulence reminding both just how they had lost the man so dear to them. They could identify with each other’s pain better, perhaps, than anyone else they knew. It was understandable. They both loved Mike. Talking about him was a way of keeping him alive in their hearts. It was also a way for Elizabeth to keep her soul from going into complete atrophy because, as she put it, “I knew that with each passing day, I was getting harder inside, building a resistance to love. I was afraid I would never love again, and then Eddie came into my life and I began to think, maybe . . .”

  James Bacon succinctly put it this way: “Eddie Fisher performed the most dangerous duty known to man, he dried a widow’s tears.”

  Edwin John Fisher, with his meticulously combed dark brown hair and somewhat foxlike face, was born in 1928 in South Philadelphia, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. From those humble beginnings, he rose to the top rung on the pop music ladder before he was old enough to vote. With an easy smile and an ingratiating demeanor, he was considered “cute” and a snappy Finding Her Way

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  dresser. He was a genuine teen idol by 1954—having sold more than eight million records—when he met America’s girl next door, Debbie Reynolds, a five-foot-two, eyes-of-blue, energetic and ever so wholesome entertainer. Fans overwhelmingly approved of their relationship, which was covered in exacting detail by all the movie magazines. “Never,” said gossip maven Hedda Hopper, “have I seen a more patriotic match than these two clean-cut, clean-living youngsters. When I think of them, I see flags flying and hear bands playing.”

  As if to accede to their fans’ demands, Eddie and Debbie were wed in 1955 in a Catholic ceremony. Despite the birth of their daughter, Carrie, during their first year together, the marriage was in trouble almost from the beginning. Still, they muddled through and were inspired by the marriage of their close friends Elizabeth and Mike—that is until Mike died. Eddie was so sad about his friend’s death that Elizabeth’s heart went out to him. Since the source of their mourning was the loss of the same man, a bond grew. Within about five months—by August—both began to consider the unthinkable. Could the two of them be a couple? Elizabeth knew that going after Eddie Fisher would make for a huge scandal in her life. However, she simply couldn’t chase away that feeling that Eddie might bring back some of the magic she had felt with Mike. After all, Todd and Fisher had been joined at the hip for so many years that they were able to finish each other’s sentences. Maybe this was how she could climb out of the abyss left after Mike’s death, with the help of his best friend. In other words, still so much a child at heart, she would replace Mike in her life with Eddie, just as she had Nibbles the chipmunk in her book Nibbles and Me, written when she was just fourteen. In the story, when the chipmunk dies (and apparently this really happened, since it was originally a school essay), “My heart was broken. Mummie and I went up into the woods and cried it out. We walked and walked and talked about life. And then I knew just as I knew before, that in reality there is no death. I knew that he would always live in my heart, and that another one would come 142

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  to me. Not to take his place, but to bring the same sense of love to me, and he did—and I knew him immediately, and I named him Nibbles . . . not Nibbles the second, but just Nibbles—my favorite chipmunk.”

  Eddie’s marriage to Debbie didn’t seem to be working out anyway, Elizabeth rationalized. After all, Debbie had already filed for divorce—twice—so how content could she be in the relationship? Of course, Debbie had two children at home, one a newborn, so that did present a bit of a complication. “However,” Elizabeth explained to one friend, “she’s in show business and didn’t get to the top of her profession by being weak-kneed. She must have some inherent strength, like every other dame in this goddamned business.” Debbie would survive, Elizabeth decided. She’d known her for many years, and she wasn’t worried about her at all. In fact, the end of her marriage might be just what she needed to find the right man for her, someone who might make her happier than she’d ever been with Eddie Fisher.

  The bottom line, though, was that Elizabeth Taylor, though still naïve in many ways, was a grown woman who didn’t play by the rules. She was a star, living a different reality, as was Eddie Fisher. “Look, we felt we could get away with anything,” Eddie now says. “After all, we had climbed to the top of our professions and achieved more than we ever dreamed possible, so we felt invincible. We did whatever the hell we wanted to do and then waited for the consequences. That’s just the way we were back then. Young, rich, famous . . . and irresponsible. Ahhhh,” he sighed. “Good times.”

  It didn’t take long for the tempestuous Liz-Eddie-Debbie triangle to make international news. Once the sensational headlines began to surface, they continued for the biggest story in the land—not the biggest show business story, the biggest story . . . period. One Swedish newspaper best summed up the public sentiment with the headline, “Blood Thirsty Widow Liz Vampired Eddie.” Editorials closer to home denounced Elizabeth; fan magazines encouraged readers to boycott her films. The press seemed to Finding Her Way

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  completely forget that she was a recent widow and now painted her solely as a calculating homewrecker. Images were quickly set in stone: Debbie was America’s fragile, put-upon sweetheart, while Elizabeth was the evil siren in search of yet another sexual conquest. With the passing of time, everyone—or at least that’s how it seemed—had a strongly held opinion about the affair, and most of those were against Elizabeth. In just a few months, her status had changed from sainted widow to shameless hussy. The two left Musso and Frank’s Grill in Hollywood one evening, shortly after deciding to unveil their forbidden love. The press flashbulbs were clearly accompanied by a sound that was brand-new to Elizabeth: the unmistakable grumble of a disapproving public.

