We remember the 'affair' between the protagonist of 'Cleopatra' and the singer who left Reynolds composed, without a husband... and with two children to raise
Imagine for a moment that you are a happily married woman, but one fine day she discovers that her husband cheats on her. Added to this irreparable damage is a fact: her type has not cheated on her with just anyone, but with one of the most beautiful women in the world. What would you do? What would go through his head? Would he congratulate her husband on her good taste in betraying her? Would he take an ice pick and stick him and her lover in the act, à la Sharon Stone in 'Basic Instinct'? Would she forgive them and move on?
All these sensations were what Debbie Reynolds experienced when she discovered that her lover, her husband, the singer Eddie Fisher, was leaving her for the glamorous Elizabeth Taylor. Even Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie and Eddie (a girl just four years old when her father's infidelity took place), joked with her 'Star Wars fans about how her father had gone "to the dark side of the Force. "Leaving his mother. The truth is that that was one of the most notorious scandals in Hollywood in 1959; the one that was torn between television, biblical blockbusters,, and the decline of the big studios. Also among those who were in favor of the loving wife, Debbie Reynolds, or the bawdy lover, Elizabeth Taylor. But how did that story of cuckolding, jealousy, stars, and alcohol begin?
Let's go back to the mid-50s. Debbie Reynolds, the mischievous star of 'Singing in the Rain', sang candid songs like 'Tammy' and conquered the teenagers of half of America. To cap off her image of perfection she married the hot singer, Eddie Fisher. This, in turn, was a close friend of Mike Todd, the all-powerful producer (the best-known adaptation of 'Around the World in 80 Days' is among his great feats), and his wife, the stunning Elizabeth Taylor.
The friendship was so close that Eddie and Debbie had been the groomsmen at the wedding between the producer and the 'Giant' star. Gossip tells that Fisher began to feel attracted to Taylor when she was pregnant with her third child and he had another on the way with Reynolds. Todd's death in a plane crash in 1958 accelerated the rapprochement between the two. When Eddie Fisher had to comfort the sad widow that Elizabeth Taylor had become, things got out of hand.
Debbie Reynolds didn't know she had an enemy in her own home. In times of exacerbated machismo, one might think that this enemy was Liz Taylor. But make no mistake: her adversary was her own husband, Eddie. It was he who insisted on inviting the beautiful widow to her house so that she could spend a vacation with them, to recover from her hard blow. One night, after a party, Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor, with a few too many drinks and their libido through the roof, didn't avoid getting closer. The impulses did the rest and, from that moment, they became lovers. When the press discovered the romance, few had mercy on both. Much less the puritanical America of the Eisenhower era, in which women appeared with roast turkey and pinned aprons in thousand-and-one advertisements for idyllic perfection.
To punish Fisher, NBC went so far as to cancel 'The Eddie Fisher Show', built on the singer's greater glory. There was also no shortage of press reviews that cast Debbie Reynolds in the role of the vilified wife. One of her best friends had stolen her husband from her and left her composed, without a husband, and with two children (one of the two, the famous Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher). "Eddie and Elizabeth were vilified. He was declared a failure and an opportunistic loser, and Elizabeth was labeled a bad girl and a home-wrecking whore. Debbie, the good girl, the innocent victim, unsuspecting single mother, was embraced globally with love and sympathy", wrote the son of Fisher and Reynolds in 2018.
The truth is that in 1959 Fisher threw the blanket over his head and divorced Debbie to marry Elizabeth Taylor. Karma wanted to pay him in kind when, three years later, Liz cheated on him with Richard Burton while filming 'Cleopatra'. That was another scandal in the rosary of scandals of the star. She was used to bad publicity by now, but not Fisher, who suffered when she saw him become a cuckold himself.
Reynolds also remarried in 1960, this time to millionaire businessman Harry Karl. Years passed before she and Elizabeth, once partners at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, met again. She was aboard the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship, in 1966. And no, despite what it may seem, they did not pull their hair out or try to throw their opponent overboard. Reynolds and Taylor talked about it and, to the surprise of a world that loved feuds between posh women, they ended up making up. The signing of the peace led to the 'Singing in the Rain' star and her new husband agreeing to dine with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton at the ship's restaurant. In the end, it was poor Eddie Fisher, with a career drowned out by alcohol and rampages of all colors, who came out worse off.
The renewed friendship between Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds was so great that the former offered the latter refuge in a hotel she owned during the 9/11 attacks. And not only that. When she died in 2011, Taylor bequeathed to her friend a pair of sapphire earrings and a matching bracelet and necklace in her will. If that's not friendship... For years, when the press asked Debbie Reynolds (who came to star in a TV movie with Taylor that included a dialogue about the famous affair) her answer was clear and forceful: "You have to realize that What's life about and... is it worth it to get angry? Is it really worth it?"
Fisher, for his part, passed away on September 22, 2010, ten years ago now, after complications from hip surgery. He always complained that that love triangle had made his musical career ugly and they kept asking him about the same thing when he had a birthday. Good Debbie died in December 2016, one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher. With her smiling eyes and that sweet air that she hid from an iron professional, she was clear, until the last of her days, that horns should never take off the shoulder of a good friend.
