The jewellery case had once belonged to Elizabeth Taylor, the same beautiful shade of violet as her eyes. Inside were three sparkling pieces: sapphire earrings, a bracelet and matching necklace.
Even without the cachet of belonging to her personal collection, they were worth a great deal and Taylor was specific about who should inherit after her death in 2011. Her relatives may have hoped they would come their way but they were destined to go outside the family and to the most unexpected of recipients.
Devoted: Liz Taylor and Debbie Reynolds with Eddie Fischer in 1958
At 79, the same age as Taylor when she died, her fellow Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds learned that she would inherit the gems. That Reynolds might accept the bequest would have been inconceivable in 1958 when Taylor famously betrayed their friendship by stealing her husband Eddie Fisher and embroiling them in one of the biggest Hollywood scandals of the day.
Although it was known that the two women eventually made peace, no one imagined Taylor would remember her former love rival so generously in her will. But as Reynolds explains in an entertaining new autobiography, the reconciliation between her and her ‘dear friend’ went much further than anyone knew.
She recalls visiting an increasingly frail Taylor at her home in 2003 and taking along a pumpkin pie. Together they began watching the Tom Cruise film, The Last Samurai. ‘It features a lot of sword fights which really didn’t interest us,’ she says. ‘So we sat in Elizabeth’s bed, eating pie and chatting, while her nurse sat quietly beside us.‘During my visit, one of Elizabeth’s admirers dropped off a diamond bracelet for her. It was a bit tight so I told her she might have to add a diamond or two to make it fit better. “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I’ll just wear it early in the day when I’m not so swollen.”
‘Elizabeth had jewels for every occasion — and every stage of water retention.’
So companionable are such scenes that readers of this new memoir may wonder whether Reynolds was grateful to Taylor for breaking up her marriage. Strange though it sounds, she makes it clear that her divorce was no surprise.
By the time she married Fisher in September 1955, the 23-year-old daughter of a devoutly religious railroad worker was used to dealing with wayward men. Growing up in LA, as a keen Girl Scout, she originally wanted to be a gym teacher but was signed by Warner Brothers and then MGM after winning a beauty contest at 16.
In her first major studio role she was paired with Gene Kelly in the 1952 classic Singin’ In the Rain and in one scene they had kissed to the strains of You Are My Lucky Star. ‘Stanley Donen, the director, shouted “Action!”. The camera closed in. Gene took me tightly in his arms . . . and shoved his tongue down my throat,’ she recalls.‘ “Eew! What was that?” I screeched, breaking free of his grasp and spitting. I was an innocent 19-year-old kid who had never been French kissed. It felt like an assault. I was stunned that this 39-year-old man would do this to me.’
She would not easily be taken advantage of again. During the making of Give a Girl a Break in 1953, the legendary dancer and choreographer Bob Fosse tried to get closer to her than was professionally necessary. ‘He was so in love with his well-endowed self that he would come up behind me and press his “gift” against me,’ says Reynolds. ‘It was obvious he wasn’t wearing any underwear.‘I could feel everything he wanted to share and Bobby didn’t respond to subtle discouragement like being pushed away vigorously, so I went out one lunchtime and bought the biggest jockstrap I could find. ‘Back at rehearsal, I placed my present in Bobby’s locker. He got the message and never poked me again.’
Reynolds was warned off Fischer by Frank Sinatra, her co-star in The Tender Trap from 1955
She was still a virgin in 1954 when she met and fell in love with Eddie Fisher, a nightclub crooner whose matinee-idol looks and smooth voice had won him his own national TV show. Fisher was four years older and infinitely more experienced. He had lost his virginity to a prostitute at 15, claimed to have been seduced by Marlene Dietrich in a mirrored bathroom and was also linked with Judy Garland, Ann-Margret, Merle Oberon and other stars of the day.
Reynolds was warned off him by Frank Sinatra, her co-star in The Tender Trap, filmed that year. 'One day he took me to lunch and asked me a lot of questions about my feelings for Eddie. I told him that I loved Eddie and wanted to marry him.‘ “You should think twice about this,” he said. “It’s a hard life marrying a singer. I know.” ’
She realised the wisdom of his words too late.
In October 1956, just over a year into her marriage to Fisher, she gave birth to their daughter Carrie - who later played Princess Leia in Star Wars. Rather than doting on his new daughter, Fisher was absent for long and unexplained periods. ‘I sensed that our marriage was in trouble,’ she says. ‘More than anything I wanted another baby so that Carrie could have someone to grow up with. The problem was, Eddie and I hardly ever had sex after Carrie was born.
‘There were plenty of other men but I wasn’t that kind of girl - and besides, I wanted my kids to have the same father. Time was running out and I was on a mission to get pregnant.’
She seized her chance on a holiday with Elizabeth Taylor and her third husband Mike Todd. Reynolds and Taylor had known each other since their days as MGM starlets and Fisher was Todd’s best friend.
Debbie Reynolds with son, filmmaker Todd Fisher, and daughter, screenwriter and Star Wars star Carrie Fisher
The couples often socialised and became so close that when Todd and Taylor married in February 1957, Fisher was his best man and Reynolds her matron of honour, even washing her friend’s hair on the night before the wedding.
