Debbie Reynolds is an American actress, singer, and dancer.
Initially signed at age sixteen by Warner Bros., Reynolds' career got off to a slow
start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave her a small but significant
part in the film Three Little Words starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton, then signed
her to a seven-year contract. In her next film, Two Weeks with Love, she had a hit with
the song "Aba Daba Honeymoon". However, it was her first leading role, in Singin' in
the Rain with Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, that set her on the path to fame. By the mid-1950s,
she was a major star. Other notable successes include Tammy and
the Bachelor, in which her rendering of the song "Tammy" reached number one on the music
charts; a major role opposite Gregory Peck in the Cinerama episodic ensemble Western
How the West Was Won; and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a biographical film about the famously
boisterous Titanic shipwreck survivor, for which she received a nomination for the Academy
Award for Best Actress. She continues to perform successfully on stage, television and film
to the present day. Reynolds's first marriage, to popular singer
Eddie Fisher, produced a son, author/host producer Todd Fisher, and a daughter, actress/author
Carrie Fisher, but ended in divorce in 1959 when Fisher fell in love with Reynolds's former
friend Elizabeth Taylor. Reynolds's second and third marriages also ended in divorce,
each time ruining her financially. She is a noted collector of film memorabilia,
beginning with the landmark 1970 MGM auction. In June 2011, unable to find a suitable home
for her large collection, she began auctioning it off.
Early life Reynolds was born Mary Frances Reynolds in
El Paso, Texas, the second child of Maxine N. and Raymond Francis Reynolds, who was a carpenter
for the Southern Pacific Railroad. She has Scotch-Irish and English ancestry. Reynolds
was a Campfire Girl and a troop leader. Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939,
and she was raised in a strict Nazarene faith. At age sixteen, while a student at Burbank
High School, Reynolds won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. Soon after, she had a contract
with Warner Bros., and acquired a new first name. Her older brother Bill was in the Burbank
High Class of 1947. Career
Reynolds regularly appeared in movie musicals during the 1950s and had several hit records
during the period. Her song "Aba Daba Honeymoon" was a top-three hit in 1951. Her most high-profile
film role was in Singin' in the Rain as Kathy Selden. In Bundle of Joy she appeared with
her then-husband, Eddie Fisher. Her recording of the song "Tammy") earned
her a gold record, and was the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957. It was
number one for five weeks on the Billboard pop charts. In the movie, she co-starred with
Leslie Nielsen.
In 1959, Reynolds recorded her first album for Dot Records, simply called Debbie, which
included her own selection of twelve standards including "S'posin'", "Moonglow", "Mean To
Me", and "Time After Time". Bing Crosby paid tribute to Reynolds in the sleeve notes accompanying
the album thus:
Someone recently said, and with reasonable accuracy I would think, that good singers
make good actors. Evidence in support of this belief is available in the recent performances
of Sinatra and Martin, for instance, but I would like to put forth also the proposition
that the reverse is quite true: good actors make good singers. Assuming they can carry
a tune. We all know that Debbie is better than a good actress—she's VERY good, and
we all know she can sing with a lilt and a listenable quality that's genuinely pleasant
and agreeable. Witness "Tammy". It was small surprise to me then that when I listened to
this beautiful album she has etched for Dot, I found myself captivated and enchanted. Quite
obviously Debbie had spent a great deal of time selecting the songs to be included, because
she's made them her own, and invested them with a sincerity that's inescapable—of contrasting
moods to be sure, but the moods are there, and to me, mighty effective. And that, mes
amis, is artistry.
Reynolds also scored two other top-25 Billboard hits with "A Very Special Love" and "Am I
That Easy to Forget"—a pop-music version of a country-music hit made famous by both
songwriters Carl Belew, Skeeter Davis, and several years later by singer Engelbert Humperdinck.
She has released several albums of both her vintage performances and her later recordings.
During these years, she also headlined in major Las Vegas showrooms.
Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown led to a nomination for the Academy
Award for Best Actress. She then portrayed Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun.
In what Reynolds has called the "stupidest mistake of my entire career", she made headlines
in 1970 after instigating a fight with the NBC television network over cigarette advertising
on her eponymous television series; NBC canceled the show.
Reynolds made her Broadway debut in 1973 in a revival of Irene, a musical first produced
60 years before. For that production, she received a Tony nomination. She toured with
Harve Presnell in Annie Get Your Gun, then wrapped up the Broadway run of Woman of the
Year in 1983. In the late 1980s, Reynolds repeated her role as Molly Brown in the stage
version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, first opposite Presnell and later with Ron Raines.
