Stars: A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Decorum

For month after nervous month, Elizabeth Taylor kept Eddie Fisher at arm’s length as a kind of singing duck. It would never do to dump him, not while Richard Burton was still resisting. If Taylor had divorced Fisher and Burton had gone back to Sybil, Taylor would have lost ten-tenths of her pretty face. But if the affair had collapsed while both were still married, then it would have been just another office romance.

With Burton’s divorce two weeks ago, Eddie’s usefulness ended; and Elizabeth Taylor almost immediately began to complain to the press that Fisher was in the way, that he was slowing things up, and that he was holding out for a payoff of more than $1,000,000.

Hearing this in Las Vegas, Fisher exploded. “I wouldn’t stand in the way of this earth-shattering, world-shaking romance for anything in the world,” he said. “I tried for months to get Elizabeth on the phone to say let’s get it over with. She wouldn’t talk to me. Now all of a sudden I’m supposed to be standing in the way of the marriage of this lovely young couple who have been going together for so long.”

Questionable Washday. “Legal matters take time, and the great lovers will just have to bear up a few more days or maybe weeks,” Eddie went on. “They stamp their feet, and if they don’t get what they want, the world must stop. They’re acting like a couple of kids in a playpen. They’ve been in their playpen long enough. They can wait a few days.”

As for his reported insistence on a $1,000,000-plus settlement, it was just not true. In fact, said Eddie, he had no clear idea what sort of divorce settlement Elizabeth wanted. “I’m not objecting to giving up anything. The one thing I’d like to give up is my marriage certificate. I’m willing for her to be happy with Richard the Lionhearted as soon as possible.”

Proud Mother. Meanwhile in Mexico, the cast and crew of The Night of the Iguana had long since gone home, but Liz and Burton, who had no home to goto, were still there. Richard the Lionhearted, taking regular Harry Truman constitutionals, paced briskly along with members of the press in tow, covering the 1,200-meter distance from his villa to his favorite bar without even getting winded. Assuming a quick finish to the Fisher business, when would he become the fifth Mr. Taylor? “Probably about January 20.” Why wait? “There will be a few days’ delay arranging the wedding, and also for the sake of decorum—what little decorum is left now.”

On Christmas Day, Burton and his fiancee passed out some $500 worth of toys to the children of Puerto Vallarta. But most of the day Burton spent away from the public eye, in the bosom of his new family: Elizabeth’s forever proud and beaming mother, and her father (whose usual expression is uncertainty), and her brother, and her sister-in-law, and her two little boys by Michael Wilding, and her little girl by Mike Todd, and the little German girl she adopted two years ago, and Taffy, her little yipping Sealyham.

Before the door shut behind the family group, someone asked Elizabeth to comment on the bold protestations of Eddie Fisher. “Please,” she said, “do not spoil my Christmas.”

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