Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

I Don't Want to Leave You, Eddie (Continued from page 26) airplane one fatal day without her. . . . "When I opened at the Waldorf-Astoria Empire Room in November," Eddie explained to me recently, "Elizabeth already had temperature and a cruel hacking cough. But she knew how important this opening was to my career, and wouldn't hear of going to the hospital. "Elizabeth just hates hospitals," he added, shaking his head to indicate puzzlement, as we rode up to Doctors Hospital — where Liz had finally been forced to go on Thanksgiving day. "Elizabeth's been in so many hospitals, — about fifteen in all," Eddie continued, reeling off mentions of her back ailment that had kept her in a cast . . . her throat operations . . . and the birth of her daughter Liza when she was married to Michael Todd. "Elizabeth" — that's what Eddie always calls her — "had that Caesarean against the advice of twelve doctors," he said. "And to make it worse, she resists anesthetics— they can't seem to knock her out. She sleeps two hours and she's conscious again." I asked Eddie how her attack of pneumonia had come about, and he, knowing Liz' revulsion to discussing details of her illness, replied, "You're not going to get medical, are you?" Eddie let himself get 'medical' enough to say, "Actually, all we know is that for a long time she's had spasms of coughing that she can't control — accompanied by very painful headaches." Eddie was especially bothered because no one seems to know what caused the coughing. "I'm sure it's not due to smoking," he said. "Elizabeth's not a heavy smoker. She never starts smoking until 5:00 in the afternoon. She says she doesn't like the taste of cigarettes in the daytime." Those six-month presents When I had interviewed the Fishers in their five-bedroom apartment at the Waldorf shortly before Eddie's Empire Room opening, Liz had been less concerned about her illness than about keeping her husband's spirit up — and being a dutiful mother. Eddie was holding hands with Liz, who was watching the two dogs, and Do-do the Siamese cat which was on my lap biting my pencil, and baby Liza, who was on my lap biting Do-do. It was the six-month anniversary of their wedding, and Liz had brightened the occasion by giving him a gift of diamond-studded cufflinks, the diamonds in X's, and engraved with some very personal (and unprintable) endearment. (They wouldn't even let me peek.) Eddie's reaction was, "Oh, they're beautiful . . . marvelous." "Tell him," Liz directed Eddie, "what you got me!" "A mink sweater," Eddie smiled bashfully. "Something every girl needs," Liz said. Regarding their future plans, Eddie announced, "We plan to live here permanently. The kids are going to school here." "Michael was sick and stayed home the other day — and actually did his homework in bed," Liz added. "I don't see how he could be a child of mine." Eddie was tickled as a little boy when he revealed that Liz had helped him get a part in her new movie, Butterfield 8. "I'm gonna play a piano player named Eddie. Elizabeth plays a ... a ... a lady 56 of the evening. I never acted before." Eddie seemed to say this emphatically. I asked, "Didn't you act in Bundle of Joy?" (which you'll remember he did with Debbie Reynolds) . "No! I looked like a gook. Now I'm in the hands of a very good director — and directress — my wife." He smiled littleboyishly at the pretty Mrs. Fisher. Eddie was also joyous about his new recording arrangement — heading his own company, with Liz also heading it — if you can straighten that out. I couldn't get clear from them who is president and who is vice president. Each said the other was president. Regardless, the moneybags, the angel, is Canadian multimillionaire Lou Chesler, of General Development fame. "Why don't you do a TV spec together?" I asked. "What would Elizabeth do?" Eddie asked. "She can't. . . ." "Don't knock her," I warned him. "I happen to like her." Eddie laughed. "She can't sing. She started as a singer. She's terrible." "That's right," Liz nodded. "I can't even croak." Eddie was hurt about a few stories in the papers — especially one that implied that his engagement at the Las Vegas Desert Inn had been a failure. "That's as true as we're not sitting here," he said. "It was a wonderful engagement. In fact, we're going to work there eight weeks a year." Liz and that baby "By the way," I suddenly burst in, "are you expecting?" "Expecting what?" Liz shot back, playing it innocently. "To become a mother," I exclaimed. "I am a mother," she reminded