Reynolds continues to make appearances in film and television. She played Helen Chappel
Hackett's mother, Deedee Chappel, on an episode of Wings titled, "If It's Not One Thing, It's
Your Mother", which originally aired on November 22, 1994. From 1999 to its 2006 series finale,
she played Grace Adler's theatrical mother, Bobbi Adler, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace,
which earned her an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy
Series in 2000. She also plays a recurring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie
Halloweentown film series as Aggie Cromwell. Reynolds made a guest appearance as a presenter
at the 69th Academy Awards in 1997. Reynolds appeared in her West End show Debbie
Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous. In June 2010 she replaced Ivana Trump answering reader
queries for the weekly paper Globe. Reynolds' new tell-all autobiography, Unsinkable—a
play-on-words of her 1964 film The Unsinkable Molly Brown—was published by William Morrow
and Company on April 2, 2013. Awards and nominations
Reynolds won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her
role in The Catered Affair. She has received various nominations for awards
including: an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for The Unsinkable Molly Brown,
a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for
The Debbie Reynolds Show, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical
or Comedy for Mother and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series,
for her role of Bobbi Adler in the sitcom Will & Grace. In 1996 and 1997, she received
the Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy, in the American Comedy Awards.
Her foot and hand prints are preserved at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood,
California. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6654 Hollywood Boulevard for
live performance and a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars
dedicated to her. In November 2006, Reynolds received the "Lifetime
Achievement Award" from Chapman University. On May 17, 2007, she was awarded an honorary
degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she had
contributed for many years to the film-studies program.
Reynolds last CD was a Christmas Record with the late Donald O'Connor entitled "Chrissy
the Christmas Mouse". It received rave reviews and was arranged by Angelo DiPippo and produced
by Dr. Fillardi. Film memorabilia
Reynolds has amassed a large collection of movie memorabilia, beginning with the landmark
1970 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer auction, and displayed them, first in a museum at her Las Vegas hotel
and casino during the 1990s and later in a museum close to the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.
On several occasions, she has auctioned off items from the collection.
The museum was to relocate to be the centerpiece of the Belle Island Village tourist attraction
in the resort city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but the developer went bankrupt. The museum
itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009.
Todd Fisher, Reynolds' son, announced that his mother was "heartbroken" to have to auction
off her collection. It was valued at $10.79 million in the bankruptcy filing. The Vancouver Sun
reported that Profiles in History has been given the responsibility of conducting a series
of auctions beginning in June and continuing into December 2011. Among the "more than 3500
costumes, 20,000 photographs, and thousands of movie posters, costume sketches, and props"
to be sold are Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat and Marilyn Monroe's white "subway dress",
whose skirt is lifted up by the breeze from a passing subway train in the film The Seven
Year Itch. On June 18, 2011, the subway dress was sold
for $4.6 million, far in excess of pre-auction estimates of $1–2 million. Another Monroe
dress, which she wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, fetched $1.2 million, four times
the upper pre-sale expectation. Personal life
Health problems Reynolds was hospitalized in October 2012
at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles because she had an adverse reaction to medication
she was taking. She canceled appearances and concert engagements for the next three months.
Marriages
Reynolds has been married three times. Her first marriage was to singer Eddie Fisher
in 1955. They are the parents of Carrie and Todd Fisher. A public scandal ensued when
Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor fell in love following the death of Taylor's then-husband Mike Todd,
and Reynolds and Fisher were divorced in 1959. In 2011, first on The Oprah Winfrey Show only
weeks before Elizabeth Taylor's death from congestive heart failure, Reynolds explained
that she and Taylor happened to be traveling on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth at the
same time when they made up. Reynolds sent a note to Taylor's room, and Taylor sent a
note in reply asking to have dinner with Reynolds and end their feud. The two reconciled, and,
as Reynolds put it, "...we had a wonderful evening with a lot of laughs".
Her second marriage, to millionaire businessman Harry Karl, lasted from 1960 to 1973. He was
previously married to Marie McDonald. Reynolds later found herself in financial difficulty
because of Karl's gambling and bad investments.
Reynolds was married to real estate developer Richard Hamlett from 1984 to 1996. They purchased
Paddlewheel Hotel & Casino, a small hotel and casino in Las Vegas, but it was not a
success. In 1997, Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Charity work Since 1955, Reynolds has been active in The
Thalians, a charitable organization, devoted to children and adults with mental health
issues. In 2011 she stepped down after 56 years of involvement, and is now an emerita
member. In keeping with the celebrity tradition of
the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival of Winchester, Virginia, Reynolds was honored as the Grand
Marshal of the 2011 ABF that took place from April 26 to May 1, 2011.
Filmography Features:
Short subjects: A Visit with Debbie Reynolds
The Story of a Dress In the Picture
Television work
Stage work Best Foot Forward
Irene Debbie
Annie Get Your Gun Woman of the Year
The Unsinkable Molly Brown Irene Perth Western Australia
Awards and nominations See also
List of American film actresses List of people from California
List of people from Texas References
Further reading Reynolds, Debbie. Debbie: My Life. William
Morrow and Company. ISBN 978-0-688-06633-8. Reynolds, Debbie. Unsinkable: A Memoir. William
Morrow and Company. ISBN 978-0-062-21365-5. External links
debbiereynolds.com, Reynolds's official website Debbie Reynolds at AllMovie
Debbie Reynolds at the Internet Broadway Database Debbie Reynolds at the Internet Movie Database
Debbie Reynolds at the TCM Movie Database Works by or about Debbie Reynolds in libraries
Debbie Reynolds' Hollywood Motion Picture Museum website
Debbie Reynolds at TVGuide.com Radio appearance WSRQ "Big Band Files w/Doug
Miles Photographs and literature
Debbie Reynolds at Emmys.com