This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
One of Elizabeth Taylor’s biggest regrets was marrying husband no. 4.
The actress, who tied the knot eight times to seven men, is the subject of a new HBO documentary, “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes.” The film details the Oscar winner’s life and loves in her words from a recently discovered series of candid interviews.
During one of her sit-downs, Taylor claimed that Eddie Fisher once taunted her with a gun during their union.
“I was surprised by some of the things that she did and admitted to doing,” director Nanette Burstein told Fox News Digital. “Like attempting suicide, for example. Because she was so unhappy with her marriage to Eddie Fisher and the fact that he put a gun to her head and said, ‘You’re much too pretty to shoot.’ Some of these tidbits of really tumultuous moments in her life were revelations to me.”
Burstein said that Taylor felt so “trapped” in her marriage to Fisher that she was ready to take her life. The guilt stopped her.
“She was so upset with herself for attempting suicide because of her children,” said Burstein. “She felt it was so selfish. But a lot of it was feeling trapped, like, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve publicly divorced so many men at this point, and I’m still in my 20s, early 30s.’ She was so ashamed. She married Eddie Fisher because she was reacting to the death of [her third husband] Mike Todd, who tragically and suddenly died in a plane crash.”
“She was madly in love with [Todd],” Burstein continued. “She was experiencing terrible grief and obviously made a very bad decision in the midst of that. Then she didn’t know how to get out of it. And then she was falling in love with Richard Burton and having another affair, one that became more public and scandalous.”
In the documentary, Taylor described how her marriage to Fisher was “like being locked up.”
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“Eddie made sure that I felt lonely,” she is heard saying. “We never went out. It’s like he didn’t like me to mingle with other people… I started to sleep 14-15 hours at once. I was trying to avoid everything. I was trying to avoid life. But I was so desperate at one time that I did take some sleeping pills. I did it deliberately, calmly and in front of Eddie. I was fed up with everything. I couldn’t face the thought of divorce. I’d rather be dead than face going through a divorce.”
“A doctor came to the hotel,” she said. “And thank God. I’m so deeply ashamed.”
During her marriage to Fisher, Taylor fell in love with Burton, her “Cleopatra” co-star. Fisher made his feelings known.
“Eddie at nighttime would sit up,” Taylor recalled. “He had a gun. Every time I started to close my eyes… he would stroke my arm and say, ‘I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to shoot you. You’re much too pretty.’ All night long… I was so scared.”
Burstein said it was clear Taylor “did not like Eddie.”
“The way she described it, he was cruel to her,” said Burstein. “He seemed very controlling. He probably sensed that she wasn’t in love with him, and he was reacting… in a very jealous, controlling way. [But] she never loved him to begin with. Now she’s stuck in a loveless marriage in which the guy is putting a gun to her head.”
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In the 2011 book, “Furious Love,” obtained by Fox News Digital, authors Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger wrote that one night, Taylor woke up to Fisher “watching over her, pointing the gun at her head. ‘Don’t worry, Elizabeth,’ she heard him say. ‘I’m not going to kill you. You’re too beautiful.’ That’s when she fled. She gathered up her children… and never went back.”
Fisher’s son, Todd Fisher, told Fox News Digital this was the first time he had heard this claim.
“I never discussed this with him when he was alive,” Todd explained to Fox News Digital. “We obviously had talked about Elizabeth… He was very obsessed with her and had basically scuttled his whole life and career for her. And Richard Burton was quite a formidable foe in terms of someone to compete with. My father was not in his league at all. My father was super charming, an amazing singer. But Richard Burton was far more cerebral and charismatic in different ways… He was also very intense. My father was not like that at all.”
“Richard Burton was an in-your-face kind of a person, whereas my father was super mellow,” he shared. “But when it comes to him losing Elizabeth… I know that he was crazy in love with her. He said [she] was the love of his life, but he was not the love of her life.”
Todd said that while his father had a small collection of guns “from his service days,” he was never violent. He also noted that Taylor, whom he befriended over the years, never shared this story with either him or his sister. Still, he also knows that Taylor would never have said anything “salacious” to “gain points.”
“My father was more like that,” he admitted. “My father would do things to attract the press, like gnats to a wine glass. He would try to think of salacious things to say, but that really wasn’t Liz. I would have a tendency to… possibly believe this story based upon how worked up he was about what had happened in his mind. He had given up everything for her. He had scuttled his family, his career – everything… And he was using drugs… Do drug addicts and alcoholics do stupid things? Hell yes.”