Three months later, they all rented a villa in Italy. By then Taylor was six months’ pregnant with daughter Liza, conceived with Todd while she was still married to second husband, the English actor Michael Wilding.
Describing Taylor’s happiness as ‘contagious’, Reynolds was more determined to become pregnant herself. By now aware her ‘sperm bank’, as she refers to Fisher, got his highs from amphetamines and rarely drank, she plied him with beer and got him inebriated. ‘Sure that I was fertile, I was excited about getting my hands on Eddie,’ she writes. ‘I soon got Eddie excited too, even though he was half asleep.
‘When the deed was done, I used the beautiful headboard on our bed to prop up my legs all night. I stayed that way until I left for the airport the next morning. Nine months later, Carrie had a brother Todd. Mission accomplished.’
Shortly after their son’s birth in early 1958, the couple heard that Mike Todd had been killed in a plane crash. Taylor was hysterical and Reynolds offered to look after her three children - the new baby and her two sons by Michael Wilding - at her own home.
The kind of generosity you might expect of a good friend, but harder to understand is why Reynolds also agreed to lend Taylor her husband - raising no objection when Fisher moved in with the grieving widow, to keep an eye on her for a few days.
‘He went with my blessing,’ writes Reynolds. ‘The four of us were so close, I was sure he could comfort her.’
Given the circumstances, this seems extraordinary. How many women would be happy for their husbands to share a home with one of the most beautiful woman in the world, in mourning or not? Perhaps only one like Reynolds who was aware, if only subconsciously, that her marriage was already approaching its end.
Eddie Fisher poses with his soon-to-be-divorced wife Debbie Reynolds and his soon-to-be-next wife Elizabeth Taylor at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas in 1957
Confirmation came two weeks after Todd’s death. Taylor went on a trip to New York and Fisher followed. When Reynolds tried to call his room there was no reply so she called Taylor’s suite. ‘Eddie took the call and I heard Elizabeth saying, “Who is it, darling?”
Following their divorce in 1959, Fisher came off far worse. The unfavourable publicity saw his TV series cancelled and he was later dropped by his record label.
His career never recovered and his subsequent marriage to Taylor, which lasted less than five years, was soon disrupted by her affair with future husband Richard Burton.
Reynolds’ popularity seems to have been boosted by the scandal. She went on to make classic films, How the West Was Won, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, for which she won an Oscar nomination.
She married second husband Harry Karl, a wealthy businessman, which must have made it easier to offer an olive branch when, seven years after her divorce from Fisher, she was sailing for Europe on the same cruise as Taylor and Richard Burton.
‘I invited Elizabeth and Richard to our suite for cocktails and I don’t think we even mentioned Eddie Fisher more than in passing,’ she says. ‘We drank champagne and had a lovely time.’
From then on, according to Reynolds, they shared ‘many happy times’ but for all their renewed friendship Taylor seemed unable to forgive herself for the betrayal.
In 2001, they appeared in the TV movie These Old Broads, written and directed by Carrie Fisher. ‘Elizabeth was in very poor health and her doctors didn’t want her to do the role but she agreed to do the movie for Carrie,’ says Reynolds. ‘I felt it was an attempt to make amends to Carrie and me for her part in my divorce decades before.’
For Taylor, taking part must have been all the harder given that she played a woman who stole the husband of Reynolds’ character.
Two old friends: Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor in 2001
‘ “I’m so sorry for what I did to you with Eddie,” she said one day. “I just feel so awful when I think of how I hurt you and your children.”
‘ “That was another lifetime,” I assured her. “You and I made up years ago.” ’
But Taylor continued to atone as only a movie legend married eight times could do.
In 2001, Taylor got Reynolds a ticket to see her friend Michael Jackson in concert in New York in celebration of his 30 years in show business. The following morning, September 11, both women awoke in hotel rooms in different parts of the city to news of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers.
By then Reynolds was divorced from her third husband Richard Hamlett, whose affairs with various women, including a ‘toothless waitress from a waffle house’, bewildered her in a way that Eddie Fisher’s infidelity had not.
‘Hell, my first husband left me for Elizabeth Taylor,’ she says. ‘At least that made sense.’ Fancying an adventure, Reynolds travelled to New York alone but felt frightened and vulnerable and was relieved when Taylor invited her to share her suite until they could both get out of the city.
For the next few days, with American airspace closed, the two were holed up, crying together at the news reports as Taylor’s butler took care of them. When Reynolds realised she would not make it to California for a one-woman show she was booked perform that weekend, Taylor offered to help.
She called in a favour from U.S. Senator John Warner, the seventh of her eight husbands, who arranged for them to be flown to LA on private jet, as soon as flights resumed, in time for Reynolds to make her concert.
Such gestures were no doubt appreciated by Reynolds, but near the end their friendship was about the shared hardships of old age.
The last time they spoke by telephone was shortly before Taylor’s death.
‘ “Getting old is really s****y,” I said.
‘Elizabeth laughed that wonderful full laugh.
‘ “It certainly is, Debbie. This is really tough.”’
They would not see each other again, but Taylor would reach out to Reynolds with a surprise bequest. Not an apology, for that was no longer needed, but as a symbol of friendship that endured once they had put their differences behind them.
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