The Life of the Senses

Below her high-piled, Gibson-girl hairdo, her smile was beatific as the flashbulbs flared like the big guns off Iwo on D-plus-one. For the moment, only the desperate waitresses in the main cabaret of Las Vegas' Tropicana Hotel seemed to realize that visiting Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor was not the star of the show. "What can I serve you in the way of triples?" they asked, as they tried to turn the customers' minds back to the main business of the house. "You'll need three drinks to use up your minimum, and I can't serve you anything once Mr. Fisher starts to sing."

But apple-cheeked Eddie Fisher, also entranced, agreed with the customers. Nostrils flaring, he made it plain that all his songs were for Liz--Tonight Won't Be Just Any Night, It Happens Every Spring. Then Eddie flashed an arch smile for the rest of his fans. "I opened here two years ago," he said. "Since then, nothing much has happened." Having thus wrapped up his marriage to Debbie Reynolds and seven months of sharing headlines with Liz, Eddie ran through the rest of his repertory and retired to his dressing room. Elizabeth followed, trailing Mamma, Papa, secretaries, agents, flacks. "She's lovely." muttered a lady in the audience, "but I wish they'd get married and be done with it."

Man & Wife. Liz, who got to the dressing room just in time to hug a bare-chested Eddie, obviously agreed. Her 50-diamond bracelet, she announced at an impromptu press conference, was Eddie's engagement present. "We intend to travel and see as much of the world as we can," said Eddie. Added Liz demurely: "And we would like to travel as man and wife."

A reporter questioned this sudden concern for propriety. "We respect public opinion," answered Liz, "but you can't live by it. If we lived by it, Eddie and I would have been terribly unhappy through all this turmoil. But I can shamelessly say that we have been terribly happy. I am literally rising above it." Her words rang all the way to Manhattan, where Pundit Max Lerner wrote in the New York Post: "Where so many people have become desensitized in our world, I welcome this forthright celebration of the life of the senses . . ."

Inevitably the press-conference talk got back to the third member of the triangle. What if Debbie continued to frown on a quick divorce? Her interlocutory decree, obtained in Los Angeles, still had almost a year to run before it was final. "Debbie was very much hurt at first," said Elizabeth Taylor, out of the wisdom that comes from many a wilted romance. "I think the hurt has now left, and that she will consent to Eddie getting a divorce here." Having reassured both herself and her public, Liz left for her $500-a-week quarters at the Hidden Well Ranch. Eddie Fisher was still registered at the Tropicana.

America Waits. Next day, after nearly a month in Spain, where she had been busy filming It Started with a Kiss, Debbie flew over the top of the earth and into Hollywood. "What about it, Debbie?" reporters asked. "Will you contest the divorce? America is waiting." Friends had taken the trouble to give her a report by telephone on the Las Vegas idyl while her plane refueled in Winnipeg, and Debbie was ready. "It comes as very much of a surprise to me," she said with a straight face. "The position in which I was placed made it necessary to give my consent. But I don't need to. They would have gotten married anyway."

In Las Vegas, a reporter, waiting for the word, had already dialed all but the last digit of the Hidden Well telephone number. Now he completed the call. "Liz is flipping," Eddie announced when he heard the news. "She's jumping all over the room." Said Liz: "I knew it all along. Just chalk it up to woman's psychology or intuition." Now, continued Liz, she would quit pictures (after making three more, that is). The marriage would take place on May 11, after Eddie gets a Nevada divorce, and Liz would like the ceremony to be performed by Rabbi Max Nussbaum, who officiated at her conversion to Judaism (TIME, April 6).

Back in Hollywood, Debbie Reynolds hopefully reached for the last word. Said she: "I'm sure you're all exhausted by this topic as much as I am."

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