Elizabeth Taylor's Private Letters Shed Light On The Hollywood Affair That Ended A Decade-Long Feud

The love triangle that spawned a million column inches started in the early 1950s. Taylor met a young Debbie Reynolds while attending school on the MGM lot between movie shoots. As Reynolds told People in 2015, “I was just a beginner, and [Taylor] and I were not in any manner alike, but we got along very well because I was in awe of going to school with Elizabeth Taylor. And if anyone said they weren’t, then they were lying. Or going blind.”

Soon, though, Reynolds would join Taylor’s ranks as a Hollywood star herself, thanks to the release of Singin’ in the Rain in 1952. The actor’s personal life also took off after she starred in the movie. In 1955 she wed crooner Eddie Fisher, whose popularity at the time mirrored that of Frank Sinatra. At this point, Taylor was coming into her own as a movie star while navigating her own personal loves. She was on to her second husband, Michael Wilding.

That marriage wouldn't last, however, and it wasn't long before Taylor was moving on to husband number three. This was the film producer Mike Todd. And not only was Taylor close with Reynolds, but Todd had a great friendship with Reynolds’ groom, Fisher. This led Taylor and Todd to include Reynolds and Fisher in their 1957 wedding ceremony. Reynolds told the Daily Mail in 2010, “Eddie had been best man at their wedding, and I had been a bridesmaid. We saw a lot of each other.”

In fact, some consider the Taylor-Todd and Reynolds-Fisher pairings to be some of Hollywood’s first so-called power couples. Little did any of them know, none of it would last. But the circumstances that brought everything to a halt started with a tragedy. Within a year of saying “I do” to Taylor — and welcoming their first child, a daughter named Liza — Todd perished in a plane crash. He had been traveling in his private plane — which he had named The Liz.

Understandably, the unexpected loss of her husband left Taylor devastated. The actress resumed working just three weeks after Todd's death to distract herself and pay off some of her late husband’s debts. Still, she needed someone to lean on – and she found him in Todd’s best friend: Fisher. But what started as a platonic consolation became a full-fledged affair between Taylor and Fisher. And, as Reynolds recalled, she was in the dark about her husband’s secret relationship with her friend. “I was the last to find out about the affair,” she said.

Reynolds continued, "There had been hints in the papers, and I had noticed that when I turned up at functions or parties on my own my friends were whispering. Although I didn't want to find out the truth, I had to face up to it. Even so, it was a great shock to find them together. It left me shattered." She later added, "Some people think I’m tough, but you have to be in order to make a living in show business for more than 60 years." Still, this was particularly heartbreaking.

It wouldn’t be the papers that broke the news to Reynolds — it happened over a fateful phone call. The Singin’ in the Rain star sat at home alone while her singer husband, Fisher, traveled around on a concert tour. So she felt lonely and rang Taylor to catch up. But Taylor didn’t pick up the phone. Instead, it was Reynolds’ husband, Fisher, on the line. “Suddenly, a lot of things clicked into place. I could hear her voice asking him who was calling – they were obviously in bed together. I yelled at him, ‘Roll over, darling, and let me speak to Elizabeth,’” Reynolds recalled.

In response, Fisher hung up on Reynolds and immediately came home. But he hadn’t returned to beg for his wife’s forgiveness. As she remembered it, the singer said, “I’m sorry. Elizabeth and I are in love, and I want a divorce.” He got his wish in 1959, and, in that same year, he and Taylor wed in Las Vegas. The whole thing left Reynolds shocked and devastated. She added, “I was very religious, so I didn’t believe in divorce, but they laid guilt on me that I was keeping them and true love apart. So I finally let Eddie off the hook.”

Ultimately, though, Reynolds came to understand her husband’s affair and request for a divorce, considering that he had fallen for Tayor. “I might not have been as surprised were it anyone else. But how it all happened was rather scandalous in that they didn't take more care to avoid hurting me. I understand when I look back on it. Who would pass by Elizabeth? No woman living was as beautiful as her. And Eddie had even tried to act like Mike Todd, smoking big cigars,” she explained.

In parting from her estranged husband, though, Reynolds recalled issuing Fisher a warning about the temptress Taylor. She remembered herself saying, “If you marry her, she will throw you out within 18 months.” It turned out that Reynolds’ prediction would become reality, although not as quickly as she had thought. It wasn't until 1961 that Taylor began an affair with another incredibly famous man. This was two years after her wedding to Fisher — but still three years before the pair would eventually divorce.

