"If I had known that first night we spent together how our love was going to help destroy my career and, for a time, my life, if I had known how much pain my love for Elizabeth was going to bring me... I still wouldn't have hesitated!"

- Eddie Fisher

Butterfield 8 (1960) DVD

Three's a crowd: Liz, Eddie and Debbie. Eddie later said of Debbie, "when I left her for Elizabeth Taylor, she should have won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the wronged woman".

Behind the Scenes: The Liz-Eddie-Debbie (& Richard) Scandals

LIZ TAYLOR'S OSCAR FOR BUTTERFIELD 8, ONE MIGHT THINK, WAS REALLY FOR THE DRAMA BEING ACTED OUT IN HER PERSONAL LIFE. Having lost her third husband, Mike Todd, in a plane crash, Talyor decided to keep Debbie Reynold's. As Mike's friend, Eddie Fisher, was already providing comfort to the grieving widow, when - to worldwide disapproval - he decided to replace him in the matrimonial bed.

Fisher said, "I had to figure out how to announce to the world that I was leaving sweet little Debbie for my best friend's widow without destroying Elizabeth's and my careers." The backlash brought 7,000 pieces of hate-mail a week and an Eddie & Liz boycott. Despite all that, Fisher, her co-star in Butterfield 8, was soon replaced by fourth husband, Richard Burton on the notorious set of "Cleopatra", a union condemned by the Catholic Church but enjoyed by cinemagoers.

"Let's face it, Debbie, Liz is sex-on-legs, and you're... well... "Tammy".

A DAY AT THE RACES: Mike Todd keeps Liz Taylor close while Eddie Fisher points his pipe at her and Debbie Reynolds looks away.

WIFE SWAP, BEFORE AND AFTER: Eddie Fisher said his marriage to Debbie, whom he then described as "a self-centered, totally driven, insecure, untruthful phony", was over long before Liz entered the frame. "Debbie's whole life has been an act... when I left her for Elizabeth Taylor, she should have won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the wronged woman", he wrote in his book, "Been There, Done That".

HUSBAND SWAP, BEFORE AND AFTER: Burton and Taylor became a media soap opera as their drunken brawls and lavish lifestyle kept them in the headlines. A book on Talylor in 2000, "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World", claimed Burton was a closet gay who had an affair with Sir Laurence Olivier and also tried to seduce Taylor's husband at the time, Eddie Fisher. Burton's brother Graham Jenkins described him as "the most heterosexual man most people had ever encountered", adding, "If Rich was a homosexual then I'm a nun".

Liz falls ill in London where a tracheotomy had to be performed to save her life during the filming of "Cleopatra". Liz's near-death experience caused the public anger felt towards her to change to sympathy. She won the Best Actress Oscar while still in the hospital prompting Shirley Maclaine's quip "I lost the Oscar to a tracheotomy".

LIZ & DEBBIE POSTSCRIPT

For seven years after, the former friends, Liz and Debbie, avoided contact - until Debbie boarded the Queen Elizabeth with her second husband, Harry Karl, and found that Miss Taylor was on the ship. She recalls: 'Liz was with Richard Burton and her whole family, all the children and the nannies. I sent a little note to her, saying: "Let's get together to have dinner. It's silly to carry on this fight now that we've both remarried and it's all just sort of ridiculous, isn't it?" 'It turned out she'd sent one to me at the same time, so they criss-crossed. We had dinner that night in the main dining room. Heads turned. Cameras were everywhere. People were hiding behind plants taking pictures.' To this day, she remains in touch with Elizabeth, the past forgotten and forgiven. Read more

Bryan James, Classic Films Reloaded

Blog on Butterfield 8

Marital CV: Liz has tied the knot 8 times

Conrad Hilton (6 May 1950 - 29 January 1951) (divorced)
Michael Wilding (21 February 1952 - 26 January 1957) (divorced)
Michael Todd (2 February 1957 - 22 March 1958) (widowed)
Eddie Fisher (12 May 1959 - 6 March 1964) (divorced)
Richard Burton (15 March 1964 - 26 June 1974) (divorced)
Richard Burton (again) (10 October 1975 - 29 July 1976) (divorced)
John Warner (4 December 1976 - 7 November 1982) (divorced)
Larry Fortensky (6 October 1991 - 31 October 1996) (divorced)

Eddie Fisher: Liz was love of my life - Larry King Show 1996

Debbie Reynolds jokes about Liz and Eddie with Carol Lynley at an AIDS benefit in San Francisco, 2005

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