How to Be a Movie Star

by William J. Mann

  "But what other choice did she have?" Dick Clayton asked rhetorically. After all, she had to "protect her own interests," said MGM publicist Rick Ingersoll. Alan Cahan, who was just then starting a long career as a publicist, thought that Debbie's behavior was a classic example of how a star can use the media for her own advantage. "Debbie Reynolds considered her options and made a choice," he said. "Either be typed as the undesirable woman, which would've been pretty pathetic, or go for the sympathy vote. It wasn't going to make her as glamorous as Elizabeth Taylor, but who could compete with that? So she went the other way and decided to be the Good Girl to Liz's Bad Girl."

  Plan A—preserving the marriage to keep her reputation intact—hadn't worked, so it was time for Plan B, which turned out be far more achievable. The press, uncomfortable with nuance and easily susceptible to archetypes, loved the Good Girl–Bad Girl dichotomy—a narrative as old as time and still trotted out today. The words used to describe Debbie were significant. She was always "brave" or "plucky" or "unassuming." When she spoke, she always "managed a smile" or "held back tears." For the next several months hundreds of photographs of Debbie and her children would be taken—but, in direct contrast to the usual practice, it was usually only those in which Carrie and Todd looked sad and distraught that made it into print.

  One other bit of manipulation seems to have been attempted as well. On the very day that most other newspapers were reporting that the Fishers had separated, some provincial papers were printing a piece supposedly written by Eddie in which he claimed to be "still very much in love with my wife." It forced a quick denial from Eddie's lawyers, who insisted that he hadn't penned the article. Of course he hadn't. It was likely written by the Metro publicity department before Hedda's bombshell interview with Elizabeth had changed the storyline, and only those far outside the Hollywood loop—like the Times of Chester, Pennsylvania—still considered the press release relevant.

  Meanwhile Elizabeth kept mum, refusing to get out of bed at Frings's house, eating carton after carton of beef-and-pinto-bean chili from Chasen's restaurant, and speaking to no one. But Eddie ventured forward in an attempt to prevent the bad press from sticking to his ladylove. "I'm the heavy," he said. "Don't blame Elizabeth." But he offered no such solicitude for Debbie. Though he accepted "full responsibility" for their problems, Eddie stated, "My marriage would have come to an end even if I had never known Elizabeth Taylor." This, though the truth, directly contradicted what Debbie had said, and led to her announcement the next day that she'd sue for divorce.

  Once more, Debbie was forced out front to "protect her interests." To reporters, she issued a mawkish statement about "how blind love can be." She knew what she was doing. Faced with this humiliation from her husband, she knew exactly which cards to play. "I will endeavor to use all my strength to survive and understand, for the benefit of my two children," she said. Of course the press ran her statement under pictures of her holding Carrie and Todd.

  The archetypes—Good Girl, Bad Girl, Errant Husband—were hardening into place, no matter the more nuanced picture that a few tried valiantly to describe. Veteran Hollywood journalist Vernon Scott was one of those who attempted to tell the truth to his readers. "Insiders know the Fisher family has had serious problems from the very beginning." But the public wasn't listening. All they knew was "poor little Debbie," as Hedda had described her, had been abandoned with two small children. "It seems unbelievable," Debbie told the press, "to say that you can live happily with a man and not know he doesn't love you. But that—as God is my witness—is the truth."

  Debbie didn't just invoke God in that statement. She conjured up the greatest fear of many housewives—that a more beautiful, more desirable woman lurked around the corner, waiting to sneak in and destroy their marriages and ways of life. Hands down, the public-relations battle was won. In just two days' time—from September 11 to September 13—the world turned sharply against Elizabeth Taylor. No longer the beloved young widow, she was now that blackest of fifties stereotypes: the home wrecker.

  The first delivery of letters—maybe a couple dozen—arrived at Hedda's office on September 12, the day after her front-page exclusive. On the 13th, one of her secretaries lugged in a heavy burlap sack that had just been dropped off by messenger from the Times building downtown. As Hedda sat back wide-eyed and slackjawed in her chair, the secretary proceeded to empty the sack onto her desk. Hundreds of letters spilled out, growing into an enormous pile, several slipping off and falling to the floor. Many were addressed simply to "Miss Hopper, Hollywood." The post office knew how to find her.