Just after her marriage to Fisher, Taylor landed a lucrative deal to star in 20th Century Fox’s Cleopatra. In fact, she became the first actress to earn $1 million for a part in a film. Plus, studio executives promised her 10 percent of the movie’s profits on top of her seven-figure paycheck. But production for Cleopatra didn’t go smoothly. Taylor almost died of pneumonia during the first shoot in England, which began in 1960. So producers decided to start over with a new filming location in Rome, Italy. Then they brought in a new leading man to play Mark Antony: Welsh actor Richard Burton.

When all was said and done, Cleopatra cost as much as $31.1 million. In today's money, that makes the movie even more expensive than comic-book movies such as The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Fortunately, the movie was the biggest box-office draw of that year. The critics weren't as kind as the audiences, though, and 20th Century Fox even tried to sue Taylor and Burton for causing the production to go over budget. But the real drama between the stars happened behind the scenes of the movie.

The chemistry between Taylor and Burton bubbled over from filming and into their real lives. Although both Cleopatra stars had spouses at home, they embarked on a passionate affair. And after the paparazzi snapped pictures of them together on a yacht in Italy, the world knew about the co-stars’ secret relationship. But for Taylor, it seems, the affair had almost been guaranteed from the moment they met. And their confessions and love letters since that time have revealed just how deep their passions ran.

"Attentive, loving — that was Richard — from those first moments in Rome, we were always madly and powerfully in love," Taylor said in the biography Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. "We had more time but not enough. [When I met him], Richard came on the set and sort of sidled over to me and said, 'Has anybody ever told you that you're a very pretty girl?' I thought, 'Oy gevalt, the great lover, the great wit, the great Welsh intellectual, and he comes out with a corny line like that!'"

The film wasn't the first time they'd ever met — but it was the first time they'd spent significant time together. For their opening scene, though, Burton was hung over. "He was kind of quivering from head to foot," Taylor said. "He ordered a cup of coffee to sort of still his trembling fists, and I had to help it to his mouth, and that just endeared him to me. I thought, 'Well, he really is human.' So vulnerable and sweet and shaky and terribly giggly that with my heart I 'cwtched' him — that's Welsh for 'hug.'"

And it wasn't long before the pair consummated their feelings. "Imagine having Richard Burton's voice in your ear while you are making love," Taylor said. "It drowned out the troubles, the sorrows — everything just melted away." And naturally, people began to talk about the affair on the set, with word eventually working its way back to Fisher, Taylor's husband. In the end, he asked her outright, "Is there something going on between you and Burton?" And she said, simply, "Yes."

"Richard and I had an incredible chemistry together," Taylor said. "We couldn't get enough of each other." She said they used to "make love, and play Scrabble, and spell out naughty words for each other, and the game would never be finished. When you get aroused playing Scrabble, that's love, baby." They would drink together, fight with each other, and then get back together again. "I think they had fights for the glory of making up," said actor Rod Taylor. "It was foreplay to them."

In spite of the tabloid scandal that swirled afterward, Taylor and Burton remained an item. Burton divorced his wife in December 1963 on the grounds of abandonment. She divorced Fisher in 1964 and, nine days later, married her Cleopatra co-star. “Liz and Dick,” as the media referred to the couple, went on to act in 11 movies together and lead a luxurious, jet-setting lifestyle together. They would write each other many letters in the meantime — the contents of which could make you blush.

For instance, on May 10, 1969, Burton wrote the following to Taylor: "You will never, of course, because you are too young, understand the idea of loneliness. I love you better than buckets of brine poured over a boiling body, than ice cream laved on a parched mouth, than sanity smoothed over madness..." It was little wonder that the Welshman was known as a grand romantic! In his diary, he wrote, "[Taylor] is a wildly exciting love-mistress, she is shy and witty, she is nobody's fool, she is a brilliant actress, she is beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography..."

"I lust after your smell," Burton wrote in another letter, "and your round belly and the exquisite softness of the inside of your thighs and your baby-bottom and your giving lips & the half-hostile look in your eyes when you’re deep in rut with your little Welsh stallion." Is it hot in here, or is just us?! Another read, "My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you. You don’t realize, of course, E.B., how fascinatingly beautiful you have always been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness."

But Burton could sometimes be deep and introspective, too. Once he wrote, "I know I’m a terrible liar sometimes, but please believe that I have never betrayed either in word or deed the physical you or the mental you. I simply love you too much. I flatter and am flattered and both too easily. It’s only a question of booze. I behaved like an idiot... I deserve all the injury that you can inflict, and I will take it as long as you stay with me — Husbs (I hope)."

On the reverse of a 1970 photo of Taylor, Burton wrote, "She is like the tide, she comes and she goes, she runs to me as in this stupendous photographic image. In my poor and tormented youth, I had always dreamed of this woman. And now, when this dream occasionally returns, I extend my arm, and she is here... by my side. If you have not met or known her, you have lost much in life." And Burton even wrote Taylor a letter after the pair began to head toward divorce.

