Just Friends

Older citizens, if they search their memories hard, can still remember when Elizabeth Taylor appeared opposite Roddy McDowall in Lassie Come Home, was seen around Hollywood playing with rabbits and turtles, and wrote a story about a pet chipmunk entitled Nibbles and Me. Ah, youth! Today every movie fan from Pomona to Pago Pago knows that when Elizabeth Taylor nibbles, it isn't chipmunks. And so when Liz got involved with a laddie who wouldn't come home and a lassie who wouldn't stand for it, Hollywood was in the midst of one of those major, publicity-churning crises. Trouble was that she had picked on two absolutely living dimpled dolls--Eddie Fisher, that wholesome, bubbly Coca-Cola boy, and his child bride, Debbie

Reynolds (who is actually the same age as 26-year-old Liz).

Still legend is the public bliss that surrounded the wedding of Eddie and Debbie three years ago in an enchanted castle named Grossinger's, a famed Catskills resort. At the time, pressagents recalled glowingly that when Debbie was in high school her mother had embroidered sweaters for her with the initials N.N.--for "non-neckers." Eddie, while never one to be stopped by initials, seemed to behave, at least for a while, and did not chase around a bit more than he had as a bachelor.

When Mike Todd, Liz Taylor's third husband, was killed in a plane crash last May, Debbie and Eddie were on hand to help console her. The Todds and the Fishers had been good friends (although in retrospect last week, Debbie made a fine point to the effect that perhaps they had not really been "good friends" but only "just friends"). When Eddie and Liz were in New York two weeks ago, consolation continued in nightclubs and during a weekend at Grossinger's. After Liz and Eddie finally returned to the coast, there followed a barrage of press releases --soothing, aggressive, clinical, statesmanlike. Liz went into hiding. Eddie and Debbie had a fight within earshot of newsmen ("What's the matter with you, anyway?" cried she). Everybody was retroactively psychoanalyzed--Eddie had never been close to his father, had always been wild, but now he felt guilty; Debbie was really domineering; Liz--well, Liz was too beautiful for her own good ("I've the body of a woman and the emotions of a child," she had said once in a moment of self-analysis).

As the drama developed from "misunderstanding" via "separation" to "I'll file for divorce," the Greek chorus of the Hollywood columnists was in full chant. Hedda Hopper got through to Liz, and when she asked the Widow Todd what the whole thing was about, the answer was unp--nt--le.

Back in the borscht belt, Jennie Grossinger sorrowed: "Debbie is adorable and so is Eddie. Two nicer people they don't come. I hope it'll blow over like little grey clouds." But the clouds kept darkening--as far away as Miami. There, Artist Ralph Cowan was stuck with a life-size portrait of Debbie that she had ordered for Eddie's birthday. "Now she doesn't want it," said Cowan. He also had a portrait of Liz on hand. "The man who ordered it never finished the payments." So Cowan shipped it to an eager buyer, Eddie Fisher. It seemed like the most sensible maneuver of the week.

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