  Hedda dug in gleefully. "For many years, I have been a fan of Elizabeth Taylor," read one of the first letters, from a woman in Lompoc, California. "I haven't missed a single movie that she has appeared in. I was definitely looking forward to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But now I wouldn't go to see her movies if someone paid my way. She has made herself sickening and disgusting ... I surely hope that [Eddie Fisher] will see the light of day before it is to [sic] late and return to his sweet wife and family."

  Nearly every letter contained more of the same. On the 14th, two sacks were delivered to Hedda's office, and secretaries began sorting the cards, letters, and telegrams into piles on the floor. As Hedda's story was syndicated across the nation and the saga of Liz, Eddie, and Debbie dominated the news, the flood of mail increased. Missives arrived from every state in the union and as far away as Norway and Australia.

  The scandal had clearly touched a nerve. Letter writers described themselves as "heavy-hearted" and "broken," unable to stop thinking about Debbie's pain. Several prefaced their comments with the admission that they'd never before written to a newspaper about a celebrity. Many wrote long and personal accounts that reflected the relationship the public still had with movie stars in 1958. "I consider the show people to be my family," one housewife wrote. "I love them all and have made excuses for their marital troubles, flirtations, etc." But Elizabeth's behavior, she said, was "too much to take." Some writers were surprised by the depth of their emotion: "I am so disgusted with myself because I have let the Fisher-Taylor scandal upset me [but] one hears about it everywhere." Another stated: "There is so much feeling about this wherever we go."

  Elizabeth's fans were turning on her. Hedda preserved in her files the torn-up glossy photos of Elizabeth that were sent to her, some with the word hussy scrawled over them. A young mother from Natchez, Mississippi, penned a four-page letter pouring out her feelings of betrayal: "As far back as I can possibly remember I've held a driving fascination for Elizabeth Taylor. The only movie magazines I ever read had to have a story or some write-up about her. I have defended her like a best friend." But no more. Now she asked, "Is Miss Taylor such a money item to the Hollywood industry that she can't be criticized truthfully—look at all the bull about her poor premature daughter—there's no such thing as a 6-month baby." Others homed in on the same point: "I had little respect for Liz after her mix-up with Todd while married to Mr. Wilding. Most of us can do a little adding in arithmetic!"

  All of Elizabeth's carefully constructed press was unraveling. Her fans were now calling her a "detestable little tramp," "just garbage," "nasty little alley cat," and "the meanest snake on earth." One woman from Affton, Missouri, thought Elizabeth belonged "not to the acting profession but rather to the oldest profession in the world." Another letter writer included a piece of cheese wrapped in aluminum foil—a treat for "Maggie the Cat" to feed to the "rat she trapped." Hedda would keep the foil, cheese and all, in her files for years.

  But the rat wasn't getting as much heat as the cat. Eddie was usually called "misguided," while Elizabeth was "piggish." Eddie might be a "heel," one woman from Omaha wrote, but "Liz" was more to blame: "I always feel it's up to the woman to keep a man in his place." A housewife from Glastonbury, Connecticut, observed that, in these situations, "the blame should be placed on the other woman." When comedian George Jessel, appearing on The Steve Allen Show on September 16, defended his old pal E
ddie by saying it would be hard for any man "to resist Elizabeth Taylor," he was summing up the opinion of many. Elizabeth was the villain here, the black widow luring away a defenseless man. Columnist (and famed Illinois restaurateur) Fanny Lazzar went so far as to scold the star for usurping male prerogatives. "Imagine a woman who proposes to a man," Lazzar wrote, referencing the publicity around Elizabeth's pursuit of Michael Wilding. Hedda kept a copy of Lazzar's column, marked with arrows, in her files.