  “Shame on you,” one said.

  “Whore!” yelled another.

  Eddie recalled that the two huddled together, ducking into the black sedan. As the driver headed off, Elizabeth looked back at the angry mob.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she said, “what the hell have we done?”

  Elizabeth and Eddie Marry

  I nterestingly, despite the imbroglio in which she found herself at this time, Elizabeth Taylor’s career as one of the world’s leading actresses did not suffer. By the end of the 1950s, she was one of the most beautiful and sought-after women in film. Her place in the history of motion pictures was irrevocably fixed and firmly secure, even if she were never to make another movie. Everything about her promised excitement. Bad publicity, good publicity, triumphs, 144

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  tragedies . . . it all blended together to create a Hollywood personality the likes of which the public could seemingly not get enough of. She was like a comet blazing across the sky, only there was no burnout for her. Instead, she seemed to only get brighter, bigger, and better with time, a woman whose beauty was matched by her ability as an actress. The film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—in which, happily for the studio, she played a woman with
a voracious appetite for sex—was a box-office success; she was nominated for another Oscar for her work in it, this time losing to Susan Hayward (in I Want to Live). Still, Elizabeth was a hot commodity. Her success despite the affair with Eddie only emboldened her, in a sense, to believe that she could do no wrong, even when she was very wrong in what she was doing.

  Debbie, as the woman scorned, also saw her career take flight. Eddie’s sank into serious decline, at least for the time being. Six months after the affair started—and a month shy of the one-year anniversary of Mike Todd’s death—Debbie filed for divorce again. When it was finally granted, custody of the couple’s children and a large financial and property settlement were Debbie’s. It had been acrimonious, though, and by the time all of the mudslinging was over, Debbie truly loathed Eddie—and the feeling was mutual. With Eddie’s divorce at last finalized, he and Elizabeth were free to marry after a suitable, and legally directed, waiting period. First, though, Elizabeth wanted to formally convert to Judaism. She says that her decision to do so was not influenced by Eddie, and is eager to set the record straight in that regard since so many accounts in the past have said that she converted for him. She explains that she first thought she wanted to convert when she was married to Mike Todd, who was also Jewish. He suggested that she wait and make a careful decision about it. After Mike’s death, Elizabeth felt a “desperate need for a formalized religion” and recalls that she wasn’t feeling spiritually fulfilled by Catholicism. Christian Science, her faith when she was a child, also didn’t address many of the questions she had about life and death, at least not to Finding Her Way

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  her satisfaction. After studying the Reform philosophy of Judaism for about nine months, she says, she felt an immediate connection to the faith. She never was much for attending synagogue, though. She says, “I’m one of those people who think you can be close to God anywhere, not just in a place designed for worship and built with millions of pesos while people are starving outside.” That particular observation is intriguing because, truly, it’s more a Christian Scientist’s philosophy than a Jewish one. It seems safe to say that Elizabeth took elements of both faiths, and tried to live by their tenets. At the formal religious conversion ceremony, with her parents at her side as witnesses in full support of her decision, Elizabeth repeated the words of Ruth. “Entreat me not to leave thee, and to return from following thee,” she intoned, “for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.” Her Jewish name would be Elisheba Rachel.

  On April 1, Eddie opened a six-week engagement at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. It was a terrific show; Fisher could always be depended on to deliver as an entertainer and still seemed to have the loyalty of a paying audience, no matter the scandal in his life. Sitting ringside that night was Elizabeth—smoking her cigarettes from a diamond-encrusted holder—along with Francis, Sara, Howard, and Mara. Elizabeth seemed elated, her family members a bit less so. After the performance, everyone congregated backstage with press members, friends, and coworkers. Displaying a gleaming diamond bracelet given to her by Eddie, Elizabeth announced that she hoped they would be married within six weeks. Everyone applauded the news, except for Sara and Francis. According to witnesses, they urgently pulled Howard and Mara aside and went into a huddle in a corner, seeming very concerned. Without saying a word to anyone, the four then quietly slipped out of the backstage area, suggesting that perhaps they weren’t in total alignment with Elizabeth about Eddie. Still, a hastily arranged press conference was assembled backstage. “Eddie and I are proud of our feelings toward each other and we have 146

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  never tried to hide them,” Elizabeth said to the assembled members of the media. “We have been accused of being indiscreet, and rightly so, but we haven’t tried to cover up anything. We have been honest in what we have done, and we have ourselves to live with.”

  Whatever reservations her family may have had about the union, Elizabeth and Eddie were married on May 12, 1959, in a Jewish ceremony. She wore green chiffon and looked radiant. Mike’s son was best man. At just twenty-seven, Elizabeth had now been married four times. Eddie and his new bride then sailed off to Spain for their honeymoon. “When Elizabeth loves she loves better than any woman in the world,” he said. “She gives more love than any human being I have ever known in my entire life. Gives more and takes more, and that’s love and loving.”

