Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1959)

necklace. This had been one of Mike’s gifts. Every head in the crowded room turned her way. And then, as she heard a rising tide of warm applause, she felt calmer. Another burst of applause, loud and long, greeted Eddie’s entrance. And he sang as he never had before, sweeping the audience along with each change in mood. But then the sound of two women’s voices, speaking almost in a whisper at an adjacent table made Liz start a little, and want to turn her head. “. . . break his heart. She’ll break his heart just like the others,” she heard one of them say. “What do you mean, exactly?” “Surely you remember?” “No?” “The others . . the others before Eddie . . . right back to that first fellow— Glenn Davis, the football player.” “Didn’t she break her engagement to him after just a few weeks?” “Yes — and she did the same to that ambassador’s son. Bill Pawley. And then there was Nicky Hilton and her next husband, the English actor, Michael Wilding. Don’t you remember — she left them both.” “I guess Mike Todd was her only match.” The voice was sarcastic. “You’re so right. So you see, she’s bound to break Eddie’s heart too. He’s so weak compared to her — almost a boy. She thinks he’s Mike, but one morning she’ll wake up and realize he isn’t.” “You really think so?” “Sure . . .” Liz could listen no more. It made her sick. She looked across at the stage — at where Eddie was singing, seeming to sing to her alone. She smiled across at him, trying to ignore the snarls and hurtful words. Then suddenly, for a moment, she found herself holding her breath. He seemed to forget his words. But nothing could shatter his poise that night. He just shrugged lightly and confided to the audience, “I must really be in love!” and then picked up the lyric again without missing the beat. Although she hurried to his dressing room immediately after the supper show, he was already the center of admiring crowds. But well-wishers made way for her as she pushed through. Then seeing Eddie, his hair mussed, a wide grin on his face, she ran over to him. “You were wonderful, darling!” she whispered, throwing her arms around him and giving him a long kiss. Then she slipped a small box into his hand and, opening it, Eddie found a green jade ring inside. First, he tried it on the third finger of his left hand, then he slid it neatly onto the little finger, thanking her with a kiss. And everyone knew. “Yes,” Liz said, caressing the blaze of diamonds on her wrist, “this is Eddie’s engagement present to me. We’re going to marry — in six weeks, if we can.” The babble of questions rose, and the couple’s answers were swift and spontaneous. “We are very much in love . . . We’d like to travel as man and wife . . . I will ask Debbie for her consent again.” The nagging question crept in: “What about public opinion?” Tightening her grasp on Eddie’s hand, Liz said, “We respect public opinion, but you can’t live by it. If we lived by public opinion, Eddie and I would have been terribly unhappy during all this turmoil. But I can shamelessly say we have been terribly happy. We have been accused of being indiscreet — but then, we haven’t tried to cover up anything. We have been P honest in what we have done.” . . . As she spoke, Debbie’s plane, still many hundreds of miles away, was winging homeward from Europe . . . Over the desert, the sun was high the next day before Liz woke from an exhausted sleep. The house seemed quiet, but then the cook-housekeeper would long since have given the children their breakfast. Michael and Chris would be at the pool, Liza playing nearby, in their nurse’s charge. The clock said eleven. Debbie, Liz thought, should be at the Los Angeles airport by now, just arrived, and going through Customs perhaps. (Actually, the plane was still on the way, delayed two hours by bad weather.) Sharing brunch in the main building, Liz and Eddie didn’t talk much. A smile exchanged, a quick clasp of hands — nothing more was needed to express their happiness. Then, late in the lazy afternoon, the telephone rang inside the house. 'They didn’t stir from their chairs; the housekeeper would answer it. “It’s for you, Mr. Fisher.” Eddie went in, and Liz heard him say, “I don’t want to talk to any reporters.” “I know, but this one said he had a message from — from Mrs. Fisher.” Leaping to her feet, Liz ran into the living room to find Eddie at the phone, listening. His face was taut. Her hands clenched in suspense, Liz tried to hear what was being said at the other end of the wire. The voice was speaking loudly enough for her to catch a faint murmur, but she couldn’t make out the words. Suddenly, Eddie’s expression changed to one of unbelieving surprise, and he smiled a wide happy smile. He said into the phone, “Real great news — the greatest I’ve ever heard! 'Thank you, thank you, thank you. Wait!” He clutched the phone to his chest and spoke directly to Liz. “They told her right at the airport. She said ‘Yes!’ Oh Liz, she’s given her consent!” She went into a little skipping dance, all around the room. “Liz is flipping!” Eddie shouted into the phone. “She’s so excited. I’m so grateful to Debbie for this.” Snatching the phone away from him, Liz cried into it, “I’m so happy I almost passed out. I knew all along that Debbie would consent. . . . Here’s Eddie again.” “Hello? Yes, go on . . . She said what? . . . Well, we wish her that, too. We wish her the same happiness this has given us. She should find her happiness, and I pray she will.” So began the time of waiting. Relaxing in the desert sun through the long days, Liz thought that life would settle into a routine while the six weeks ticked away. But it wasn’t so simple. At first, they just circled the first day after the sixth week on the calendar. “It will be May 10th,” Eddie said. “But we can’t be married here, not in Las Vegas.” “No,” Liz agreed. “It must be a very quiet wedding. Nobody else will know a thing about it till it’s all over.” Then somebody reminded Eddie that May 10th was a Sunday; the Nevada courts would be closed. All right, they would make it May 11th. But that, somebody else said, still fell in the period after Passover, which the Jewish religion considers part of the holy time, not suitable for marriage ceremonies. “According to Orthodox AUGUST PHOTOPLAY ON SALE JULY 2nd traditions,” Eddie pointed out. “But we belong to the Reformed branch.” And there was the day when Eddie told Liz, “I — I hate to say this, but maybe I haven’t really established residence, with just the hotel suite I’m living in now.” “Oh Eddie, what can we do?” “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about,” he said with a boyishly secret smile. “Buying a ranch in Nevada. Nobody could argue about that. I like it here, don’t you?” “It’s wonderful!” “And my contract with the Tropicana runs for five years, so we’ll be coming here every so often in any case.” And Liz smiled as his mention of the Tropicana reminded her of more good news she’d heard that day — the management had just extended Eddie’s stay to six weeks, at $25,000 a week. The total contract was a $1,000,000 deal. And there was even talk that NBC was considering a new TV series for Eddie, to start in October, when all the publicity uproar might have died down. “Everything’s going to be fine,” Eddie promised. But there was one thing she hadn’t told him about. She’d been suffering from a chronic sore throat, but had tried to ignore it — there were so many more important concerns. And when she finally did consult a doctor, she was told that parts of her throat were so inflamed they must be cauterized; it would mean a few days in the hospital. Eddie looked so downcast when he heard, she had to assure him, “It’s nothing serious. You wouldn’t even call it an operation. I’ll just go to Cedars of Lebanon . . .” “I’ll commute from here for those days,” Eddie said. “I’ll spend every minute I can with you.” “Darling.” She leaned on his shoulder. Her hospital stay over, Liz returned to the quiet round of days and nights in the desert country. She was happy, she insisted, and yet the waiting told on her nerves. So she busied herself — first making up her mind as to a wedding gown, finally ordering one in moss-green from Jean Louis. She dozed in the shade too; she rested in the sun; often wandering idly over to the main ranch building to twirl the radio dials in search of romantic music and to flip through the magazines. But names would leap out at her — “Liz and Eddie . . . Debbie, Eddie and Liz.” And she would push the magazines aside. For public opinion was still there, and it wasn’t always so friendly as it had seemed to Liz on Eddie’s opening night at the Tropicana. If you’d strolled the streets of Las Vegas during those weeks, you’d have heard rude remarks. One woman tourist, eying the advertisements for the show, said, “I wouldn’t walk across the street to see Eddie Fisher.” Another woman pulled her date toward the Tropicana, giggling, “Let’s go in ’n’ thumb our noses at Eddie Fisher.” Toward Liz on her appearances in town — at the Tropicana to watch Eddie’s act, at the Variety Club convention — the first reaction was almost always admiration of her striking beauty. But then you’d hear whispers: “Seems spoiled, doesn’t she?” Eddie was the target of the same sort of criticism from some Las Vegas residents: “I liked Eddie when he first came up here. He was so easy to talk to, so nice to everybody. Now you can’t touch him. You can’t get to him. He’s changed so much.” But Eddie and Liz tried to ignore this criticism and seemed secure in their shared happiness. For they were living in the same hope, looking forward to the moment when they would hear the rabbi’s voice uniting them, the day when they would seal their rmion by sipping wine from the same cup. The End Liz’s next: “suddenly last summer” (COLUMBIA), “two for the seesaw” (u.a.).