In her 1962 memoir, “The Whole Truth and Nothing But,” Hollywood gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper, wrote of Liz Taylor’s “BUtterfield 8” Oscar in the following manner, “She won her Academy Award not for Butterfield 8 but for nearly dying. And her studio joined in by putting on a terrific public relations campaign against Debbie – with planted stories in fan magazines and loaded interviews for the newspapers – to clinch sympathy for Liz.”
The aging columnist, who loved judging all Hollywood, was of course referring to the love triangle concerning Elizabeth Taylor, actress Debbie Reynolds and Reynolds’ onetime husband, baritone Eddie Fisher. In 1958, Taylor began a love affair with Fisher, at the time married to actress Reynolds, during the filming of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Eddie Fisher later left Debbie Reynolds to wed Liz.
The public became either decidedly for or against Taylor – either content to accept that all’s fair in love and war, or the opposite view of Liz as predatory homewrecker.
Elizabeth Taylor had originally catapulted to stardom at the young age of 12 in the 1944 film, “National Velvet.” Taylor blossomed into a lovely, sensual young woman as the world watched and was often publicized as the most beautiful woman in the world. When her third husband, director Michael Todd, was suddenly killed in a plane crash on March 22, 1958, there was an outpouring of public sympathy for Liz.
Then came the Reynolds-Fisher-Taylor romance scandal, turning many sharply against her. All ill feelings were quickly forgotten though, after Liz’s near date with death from pneumonia two years later, just prior to the Academy Awards. Nominated for best actress in the 1960 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film “BUtterfield 8,” Liz garnered the coveted award many felt was undeserved. It certainly hadn’t hurt Taylor (or M-G-M) that she’d languished for weeks in an intensive care unit close to death just before the Oscars that year.
Still frail from her recent illness, Elizabeth Taylor was helped to the stage by Eddie Fisher, who’d co-starred with her in “BUtterfield 8.” He’d recently divorced Debbie Reynolds to be at Liz’s side, making him Taylor’s fourth husband to date.
To decide for yourself if Elizabeth Taylor’s 1961 Oscar was really a “sympathy award,” check out her competition that year: Shirley MacLaine for “The Apartment” – a satirical look at office politics; Melina Mercouri for “Never on Sunday,” the story of a Greek prostitute; Greer Garson for “Sunrise at Campobello,” a dramatization of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s battle with polio; and Deborah Kerr for “The Sundowners,” a film about life in the Australian outback.
The many husbands of Liz:
1. Conrad Hilton, Jr. (1950-1951)
2. Michael Wilding (1952-1957)
3. Mike Todd (1957-1958)
4. Eddie Fisher (1959-1964)
5. Richard Burton (1964-1974)
6. Richard Burton (1975-1976)
7. John Warner (1976-1982)_
8. Larry Fortensky (1991-1996)