"You’re off, by God!" he wrote on June 25, 1973. "I can barely believe it since I am so unaccustomed to anybody leaving me. But reflectively I wonder why nobody did so before. All I care about—honest to God—is that you are happy and I don’t much care who you’ll find happiness with. I mean as long as he’s a friendly bloke and treats you nice and kind. If he doesn’t I'll come at him with a hammer and clinker. God’s eye may be on the sparrow but my eye will always be on you. Never forget your strange virtues."

He ended it with, "I’ll leave it to you to announce the parting of the ways while I shall never say or write one word except this valedictory note to you. Try and look after yourself. Much love. Don’t forget that you are probably the greatest actress in the world. I wish I could borrow a minute portion of your passion and commitment, but there you are—cold is cold as ice is ice." And, on a bittersweet note, he even wrote to Taylor three days before his death.

Reportedly, Taylor kept the last love note from Burton by her bed for much of her life and even requested to be buried with it. It read, in part, "I love you, lovely woman. If anybody hurts you, just send me a line saying something like 'Need' or 'Necessary' or just the one magic word 'Elizabeth,' and I will be there somewhat faster than sound. You must know, of course, how much I love you. You must know, of course, how badly I treat you. But the fundamental and most vicious, swinish, murderous, and unchangeable fact is that we totally misunderstand each other."

He finished, "You are as distant as Venus — planet, I mean — and I am tone deaf to the music of the spheres. I love you and I always will. Come back to me as soon as you can." Burton reportedly wrote the letter on August 2, 1984, and Taylor received it after attending his memorial service. Just seeing the writing on the letter was enough to bring Taylor to tears.

Taylor and Burton’s first marriage lasted for a decade before they divorced in 1974 — and remarried in 1975. Their second go-round ended a year later, but Burton was perhaps the love of her life, according to the 2010 book Furious Love. In it, Taylor said, “After Richard, the men in my life were just there to hold the coat, to open the door. All the men after Richard were really just company.”

Even so, Taylor remarried twice after she and Burton called it quits. First came Republican politician John Warner, who came along as Taylor’s career in movies slid into decline. She left the spotlight behind to help his campaign for a Senate seat, which he won. But Taylor started using prescription drugs and alcohol to deal with her boredom, loneliness, and depression. Eventually, she and the senator divorced at the end of 1982 after almost six years of marriage. And nearly a decade later, she would marry for the last time.

In 1983 Taylor checked herself into the Betty Ford Center for her addictions to alcohol and painkillers. She stood as the first celebrity to openly do so. She returned to the clinic five years later for further treatment. Little did she know, she’d meet her future husband, Larry Fortensky, during her second session. Taylor and construction worker Fortensky wed at the Neverland Ranch, the home of Taylor’s close friend Michael Jackson. Even with all of the fanfare, though, the relationship lasted only until 1996.

In the meantime, Taylor’s former friend Debbie Reynolds had two remarriages of her own. First, she wed Harry Karl, a businessman worth millions, in 1960. After they divorced in 1973, she stayed single until 1984. That year, she married Richard Hamlett, and she stayed with the real estate developer until 1996. Yet something else happened after Reynolds divorced Fisher – and Taylor subsequently married him. The women spent seven years avoiding one another, but they had a chance encounter on board the London-bound Queen Elizabeth.

Both women had new men in their lives: Taylor had married Burton by then, and Reynolds was wed to Karl. As Reynolds told the Daily Mail, “Liz was with Richard Burton and her whole family, all the children and the nannies. I sent a little note to her, saying, ‘Let’s get together to have dinner. It’s silly to carry on this fight now that we’ve both remarried, and it’s all just sort of ridiculous, isn’t it?’”

It turned out that Taylor had the same idea. Reynolds said, “She’d sent [a note] to me at the same time, so they crisscrossed. We had dinner that night in the main dining room. Heads turned. Cameras were everywhere. People were hiding behind plants taking pictures.” With that, Reynolds and Taylor let their rough past go and restored the friendship they had started on the MGM lot in the 1950s. Reynolds said the pair found it easy to reconcile because both had moved on. By then, also, she had realized that her ex-husband Fisher deserved blame for what happened too.

After their ship-based reconciliation, Reynolds and Taylor maintained their friendship for decades to come. In 2001 they starred in These Old Broads, a film written by Reynolds’ daughter, Carrie Fisher. And, just before Taylor passed away in 2011, Reynolds told People that the pair had chatted one last time, “like two girls would.”