  The prevailing sexism of the era meant that few observers would recognize, let alone criticize, this view. Instead, Hedda was applauded for standing up for what was "right." Among those writing in to congratulate the columnist were several prominent people, including Pat Scott, the wife of actor Randolph Scott. "Randy and I were very much elated over your article this morning," she wrote. "We have always admired you and now all the more so." An executive of Town and Country magazine complimented Hedda's "beau tiful job of reporting," and silent film star Corinne Griffith called it "one of the finest jobs done for American decency in a long, long time." Even rival columnist Florabel Muir hailed the "gutsy and slashing piece that ripped the phony pretense from one shriveled soul ... Hopper at her very tops." Film director (and former journalist) Samuel Fuller sent Hedda a wire, praising the interview as "one of the best pieces of first-person reporting since H.L. Mencken took over the Baltimore literary mantle." Hedda, quite understandably, was in the clouds.

  What was so remarkable about the piece—what Fuller and the others were reacting to—was its direct confrontation with, even repudiation of, Elizabeth's public image. That was hardly the traditional role of the Hollywood reporter. But with the times changing so quickly, traditional Hollywood was resorting to untraditional measures. Hedda knew that she could still rally a sizable and vocal minority to put pressure on the industry—the same bloc that had demanded the reforms (and threatened the boycotts) that led to the establishment of the Production Code almost thirty years earlier. This was the aggregate of the cultural transformation that the Liz-Eddie-Debbie scandal was measuring. With the Code collapsing under the weight of its own intransigence, with more and more pictures pushing the bounds of what was acceptable onscreen (and more and more stars acting with an impunity unimaginable under the ironclad rule of Louis B. Mayer and the other moguls), conservatives latched onto the scandal as a cause célèbre. And for many of them, Hedda was both crusading heroine and mother confessor.

  "Please do something about this monstrous thing," one writer begged the columnist. For many, this was a sacred Christian mission: "Keep the Catholic teaching against adultery and fornication your real fight," one Chicago woman urged Hedda, "so that young folks won't become loose in the morals because of the applause and approval of the Fisher rottenness." Several letter writers insisted that if Elizabeth were to come to their neighborhoods, she would face the Biblical punishment of stoning. A correspondent from Hickory, North Carolina, compared the star's behav ior to Esau selling his birthright for a "mess of pottage." A doctor from Inglewood, California, lamented Hollywood's "multiple marriages that flaunt [sic] the sanctity and permanence of the marriage sacrament." To these people, Elizabeth was "the devil's daughter," and Hedda was their deliverer. "God bless you, Hedda!" one writer exulted. "These women who wantonly wreck marriages and deprive children of their fathers should be held up to public scorn, and nobody can do it as well as you can." Hedda took the remark as a point of pride.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, many of these writers also gave vent to a deeply ingrained anti-Semitism. "The die was cast," one man wrote, when Elizabeth married Mike Todd, because "a gentile woman becomes crude and common with close association with a Jew." From Coronado, California, came the opinion that Eddie was "just another beak-nosed Jew," and "dear little Debbie" should find a good Christian husband. It was all rather an uncanny echo of Elizabeth's part in the film Ivanhoe, six years earlier, where, as the Jewish girl Rebecca, she was tried publicly as a witch and a seductress.

  "Gone are the days when Hollywood policed itself and transgressors were punished," one Alabama newspaper lamented, a clear reference to Ingrid Bergman's European exile. Now a riot of scandals had torn through screenland in the last few years and their perpetrators had largely escaped any repercussions: the discovery of nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe; the tempestuous marriage (and brazen extramarital affairs) of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner; the "grunt and groin" music of Elvis Presley; and, just five months before the Liz-Eddie-Debbie headlines, the stabbing death of Lana Turner's gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, by her fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane. Some believed that Turner herself was the real killer and had gotten off scot-free.

  It was enough to turn a segment of the public off Hollywood forever. "I was so thoroughly disgusted when the Ingrid Bergman–Roberto Rossellini scandal came out that I have not attended one movie since," one Wisconsin woman wrote to Hedda. "And [I'm] disgusted over Frank Sinatra's flings. I point out to my niece ... to refrain from buying Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley records."

  But Elizabeth's theft of Debbie Reynolds's husband was the last straw. "Taylor is even worse than Bergman," one writer opined to Hedda. The letters continued flowing to newspaper editorial boards across the country. "You play by the rules in life," one writer declared. "Does Elizabeth Taylor know there are rules?"

