Debbie Reynolds is a famous actress, who, however, is not as well remembered by the audience as her “sworn friend” Elizabeth Taylor.
That is why the actresses were sometimes a model of female friendship, otherwise, they did not want to hear about each other.
Debbie Reynolds got into the movie almost by accident. She worked as a model and at the age of 16 she won a beauty contest, which was attended by the producer of the MGM film company. He invited her to try for a role in the comedy Three Little Words (1950).
18-year-old Liz Taylor by that time already had more than ten film roles. She was a successful actress and was not very happy when her age Debbie just come to conquer Hollywood.
However, the girls quickly became friends: “We went to school together between filming. I was an aspiring actress, we had little in common, but we were very good together, ”recalled Debbie.
Young actresses were offered different roles: Debbie often starred in comedies, and Elizabeth was offered more serious dramatic characters. In general, they were not rivals in the field of cinema, so they did not quarrel over this.
Big love
This went on for several years until the singer Eddie Fisher appeared in Debbie’s life. Taylor was married for the second time at the time, and Reynolds felt a little jealous about this.
The actress began an affair with Fischer, and in 1955 they got married. Singer Frank Sinatra tried to dissuade Reynolds. He considered his colleagues incapable of being faithful to his wife and insisted that she think carefully. But Debbie wasn’t listening. Shortly after the wedding, she gave birth to a daughter, Carrie, and a son, Todd, and at first everything was fine. True, Debbie’s career stalled, fewer and fewer roles were offered – and she never managed to return to the clip of stars of the first magnitude. But she had love!
Taylor divorced Michael Wilding in 1957 and quickly remarried Mike Todd. Eddie and Debbie witnessed and even named their newborn son after Mike. And just a year later, Mike Todd died in a plane crash, and Liz Taylor found solace in the arms of Eddie Fisher.
Divorce and tears
Thus was born one of the most famous Hollywood love triangles. Debbie was the last to know about everything – a month after Mike’s death. She did not want to admit the bitter truth, but one day Eddie packed up and went to Taylor, filed for divorce, and married Liz. Reynolds had to agree to a divorce because the lovers did not want to wait a day.
“I didn’t blame Elizabeth,” Reynolds admitted many years later. – A man does not leave a woman for another unless he himself wants to leave. When Mike died, I myself sent Eddie to her, I did not think that they would begin an affair.
So, in 1959, Debbie lost both her beloved friend and her husband at once. A year later, she married millionaire Harry Karl, and a year later, Taylor divorced Fisher, falling in love with Richard Burton. But the actresses did not want to hear about each other!
Joyful reunion
Seven years later, the ladies collided on the Queen Elizabeth ship, which was sailing to Europe. “We exchanged reserved greetings and then had dinner. She was already married to Richard Burton, I to Harry Carl. And we became friends again, ”recalls Debbie.
In 2001, Debbie and Elizabeth starred in American Old Horses, written by Carrie Fisher. There they presented this story to Eddie, which did not prevent the resumption of female friendship.
This friendship was no longer as close as in the 50s, but the actresses enjoyed meeting and discussing their personal and professional lives. This continued almost until Taylor’s death in 2011: in recent years, the actress was often sick and did not want her old friend to see her like that. None of them went to Eddie Fisher’s funeral in 2010. Debbie Reynolds herself passed away in December 2016 – the day after her daughter’s death from a heart attack, she had a stroke.