Wedding Wednesday: Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher

It’s slightly scandalous to be married four times. But when your fourth husband is your now deceased third husband’s best friend, who was married at the time you started your relationship with him….. well THAT’S scandalous. And so goes the marriage of Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher.

By all accounts, Liz Taylor was all but emotionally destroyed after Mike Todd died in a plane crash (you can read about their marriage here). In her grief, she turned to their friend Eddie, a man who had been Mike Todd’s best friend. Eddie was married to Debbie Reynolds, a friend of Liz’s since they were in their teens and Debbie had actually been the matron of honor in Liz and Mike’s wedding. <insert your audible gasp here>

It truly was a big scandal at the time. Liz was accused of being a homewrecker. Studios were unsure about using her in their productions. And to add fuel to the fire, she was quoted as saying, “Eddie is not in love with Debbie and never has been…You can’t break up a happy marriage. Debbie and Eddie’s never has been.” Yikes. Later she would claim that she only married Eddie out of her own grief. Double yikes.

And as we all already know, theirs was not a marriage that would last. Married in Vegas at a Jewish temple in May of 1959 (Todd had died in March of 1958), they divorced in March of 1964 after Liz was romantically linked to Richard Burton, with whom she was staring in a movie. But darn in… now I’m showing my hand for next week’s post.

So, before I ruin the suspense (as if we don’t all know what happened next), let’s talk about the engagement ring that Eddie gave Liz. Or…. the lack thereof. Maybe he felt she already had enough diamond rings, so he proposed with something a little less traditional: a fifty diamond, forty carat bracelet. It was a lovely compliment to her already growing collection and became a symbol of their scandalous love affair. But it was nothing compared to what was to come. But more on that next week. Stay tuned. 😉