me. Then laughingly, she stood up and showed how lean she was in her skyblue slacks. "No, we're not expecting — and if we were, we'd be delighted to tell the whole world." As for Eddie's engagement at the Waldorf, Liz did her wifely duty doubly, quadruply! Eddie's opening night in the Empire Room was the most glamorous I've seen this decade in New York — I'm not sure that even Frank Sinatra attracted more big names when he opened there. It was Liz, the promoter, the public relations wizard, who made it all possible. Word spread around midtown New York that Liz was in the Empire Room for both the dinner and supper shows, and the Waldorf lobby soon had more people in it than when Khrushchev was there. Aly Khan squeezed through, along with Jack Benny, Edie Adams, Mrs. Milton Berle, Composer Jule Styne, Ethel Merman, Sandra Church, Gloria Vanderbilt, Audrey Meadows, Phil Silvers, Red Buttons, Ingemar Johansson, Arthur Loew Jr., and Johnny Mathis. A famous columnist left muttering that he'd forgotten to make a reservation and they were going to seat him behind the orchestra. They dragged him back and gave him a table right in front of the other front tables. The maitre d'hotel, Louis, was retaining his equanimity as well as he could under fire. And at the side of Aly Khan, surveying it all, was Liz Taylor wearing quarts and quarts of diamonds and a long chinchilla wrap. One table of twelve which had seen Eddie at dinner wouldn't go, so Liz had to pay their $450 tab to get them to depart. At first we of the press wondered just how it happened that there was such a fabulous outpouring of celebrities — and then the truth came out. Liz had invited them as her guests, meaning that they had, of course, paid no checks. She had literally invited seventy people — her excuse being that in addition to it being Eddie's opening, it was their first anniversary — six months married. Some buttinsky asked Liz about her generosity. She bristled a little. "Can't a girl invite a few guests in if she wants to?" she demanded. The Waldorf figures about $20 a throw for a party in the Empire Room, so Liz' tab for her "few guests" came to around $1500. It was worthwhile, however, for never has there been such a discussed, writtenabout and photographed opening . . . and Eddie's vital engagement was off to a i smashing start. Eddie sang many love songs that seemed personally aimed at Liz, and in a closing speech said, "This wouldn't have been possible without the greatest little lady in the world. "I'd like to have her take a little bow — not too big a one — she really is Mrs. Eddie Fisher." Another party Afterward, Liz gave Eddie another party — for all the same V.I.P.'s — at Leone's restaurant. That started at 2:00 a.m. The champagne was plentiful. It was still going strong when I arrived— about 4:00 a.m. "Do you know," somebody said, "that there's probably only one other person in recent show business history who would have thought of such promotion for an opening?" "Who is that?" I asked. "Who was that?" the party commented, correcting me. "Mike Todd!" Maybe Liz had learned it from him. . . . Liz appeared in good health at the Waldorf opening, but as Eddie later told me, her cough had been getting worse and her temperature rising, and by delaying her trip to the hospital, she was making herself sicker. A week later she was in Doctors Hospital, with two doctors in attendance diagnosing her condition as double pneumonia. And the lavish Thanksgiving dinner she had arranged was left uneaten. Liz' hospitalization was a trial for Eddie because people were always asking him how she was — and she wasn't good. "Somebody even stopped me and said they'd seen her on the street — right while she was at her sickest," Eddie said. "Who was it they saw on the street who looked like her?" I asked. "I doubt if there's anybody who really looks like her," he said loyally. Her first visitor when she began to recover was playwright Tennessee Williams, who wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — the movie that won her an Academy Award nomination — and followed it up with Suddenly, Last Summer. Her second visitor was director Joseph Manckiewicz, who claims she's due to win an Oscar, long delayed, for her role in that new film. Eddie said, "I didn't count as a visitor." At first Eddie had a room at the hospital, adjoining Liz' — "but the hospital needed the room, and I got dispossessed," he explained. He raced uptown to see her in a cab between shows — toting some pizza. "Every night, pizza she's got to have," laughed Eddie. "We try different res