Later in the day, at 12:45pm, Elizabeth Taylor stars in the epic 1963 film Cleopatra on BBC2. This Hollywood blockbuster is where Taylor met her fifth husband, Richard Burton. She stayed with the actor for ten years before divorcing him (then remarrying and re-divorcing him a year later). But before that ordeal, Taylor stole her best friend Debbie Reynolds’ husband.
Taylor and Reynolds debuted in Hollywood around the same time. They were both child stars who learned the ropes as superstars before morphing into mature movie stars who took the world by storm. They reportedly double dated and spent many evenings together hanging out and nothing came of it.
Reynolds and her husband, Eddie Fisher, were madly in love. He would introduce her on stage as “my princess” and worship the ground she walks on. But everything changed after a few years of marriage when Taylor’s third husband, Mike Todd, died suddenly in a plane crash. Fisher consoled Taylor, and after a long while, their friendship blossomed into an ugly affair.
One night, while Fisher is away “on business”, a lonely Reynolds calls into the hotel room of her best friend, Taylor, to strike up a conversation. She was shocked when her husband picked up the phone.
“Suddenly, a lot of things just clicked into place,” Reynolds recalled in 2010. “I could hear her asking him who was calling—they were obviously in bed together. He spoke to Elizabeth.”
Fisher reportedly dropped the phone and ran home to face the music. He told Reynolds, “I’m sorry. Elizabeth and I are in love and I want a divorce.”
“If you marry her, she will fire you in 18 months,” Reynolds reassured her soon-to-be ex-husband. Of course, she was right. When Taylor joined the cast of Cleopatra she fell in love with Richard Burton.
But before that, Reynolds did not want to end her marriage. “I was very religious so I didn’t believe in divorce,” she told the Daily Mail. But the new couple insisted on not giving her any choice.
“They blamed me for separating them from true love,” she recalls. “So, I finally let Eddie off the hook. I told him to go.”
Reynolds was shocked and hurt by the events. “Eddie was the best guy in town [Taylor and Todd’s] The wedding and I were the bridesmaid. We saw a lot of each other and I never suspected that she would lure my husband away.
Looking back, Reynolds admits she didn’t entirely blame her husband for sneaking off with Taylor.
“I probably wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been anyone else,” she recalled. “But how it all happened was rather scandalous in that they couldn’t care less to avoid hurting me.” “I get it when I look back. Who would pass by Elizabeth? No woman lives by her beauty. And Eddie tried to act like Mike Todd, smoking a big cigar.”
Reynolds knew there were rumors in the press about her husband hanging out with Taylor after dark — but she didn’t pay any attention to them. She dismisses them as nothing more than rumors.
Unfortunately for her, she was wrong. She said, “I was the last to find out. There were hints in the papers and I noticed that when I showed up at events or parties alone, my friends would whisper. Although I didn’t want to find out the truth, I had to face it. Still, it was a great shock.” To find them together. It left me devastated.”
Still, Reynolds had the last laugh. Her warning came true: she dropped Taylor Fisher when she met Burton, and they rarely saw each other again for the rest of their lives.
On the other hand, Reynolds married a year later, in 1960, to Harry Karl, a shoe store owner.
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