Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher, and Elizabeth Taylor: Inside Hollywood’s First Love Triangle
Debbie Reynolds will go down in history as one of the greats from Hollywood’s Golden Age. She was a trailblazing actress, singer, and humanitarian, as well as one of America’s original sweethearts. She was also one of the media’s original tabloid subjects.
Through no fault of her own, Debbie was dragged into one of the biggest celebrity scandals in Hollywood history when her husband, singer Eddie Fisher, left her for their good friend Elizabeth Taylor. Debbie’s daughter, Carrie Fisher, wittily attempted to explain her parents’ situation in her book Wishful Drinking: “Now if you are too young to relate to any of this, try and think of it this way: Think of Eddie as Brad Pitt and Debbie as Jennifer Aniston and Elizabeth as Angelina Jolie. Does that help?”
The only difference is Jen and Angie weren’t BFFs.
Debbie and Elizabeth’s friendship began when they were teenagers. They attended high school together on the MGM lot and ended up marrying best friends.
“We went to school together on the lot, when she was in between films. I was just a beginner, and she and I were not in any manner alike, but we got along very well because I was in awe of going to school with Elizabeth Taylor,” Debbie recalled to People. “And if anyone said they weren’t, then they were lying. Or blind.”
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Debbie wed Eddie in 1955, and Elizabeth walked down the aisle two years later with his best friend, producer Mike Todd. The foursome were so close that Eddie was the best man at Elizabeth and Mike’s wedding, and Debbie was the matron of honor. Debbie and Eddie even named their son Todd.
In 1958, shortly after Elizabeth and Mike were hitched, Mike was killed in a plane crash. Very shortly after that, Eddie left Debbie for Elizabeth.
“Well, naturally, my father flew to Elizabeth’s side, gradually making his way slowly to her front,” Carrie quipped in her memoir. “He first dried her eyes with his handkerchief, then he consoled her with flowers, and he ultimately consoled her with his penis. Now this made marriage to my mother awkward, so he was gone within the week.”
What followed was a media circus unheard of at the time. Eddie married Elizabeth in 1959, but the two divorced in 1964. That would be because Elizabeth met Richard Burton on the set of Cleopatra, and the rest is history. So was Eddie.
Eddie’s career never quite recovered from the scandal, but Debbie — professionally — was just fine. In the new tabloid age, all public sympathy went to her. She was the “poor little light-haired girl,” as Carrie put it, and ready to move on romantically.
Carrie cracked, “Now Debbie does not want to marry another man who will run off, so she marries someone very, very old who can’t run — nope, [shoe tycoon] Harry Karl can’t run at all.”
Debbie wed millionaire businessman Harry Karl in 1960, and it wasn’t until she was happily married that she forgave Elizabeth. Years later, Debbie and Harry ran into Elizabeth and Richard while boarding the Queen Elizabeth to London.
“I looked up, and I saw tons of luggage going by me and birdcages and dog cages and nurses, and I realized Elizabeth was on the same ship as me,” Debbie recounted years later. “I almost changed my mind about going, but my husband said, ‘Don’t be silly; we won’t be on the same floor.'”
But of course they were on the same floor.
“So I sent a note to her room, and she sent a note back to mine saying that we should have dinner and get this over with and have a good time,” Debbie continued.
“The four of us ended up having dinner, and it was wonderful. She’d moved along in her life, and so had I,” she said. “If your husband’s going to leave you for anyone, it might as well be Elizabeth Taylor. She was beautiful, smart, and a very sexual woman, and I was very different — not exactly a sex kitten. I told [Eddie] she’d throw him out eventually, and that’s exactly what happened. But he wasn’t the brightest of men.”
While Debbie and Elizabeth’s rekindled friendship stayed afloat — in 2001, they even co-starred in These Old Broads, written by Carrie Fisher — Debbie’s relationship with Harry sank. They divorced in 1973, as he also cheated on her and gambled away her money.
Once again, we’ll let Carrie take it from here via Wishful Drinking: “All he does is sit in a chair and smoke and read the paper and after about thirteen years, he loses all his money, and then he takes all of hers! Fun! And so that marriage ends.”
However, Debbie wasn’t ready to give up on love. Unfortunately, the third time wasn’t the charm either. Hubby No. 3, real estate developer Richard Hamlett, apparently lost whatever money was left from the Harry years while also being unfaithful.
“I can pick good food,” Debbie laughed in 2011 while reflecting on her romantic history, “but I can’t pick a good man.”
While Debbie didn’t find her happily ever after — she and Richard finally divorced in 1996 after 12 years of marriage — there was one relationship that trumped them all.
“Carrie is my child, and I love her with every ounce of strength I possess. If love alone could cure our children, they would always be well. Since I can’t, I will do whatever I can to make her life less difficult,” Debbie wrote in her memoir Unsinkable, while talking about Carrie’s battle with mental illness. “I’m so grateful to Carrie for working so hard to stay well when sometimes it might be easier to give up.”
Related: Celebs React to the Death of Debbie Reynolds
The feeling was mutual. Just last month, Carrie sang her mother’s praises.
“She’s an immensely powerful woman, and I just admire my mother very much,” Carrie told NPR. “She also annoys me sometimes when she’s mad at the nurses, but she’s an extraordinary woman. Extraordinary. There’s very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again. I mean, she’s had an amazing life, and she’s someone to admire.”
Rest in peace, you two.