“Here’s a guy who just lost everything and scuttled everything for the woman of his dreams,” Todd continued. “And she’s now leaving him with Richard Burton, who is very much in his face about winning the contest. Can you see him getting out of control? It could have happened. But, I have to say this. In my entire life, my father never raised his hand to anybody. He never got in any fights. He never did anything inappropriate with a firearm. I never saw him do anything remotely close. So I would say that doesn’t jive in terms of his behavior. He does not have a history of beating anyone up. He never touched my mother or any other woman that I’m aware of. And nobody would ever have accused him of any violent act.
“On the other hand, I don’t know if he loved anybody the way he loved Liz. And was he stoned? I always say people that do drugs and alcohol get stuck on stupid… I would just say that there’s a chance that did happen… But in all of my conversations with Liz, this never came up.”
The scandal first started with tragedy when Taylor’s third husband Todd, a movie producer, died in a plane crash in 1958 at age 48. Fisher, who was Todd’s best friend, and his wife, Debbie Reynolds, rushed to Taylor’s side. It didn’t take long for Taylor and Fisher to embark on an affair.
Taylor was assailed as a husband thief, Fisher as a deserter of his family. Reynolds won sympathy as the innocent victim, a role emphasized when she appeared before news cameras with diaper pins on her blouse. A cover headline in Photoplay magazine in late 1958 blared: “Smiling through her tears, Debbie says: ‘I’m still very much in love with Eddie.'”
After Fisher and Reynolds divorced in 1959, he married Taylor “just three hours” later, as quoted from a newsreel at the time.
In the film, Taylor admitted she didn’t “remember too much about my marriage to him, except it was one big, friggin’ awful mistake.”
“I knew it before we were married and didn’t know how to get out of it,” said Taylor.
The marriage lasted five years. Taylor embarked on an affair with Burton during the making of “Cleopatra” in 1963. At the time, he was married to his first wife, Sybil Williams.
“I couldn’t help loving him,” Taylor admitted. “It was a fact.”
Burstein admitted it was hard to tell whether it was Todd or Burton who was the true love of Taylor’s life.
“I don’t think she even knew herself,” Burstein explained. “Mike died so soon into the marriage. It was one year after being married. It’s hard to know how it would’ve endured. When I see the footage of the two of them and hear her talk about him, it certainly seems like [he was the love of her life]. But Richard was also a great love in her life, and that obviously lasted a lot longer. I think the problem with that marriage was the alcoholism and codependency. As a result… it became toxic.”
The Welsh actor became husband no. 5 from 1964 to 1974. Burton became husband no. 6 when they rekindled their marriage in 1975. They called it quits for good in 1976.
After being discarded by Taylor, Fisher became the butt of comedians’ jokes. He began relying on drugs to get through performances, and his bookings dwindled. He later said he had made and spent $20 million during his heyday, and much of it went to gambling and drugs.
Fisher attempted a full-scale comeback. But his old fans had been turned off by the scandals, and the younger generation had been turned on to rock music. The tour was unsuccessful.
In his 1999 autobiography, “Been There, Done That,” Fisher called Reynolds “self-centered, totally driven, insecure, untruthful, phony.” He claimed he abandoned his career during the Taylor marriage because he was too busy taking her to emergency rooms and cleaning up after her pets, children and servants. Both ex-wives were furious, and his daughter, “Star Wars” actress Carrie Fisher, threatened to change her name to Reynolds.
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Burstein said that despite her multiple marriages, Taylor always prioritized her children.
“She wanted to protect her kids as best as she could,” said Burstein. “It was very hard to do because of the public scrutiny, because of the paparazzi. I think that was the thing that most concerned her in life… She was worried about being married too many times and how that affected her kids.”
“One of the things that really upset her… is that so often people thought of her as a sex symbol or a pretty face, as opposed to a talented actress, because she was so beautiful,” Burstein continued. “They couldn’t see beyond that. If you watch ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ she ages up and wears a fat suit. That’s the part she’s most proud of. She was also very slut-shamed at the time because of the affairs that she had. She was considered immoral and a homewrecker. And yet, the men that she had affairs with were also married and cheating, but they did not get lagged publicly.”
Burstein noted that Taylor was not one to mince words. The actress herself admitted that she was “in love with love.”
“There’s something in her that has this very romantic quality,” said Burstein. “But she was a child star. As a teenager, she was cast in these adult roles that were romantic leads. There were all of these love scenes, and it was a very idealized version of love. She didn’t date anyone… She knew nothing about real love or the real world at that point. But she was playing these parts.”
“I think the public thinks of her [as] this sexpot with violet eyes,” Burstein shared. “They think about her as the movie star who was married eight times to seven different men… I think this film casts a new light on her.”