  So devoted to Eddie was Elizabeth that she would rearrange her busy schedule so that she could continue to sit ringside at his nightclub appearances. Though she tried to act oblivious to the fascinated stares of other audience members, surely she had to know that she was as much on display as her husband, and probably even more so. Toward the end of the show, Eddie would customarily acknowledge friends and family members. Afterward, he would walk slowly toward Elizabeth’s side of the stage. “Liz! Liz!”

  the audience would chant. “Oh, have I left anyone out?” he would ask teasingly. Finally, he would point to her and say, “I am honored to be graced with the presence of the most beautiful woman in the world, my wife, the light of my life, Mrs. Eddie Fisher.” Held in a large halo of ice by a blue-white spot, Elizabeth would stand and allow the audience’s approval to wash over her. Then Eddie would swell into full voice for his big finale, “That Face,” which he would dedicate to Elizabeth. However, Eddie’s encore number was eerily prophetic: the Richard Rodgers–Oscar Hammerstein II song of lost love from South Pacific, “This Nearly Was Mine.”

  Alas, it took Elizabeth just a few months to come to the conclusion that she had made a big mistake. Eddie was not Mike, nor did he have the older man’s strength, determination and know-Finding Her Way 147

  how in the care and handling of a complicated woman like Elizabeth Taylor. She finally had “an epiphany,” she said: Their mutual grieving over the terrible loss of Mike Todd in their lives was what had actually brought her and Eddie together, not any true feelings of romance. Lately, whenever she looked at Eddie, she saw Mike’s ghost standing behind him, as if taunting her to recognize the truth of her fourth marriage. Or, as she later told her friend, the producer Joseph Mankiewicz, “I somehow believed that I could keep Mike’s memory alive through Eddie. Instead, I now find that all I have is Mike’s ghost. How can I be his wife,” she asked, “when I am still married to a ghost?”

  Those who remember Elizabeth on the set of Suddenly, Last Summer recall seeing her and Eddie constantly entwined and demonstrative of their affection for one another. In retrospect, their passionate display seems more like an act, played strictly for the crew. Offstage, but not always in private, her obvious contempt for the man she chose to replace Mike Todd would today probably be considered spousal abuse, with her hurling withering epithets at a cowed Fisher. It was not unlike the relationship between Brick and Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, only in reverse. For most of that film, Brick (Paul Newman) humiliates and ridicules Maggie (Elizabeth) when she unashamedly begs him to make love to her. Her pleadings are met with an utter disdain that borders on hatred. In angry frustration, she blurts out the name of Skipper, Brick’s running buddy, who may or may not have been in a sexual relationship with her husband: “Skipper is dead. I’m alive. Maggie the Cat is alive.” The parallels are uncanny, even if they are coincidental.

  Despite the emotional tumult in her life at this time with Eddie, Elizabeth Taylor’s work on Suddenly, Last Summer is captivating just the same. Appearing with a stellar cast—Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, and Mercedes McCambridge—she would be nominated for an Academy Award for her buttonpushing work in this film. Adapted from Tennessee Williams’s oneact play, it’s a difficult, challenging movie to watch, involving 148

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  electroshock therapy, homosexuality, murder, and even cannibalism. Elizabeth gives one of her best performances in it; contemporary critics noted that even at a time in her life when she seemed out of control, she managed to pull hers
elf together for her work on film. It’s because acting remained her great passion, and when she loved a role, as she did in Suddenly, Last Summer, she would gladly give herself to it completely. It was a place for her to go to escape her private demons, a sanctuary from the chaos of her jumbled world.

  Butterfield 8

  E lizabeth Taylor’s next movie, Butterfield 8, was one she truly did not want to make. In fact, she did everything she could to get out of it. As it happened, she and her agent, Kurt Frings, had just agreed with producer Walter Wanger to star for 20th Century-Fox in the epic Cleopatra, for a million dollars. Legend has it that Wanger called Elizabeth on the set of Suddenly, Last Summer and related the offer through Eddie Fisher, who had answered the phone. As a joke, Taylor supposedly replied, “Sure, tell him I’ll do it for a million dollars.” Elizabeth told the story that way in her 1965 memoir. Of it, Eddie says today, “Maybe it happened that way, maybe it didn’t. Who can remember? But if it gets me in the story, then, yeah, that’s how it happened.” Elizabeth’s salary for Cleopatra was indeed astronomical for the times, the most any actor or actress had ever been paid. However, none of her movies had ever lost money, so she was well worth it.

  Still high from that achievement, she was brought back to earth with a thud when she learned that she still had one more Finding Her Way

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  film to do for MGM. She’d thought her deal with them had expired. It hadn’t. The studio demanded that she make one more film, and that would be Butterfield 8—based on John O’Hara’s novel—for which she would receive only $125,000. Because she was being forced to do something she truly did not want to do, there was no way it would go well for her, or for the studio. She promised producer Pandro S. Berman that she would be trouble and that she would make not only his life but those of all the actors a living hell. She’d known him for most of her life—he had produced National Velvet—so one might have thought she would at least be nice to him . . . but she wasn’t. She was too angry to be nice, and made production on the film very difficult for everyone involved.