  When Chesterfield cigarettes announced that it intended to continue its sponsorship of Eddie's television show, set for its season debut on September 30, there was a call for boycotts. "So the Eddie Fisher sponsor has taken the attitude of the 'public be damned,'" one furious letter writer from Chicago vented to Hedda. Chesterfield, the writer said, was spending its money on "heels" and "strumpets" and "in fact anything that violates decency." Where was the demand for "decency in performers and entertainers"? And why didn't Chesterfield "observe such a code"?

  Because, in fact, the code was gone—and it wasn't just the Production Code that was breaking down. The codes—the very standards of living—that many had grown up with were being rewritten. For those appalled by such a turn of events, there was little to do but huff and puff—and write letters. MGM received its share of them, and given the imminent wide release of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, no doubt there were some worries that the scandal might affect business. Various petitions were received from people who vowed "never to see Miss Taylor again in a picture or stage production."

  But of even greater concern were the letters being delivered to the NBC offices and the headquarters of Liggett & Myers, the parent company of Chesterfield cigarettes. Being a TV star and dependent on the vagaries of public taste from week to week, Eddie was far more vulnerable than Elizabeth. The letters pouring in to his sponsor raised real alarm. "I am more than a little shocked to find you would allow a man of such moral turpitude as Fisher to represent a supposedly reliable product as Chesterfield," one woman wrote. "Or are we to assume that the perfidious character of the entertainer who represents you is indicative of the basically insidious nature of your product, as claimed by the medical fraternity who point to cigarettes as a causative factor in lung cancer?"

  Even if not every letter was so potently worded, such sentiment didn't go unheeded by the corporate giant. According to Fisher, he and his sponsor were at one point getting "7,000 nasty letters a week"—not to mention the occasional voodoo doll stuck with pins. Hedda, meanwhile, kept turning the screws, writing that if Eddie and his sponsor could read the letters she was getting, both would be "shaking in [their] boots."

  But for all of that, the season debut of Eddie's show (now retitled The Eddie Fisher Show) won the highest ratings for its time period, vindicating, at least for the moment, Frings's tenet that any press was good press. Eddie beat out his competitors, Sugarfoot and Wyatt Earp, popular Westerns both, by several points; the Associated Press credited the show's success to the "value of front-page publicity." The appearance of guest stars Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Ernie Kovacs, and Bing Crosby certainly helped, but many viewers had clearly tuned in
to see if Eddie might betray any hint of his romantic entanglements. He didn't. He sang "Moonlight Becomes You" and joined Kovacs in a rousing rendition of "That's Entertainment." It was all sweetness and light, jokes and happy smiles.

  For Eddie's critics, this was only cause for further outrage. Letters continued flowing in to Hedda, to MGM, to NBC, to Chesterfield. Now it wasn't just the principals being targeted, but "those appearing with Fisher" as well, for their blatant disregard of "the public feeling." Jane Powell—an old comrade of both Elizabeth and Debbie's from MGM—had felt it prudent not to appear on Eddie's show and was applauded for her "loyalty and good sense." But anybody else was fair game. Letters to Hedda indicated that a boycott of Eddie's program might be expanded to include George Gobel, whose show had the unfortunate position of alternating with Fisher's. When Steve Allen announced at the end of one of his shows that Eddie would be his guest the following week, the audience booed. Shaken by this, everyone agreed that it would be better if Eddie didn't appear.

  The concern was growing at the network. "Some cautious ad men," observed one trade paper, "fear any long, bitter divorce battle might react unfavorably for [Fisher's] sponsors." Movie stars, these ad men argued, had demonstrated that they could sustain careers in similar situations. But this was "the first serious test for a television star"—who depended on provincial, often conservative viewers to invite him into their living rooms every week.

  It was a test Eddie ultimately failed. After that first show, his ratings began to slip and continued in freefall over the next several months. Variety called the response to the scandal the "war whoop of the bluenoses." Indeed, it was a textbook example of media spin whipping up base public sentiment to conceal more nuanced facts on the ground. And yet it also demonstrated a very real truth about Hollywood: In the end, the public decides. One Chicago man, seeming to feel personally betrayed by Eddie and Elizabeth, wrote quite astutely to Hedda: "In their profession they are public property—they belong to us. We the public made them what they are and they should not forget it."