Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

active girl, but that bad nothing to do with the loss of the bahy. The doctors assured us of that. They also assured us that there were no complications because of the loss and that if we want, we can go ahead and have a whole houseful of more children.” A likely couple P 100 There probably isn't a likelier couple in the land better equipped temperamentally to handle a houseful of scampering, chattering, noisy, busy, happy children. Because as active and vital as Debbie is in her craft. Harry is just as much so in his own vast undertaking. As head of a shoe manufacturing and retailing empire, Harry Karl is a human dynamo, spanning continents at the drop of a hat, dealing in a dozen enterprises simultaneously and always ready for more. Even as I talked with him. he was cleaning up details on his latest venture. “We:ve just opened another fifty stores.” he said with pride in his voice. Debbie’s determination to give her chilli ten the protection and security of a healthy, enduring marriage runs very deep. As we talked it became manifestly clear to me that her most profound happiness is as a wife and mother — "my private ambition.” as she calls it. “We do everything together,” she said contentedly. “And Harry is a pure joy to the children — so kind, so gentle, so understanding. He makes sure that the children are along any time we go different places and do different things. He’s absolutely crazy about Todd and Carrie, and believe me they’re just as wild over their new daddy. “We spend as much time as we can with them. I myself never let working schedules interfere with my relationships with the kids. I’m with Todd and Carrie much more than the average working mother. and I’ll bet a lot more than even mothers who don’t work — who have nothing to do but stay home and raise a family. To me there’s no such thing as spending too much time with your children.” Inevitably the talk turned to Todd’s and Carrie’s real father Eddie Fisher. Debbie understands Eddie’s sense of loss in having to give up the children and does nothing to alienate Todd and Carrie from their father. When possible, she tries to allow a normal father-and-child relationship to develop between Eddie and the youngsters, even if it means taking part in the reunion herself. Not too long ago. after he left Rome to Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Eddie came to Hollywood to visit the children. He offered to take them to Disneyland. They were thrilled but insisted that Mommy go along, too. Eddie and Debbie glanced at each other — and nodded agreement. Off they traipsed, concealing whatever private emotions they had in order to present a picture of amiability and normalcy to what was a rather difficult situation. And so. appearing for all the world like the loving husband and wife they once were, they took Todd and Carrie to the wonder-filled fantasy world of Disneyland, laughing, going on rides, eating cotton candy. Perhaps it was that innocent afternoon that was so gleefully and maliciously distorted by that everlasting peril to peace and to decent privacy — The Woman. Was she there lurking in a crowd, almost tasting the scandal she could scarcely wait to spit out to all who would listen? Was hers the ever-present sick mind that always has and will forever insinuate some unfounded wickedness into such guileless pleasure? No one can say for certain. Yet a short time afterward, a dark rumor began circulating that Debbie was “tired” and “disenchanted” with Harry. The Woman didn’t stop there. Soon the thick black lie was beard that Debhie was actually “courting" Eddie, hoping to win him back. Then came the talk of an “imminent reconciliation" with Eddie and. finally, the grotesque charade of a stewing, fuming, furious Harry Karl, white with rage at his treasonous bride. Imaginations ran riot. All in a day’s work The Woman had certainly done a day’s work, hut in the end time exposed it for what it really was. A packet of vicious, empty lies. Lies that really had been doomed from the beginning. For Harry Karl is a sensitive, intelligent man. He realizes that no one can ever wholly estrange a child from his natural father, regardless of the circumstances that keep them separated. Nor should they be estranged. Eddie Fisher is Todd’s and Carrie’s father. He should — and will — continue to see them. That means Eddie and Debbie will necessarily be thrown together occasionally in the years to come. But because of Harry’s deep and abiding faith in Debbie, and of her own deep warmth and love for him, both know that neither Eddie nor anyone can ever come between them. Despite the malevolent gossip, Harry and Debbie look forward eagerly to the fulfillment of the happy years ahead. Not that they aren’t aware of certain obstacles. They do exist. They’d have to. in a family where the husband is a dynamic millionaire businessman and the mother a worldfamous actress. But both have the temperament to recognize the obstacles and overcome them. We were concluding our talk. Debbie and I. when she said reflectively: “I know I live in a goldfish bowl, but that’s the price you have to pay in this business. But I’m not tired of it. If I were. I'd get out. When I was very young. I’d walk down the street and no one would look at me. Now it’s different. People come up to me all the time and they see me. dressed up as I am. I don't scrounge around as I used to. in slacks and pedal pushers. “Most people are very polite. They just look at me. They see me and they either like me or don’t like me. Sometimes I can hear them whisper about me. They don’t know I can hear them. If they say anything bad. I have to take it as part of PHOTOGRAPHERS' CREDITS Pg 29: Frank Bez; pgs 30-31 : Bill Kobrin; pgs 34-35: William Woodfield; pg 38: Playboy Magazine; pg 48: Pictorial Parade; pg 50: William Woodfield; pgs 52-55: Frank Bez; pg 58: Globe Photos; pgs 6061: Frank Bez; pgs 66-67: Don Ornitz; pg 68: Art Palmer. showbusiness. It’s taken a long time and I’m still not used to it.” Life in the bowl Maybe Debbie never really will become accustomed to inhabiting a “goldfish bowl.” But experience, some of it bitter, has taught her to endure it. Few people, men or women, were ever exposed to so harsh a public spotlight as Debbie Reynolds during those torturous days when her marriage with Eddie Fisher first collapsed and later, with Elizabeth Taylor playing the siren role, disintegrated completely. They were agonizing, merciless, humiliating days for Debbie. But from them she emerged with a new and valuable wisdom. Never again would she allow her private life to stand naked before the world. She is determined that her marriage with Harry Karl will retain the priceless intimacy so vital for lasting peace and happiness. She may achieve it. Yet she may not. One person looms forever as a threat to that treasured privacy Debbie wants so desperately — The Woman who is trying, to break up Debbie Reynolds’ marriage! I couldn’t help pondering about The Woman. I saw in her the eternal danger, and I mentioned my thoughts to Debbie. She understood completely. Like any celebrity, Debbie Reynolds knows that somewhere, in some nameless place, that faceless phantom I call The Woman was unquestionably helping to spread the deadly poison of gossip. She has no name. Or perhaps more precisely she goes under ten thousand names. She is the narrow, thoughtless, often deliberately cruel failure who. forlorn in the knowledge of her own life’s emptiness, finds a twisted pleasure in destroying someone else’s happiness. She is the housewife, imprisoned in her workaday drudgery, who through idle gossip about the famed and the celebrated. receives a vicarious shot in the arm. She is the teenager, the secretary, the receptionist, the nurse, even teacher, who overhears some fragment of fact — or fancy — and casually passes it along to friend or fellow worker, where it becomes the link in a vicious chain that ultimately wraps itself around the throat of the victim. The Woman, then, is really every woman — every woman who either wantonly or unwittingly sets about to ruin, taint or tarnish another’s life. She is a sick woman, an endless feeder of venom out of her own loveless life. Strangely enough. The Woman is sometimes not that at all, but instead a man. equally sick and probably devoid of all masculine virility. But almost always, of course, the gossip-monger is a woman — The Woman. Gossip is her status symbol. With gossip she becomes, in her own unseeing eyes, more important. With gossip she feels the thrill, however small, of power. With gossip she is someone to conjure with. With gossip she becomes The Woman. As we talked in Houston, Debbie Reynolds understood — understood that her own happiness was now under assault because of that nameless, shapeless danger. And because she understood, she had no fear. —George Camber i See Debbie in M-G-M’s “How The West Was Won,” and “My Six Loves,” Par.