Did Liz and Eddie Get Together in This Film?
Is this where they first met and decided to marry?
shareI don't think so. As I recall, they were already married and Taylor insisted that Eddie Fisher be given a part in the movie or she wouldn't make it.
"To know is nothing at all, to imagine is everything." Anatole France
Taylor's husband Mike Todd died piloting his plane--apparently the Lucky Liz was overloaded, flying too high, iced up, and on one engine, which even a very lucky plane would have trouble overcoming. Eddie was his best friend (both were Jews which might have created more of a tie than just being in show biz together) and comforted Liz, much as his character does in this movie. There is a lot in Butterfield 8 that must have been painful for her to endure. Punishment, indeed!, by the studio.
In real life, though, they ended up together. For a while. Clearly it was just a relationship to get them both through their grief. Liz said once that she wished she had realized earlier she didn't have to marry all the men she slept with. While Debbie Reynolds was seen as the victim in all this, one has to wonder how long her husband would have remained faithful, anyway. He had five marriages and four divorces, outliving the last wife for an 8 year marriage. Debbie was married three times with three divorces--Eddie and then two men who ran her into financial collapse, so NOT a good judge of horseflesh, as it were. :) Liz and Debbie ended up good friends and both mocked Eddie as being the loser.