Friends Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor fell out after the ultimate love betrayal

DEBBIE Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor were good friends but fell out over a man in what was a major scandal. Somehow the pair eventually made up.

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DEBBIE Reynolds had every right to be furious with her good friend Elizabeth Taylor.

Reynolds’ husband, the singer Eddie Fisher — father of two of their children Carrie and Todd — had an affair with the glamorous Taylor and would go on to become her fourth husband, sparking a feud between the pair.

Reynolds and Fisher, and Taylor and her third husband, film producer Mike Todd, had all been close and regularly socialised and even holidayed together. Reynolds and Taylor had known each other since their days as MGM starlets and Fisher was Todd’s best friend. Indeed when Todd and Taylor married in February of 1957, Fisher was the best man and Reynolds the matron of honour.

Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, in Las Vegas in 1958. Fisher would go on to have an affair with — and marry — Taylor. Picture: AP

Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds hold their baby daughter, Carrie Frances Fisher. Picture: AP

When Todd was killed in a plane crash in March of1958, Reynolds offered to look after the devastated Taylor’s three children while Fisher flew to her side, ostensibly to comfort and look after her.

The affair that resulted — and their subsequent wedding in Las Vegas in May, 1959 — turned into one of the biggest scandals of the era, even leading to the axing of Fisher’s successful TV show. He would later also be dropped by his record label and his career never really recovered.

“He went with my blessing,” Reynolds wrote in her autobiography, titled Unsinkable, A Memoir. “The four of us were so close, I was sure he could comfort her.”

Eddie Fisher and actor bride Elizabeth Taylor posing for the media after their marriage in Las Vegas in 1959.

Although Reynolds was devastated by the betrayal, the already successful actor, with titles such as the 1952 musical Singin’ in the Rain behind her, became even more popular in the public eye — her career took off as her former husband’s crashed. In the years that followed, Reynolds made hit films such as the 1962 Oscar-winning western How the West Was Won and was nominated for an Oscar herself for playing the title role in the 1964 comedy musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown. She also moved on from Fisher by marrying wealthy businessman Harry Karl, they were together for 13 years.

Taylor and Fisher’s marriage however, was not so successful. The pair divorced in 1964. Taylor, who later admitted she’d only married Fisher out of grief, had already begun an affair with Richard Burton, whom she met on the set of Cleopatra (1963).

The divorce from Fisher opened the way for a rapprochement between Taylor and Reynolds. Seven years after Reynolds’ divorce from Fisher, she found herself sailing for Europe on the same cruise ship as Taylor and 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 wrote in her memoir. “We drank champagne and had a lovely time.”

Debbie Reynolds’ showbiz life

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Debbie Reynolds’ showbiz life

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In 2001 they appeared on screen together in a TV movie written and directed by Carrie Fisher, Old Broads, with Taylor playing a character who steals Reynolds’ character’s husband. Reynolds wrote that Taylor, then in failing health, had been advised against doing the film by doctors, but that she felt she needed to make amends for what she had done with Eddie decades previously.

Shirley MacLaine, Debbie Reynolds, Joan Collins and Elizabeth Taylor in a promotional shot for Carrie Fisher’s TV movie Old Broads. Picture: Timothy White / ABC via Getty Images

Reynolds and Taylor even ended up holed up together in a hotel room in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, with transport out of New York shut down.

Final proof of their renewed friendship came after Taylor’s death in March, 2011, when the glamorous actor, who “had jewels for every occasion”, bequeathed a sizeable and valuable collection of gems to her one time love rival.

Originally published as Friends Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor fell out after the ultimate love betrayal