Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1963)

With Debbie, there has always been a feeling of love for children per se, for all children. Her own, of course — (Richard Gehman once wrote “soon after the breakup with Eddie a friend asked Debbie how she had managed to get through the first few days. Answered Debbie: ‘I shut myself in my room for three days, and in that time I prayed for strength to get through — ■ not so much for my sake as for the sake of the children.’ ”) And her love for other children, thousands of others — witness her role as founder and two-times president of the Thalians, an organization that raises money for research dealing with mentally-retarded children. (The story is told how Debbie wept the day back in 1956 when she first met some of these youngsters, how she said to a friend: “These poor kids need a new clinic where they can be helped. A place with the finest facilities, the finest doctors. And me — I’m going to try to help them get this place. And get them contributions!” And. of course, she kept her promise. Says a good friend of Debbie’s: “Sbe’s pretty unstoppable, as you know. Or unsinkable — to plug the ‘Molly Brown’ movie she’ll be making in October. Anyway, there isn’t much that Debbie doesn't set her heart on that she doesn’t get. “Like with this new baby — like especially with this new baby. “Sure, there’s a medical risk involved. But Debbie’s attitude about this seems to be: When isn’t there a risk — in any pregnancy, or for that matter, in anything in life? “And. though she’s lost one child, and not too long ago, she isn’t going to let that stop her. Nor, importantly, is she ignoring some of the advice that was given to her after the last time. I mean, when she worked so much, too much I think, while carrying the last baby — going straight from ‘How The West Was Won’ into ‘My Six Loves’ — well, this time Debbie had it arranged so that she finished the picture she was working on (‘Mary, Mary’) a good four months before the baby’s due-date. Then, she and Harry took a nice leisurely trip to Europe — with lots of rest, plenty of time to relax — with nothing hurry-hurry about the trip at all, in fact. “Besides — remember — Debbie comes from hearty Texas stock. I’m sure that in her time Deb’s heard lots of stories about great-great-grandmas who bore children in covered wagons or out in the fields with or without midwives and with Indians about to attack. If her ancestors could do it, so can she. “And. knowing Debbie, she’d be the first to tell you that she couldn’t be having it easier right now, in this modern day and age of ours. “ ‘Risk?’ she’d say. ‘Why, don’t you know there hasn’t been an Indian in Beverly Hills in years?’” —Ella Ormond See Debbie in “My Six Loves,” Para.. “How The West Was Won.” M-G-M. and Warner Brothers’ picture, “Mary, Mary.” Continued from page 35 This is the story of a man running — running from the woman he once loved, running from the woman who hurt him, running from the dream that died. And running, running from accepting the truth : He loves her still. This is the story of Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Tavlor today. If you’re wondering how Eddie has weathered this one-year period of rugged, enforced adjustment after the Roman Scandals of 1962, you have only to look at his string of feverish engagements over the past year. Clearly, Eddie was a man on the run. He filled every moment of his time with work and more work. He needed to keep busy. He needed bis career. He needed to stop thinking. This was the battle to win himself a new life. Right now, looking at Eddie — tanned, exuberant, bursting with plans to produce a movie in France with Natalie Wood, having dates with Edie Adams and other attractive darlings in the cinemacenter, you would think he’s doused his torch for Liz. But that surface show, as you very well know, is not always a true barometer of the climate of the heart. Let us flashback, shall we, to April, 1962: Eddie arrives unexpectedly in New York as rumors in Rome are flying. His trip is reportedly business. He accepts no phone calls, ducks the press, opens his door only to his doctor. Days pass. No sign of Eddie. Meanwhile, back in Rome, Liz is flaunting her affair with co-star Richard Burton quite publicly. Eddie is panicky. f 20th Century-Eox is panicky. Mrs. Burton is panicky. The press is undaunted. They haunt the Hotel Pierre, the elevators, the 76 back exits. They try to pass themselves off as hotel staff. Finally, Eddie’s public relations outfit — a Hollywood-based firm with an arm in New York, decides that it is time for Eddie to face the music. They call a press conference to straighten out the wild rumors and confusion surrounding his trip to New York and the status of his marriage to Elizabeth. Shaking from lack of sleep, looking very much like a victim of a concentration camp, visibly on the verge of hysteria, Eddie enters the room. The reporters charge at him with questions. He tries to parry the answers. Finally they back him into a corner from which he cannot possibly escape. Is his marriage to Liz over? Death toll of a marriage Six thousand miles away Liz enters the skirmish via transatlantic phone. She can save Eddie with a word. “No,” she could say, “our marriage is not over.” But the lady does not choose to say that no. She refuses to uphold Eddie’s denials and the studio-released fiction that all is well in the Fisher household on the Via Appia in Rome. From Numero 7990528 in the pink villa, comes the tinkling bell of her voice — and it tolls the death of a marriage. Eddie puts the phone back on the cradle — crushed in ego, spirit and energy. He ends the interview by telling the press — “the lady has changed her mind — I guess that’s show biz.” The ill-starred interview is televised and re-televised all that night. Hollow-eyed Eddie, in a quandary of uncertainty as to his marital fate, waits for the early-morning papers to see what new developments have taken place on the other side of the world. He is not disappointed in his expectancy. Full-page blow-ups of radio-photos from Rome decorate the front pages of every newspaper. The photos show Eddie a cozy close-up of his wife in the snuggling, apparently unashamed embrace of Richard Burton — the married father of two. If Elizabeth’s non-committal conversation over the phone hadn’t already hurt Eddie terribly, these photos — immediately on the heels of that interview — killed that one small glimmer of hope he held that somehow things could still be made well. Now he knew the truth. A few days later Eddie Fisher went into an emotional tailspin that brought him frighteningly close to a complete nervous breakdown. And worst of all. now it can be revealed, he fought a frightening bout with a paralysis of his left side. The paralysis was, apparently, a result of his emotional problems. Heartbreak had crippled Eddie Fisher. Still, he managed to hang onto reality. He knew he needed help. In deep pain and confusion, he was rushed to a hospital for specialized care. He had not slept for weeks — he had eaten barely enough to keep alive and his friends were alarmed at the weight he lost. His manager tried to protect Eddie over that touch-and-go period, but the press hounded him in an effort to find out just what was j going on. If it were not for the skilled services of Dr. Max Jacobson, that well-known restorer of scores of famous people, Eddie might very well have gone over the edge. Through the use of relaxing and antidepressant drugs, Dr. Jacobson coaxed Eddie into the only possible therapy — that of talking out his conscious and subconscious thoughts. He spoke of all that had happened to him in Rome ... all that had happened before be fell into the grip of hysterical paralysis. Ordinarily a reticent conversationalist. Eddie began to respond to the doctor’s probing. He began to understand the nature of his ailment and the only hope for its cure. He regained his confidence and then, almost as if in a hypnotic trance, he began to crystallize his tortured thoughts into words. What thoughts and what words they must have been! Violent, hating, revengeful, self-pitying. A torrent of feelings poured forth from his pain-wracked mind and body. Dr. Jacobson told Eddie that by stifling any of the humiliation, frustration and hostility he felt over his marriage, he was doing real, physical damage to himself. The treatment was for Eddie to talk non-stop until the early rays of many mornings,