Biography:

Mary Frances “Debbie” Reynolds (April 1, 1932 – December 28, 2016) was an American actress, singer, and businesswoman. Her career spanned almost 70 years. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer with her portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words. Her breakout role was her first leading role, as Kathy Selden in Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Her other successes include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), Susan Slept Here (1954), Bundle of Joy (1956 Golden Globe nomination), The Catered Affair (1956 National Board of Review Best Supporting Actress Winner), and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), in which her performance of the song “Tammy” topped the Billboard music charts.^[1] In 1959, she starred in The Mating Game (with Tony Randall) and released her first pop music album, titled Debbie.^[2]

She starred with Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), How the West Was Won (1962), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a biographical film about the famously boisterous Titanic passenger Margaret “Molly” Brown.^[1] Her performance as Brown earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Some of Reynolds’ other films include The Singing Nun (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971), Charlotte’s Web (1973), Mother (1996; Golden Globe nomination) and In & Out (1997). Reynolds was also known as a cabaret performer; in 1979, she opened the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood, which was eventually demolished in 2019. The building would go on to be sold at auction, despite efforts to turn it into a museum.^[3]

In 1969, Reynolds starred in a self-titled television program, The Debbie Reynolds Show, earning her a Golden Globe nomination. In 1973, she starred in the Broadway revival of the musical Irene, which earned her a Tony Award nomination for “Best Leading Actress in a Musical“. She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in A Gift of Love (1999). After appearing in the popular early-2000s sitcom Will & Grace, Reynolds was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for “Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series” for her role of Bobbi (the lead character Grace Adler’s mother).

Also around the turn of the millennium, Reynolds reached a new, younger audience with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney’s Halloweentown series. In 1988, she published her autobiography titled Debbie: My Life; in 2013, she released a second autobiography, titled Unsinkable: A Memoir.^[4]

Reynolds also had several business ventures (besides the ownership of her dance studio), including a Las Vegas hotel and casino; she was also an avid collector of film memorabilia, beginning with items purchased at the landmark 1970 MGM Auction. She served as president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental health causes.^[1] Reynolds continued to successfully perform on stage, television, and in films into her 80s. In January 2015, she received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.^[1] In 2016, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.^[5] In the same year, a documentary about her life was released, titled Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds—which would be her final film appearance; the film premiered on HBO on January 7, 2017.^[6][7]

Reynolds died following a hemorrhagic stroke on December 28, 2016, one day after the death of her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher.^[8][9]

Early life

Mary Frances Reynolds was born on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas, to Maxene N. “Minnie” Harman and Raymond Francis “Ray” Reynolds, a carpenter who worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad.^[10] She was of Scottish-Irish and English ancestry^[11] and was raised in a strict Nazarene church of her domineering mother.^[12] She had an older brother, William, who was two years her senior.^[13] Reynolds was a Girl Scout, once saying that she wanted to die as the world’s oldest living Girl Scout.^[14] Reynolds was also a member of The International Order of Job’s Daughters.^[15]

Her mother took in laundry for income, while they lived in a shack on Magnolia Street in El Paso.^[13] “We may have been poor,” she said in a 1963 interview, “but we always had something to eat, even if Dad had to go out in the desert and shoot jackrabbits.”

One of the advantages of having been poor is that you learn to appreciate good fortune and the value of a dollar, and poverty holds no fear for you because you know you’ve gone through it and you can do it again… But we were always a happy family and a religious one. And I’m trying to inculcate in my children the same sense of values, the same tone that my mother gave to me.^[13]

Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939.^[16] When Reynolds was a 16-year-old student at Burbank High School in 1948, she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest.^[16] Soon after, she was offered a contract with Warner Brothers^[16] and was given the stage name “Debbie” by studio head Jack L. Warner.^[17]

One of her closest high school friends said that she rarely dated during her teenaged years in Burbank.

They never found her attractive in school. She was cute, but sort of tomboyish, and her family never had any money to speak of. She never dressed well or drove a car. And, I think, during all the years in school, she was invited to only one dance.^[13]

Reynolds agreed, saying, “when I started, I didn’t even know how to dress. I wore dungarees and a shirt. I had no money, no taste, and no training.”^[18] Her friend adds:

I say this in all sincerity. Debbie can serve as an inspiration to all young American womanhood. She came up the hard way, and she has a realistic sense of values based on faith, love, work, and money. Life has been kind to her because she has been kind to life. She’s a young woman with a conscience, which is something rare in Hollywood actresses. She also has a refreshing sense of honesty.^[13]

Career

Film and Television

Reynolds was discovered by talent scouts from Warner Bros. and MGM, who were at the 1948 Miss Burbank contest. Both companies wanted her to sign up with their studio, and had to flip a coin to see which one got her. Warner Bros. won the coin toss, and she was with the studio for two years.^[19] When Warner Bros. stopped producing musicals, she moved to MGM.

With MGM, Reynolds regularly appeared in movie musicals during the 1950s, and had several hit records during the period. Her song “Aba Daba Honeymoon” (featured in the film Two Weeks with Love (1950) and sung as a duet with co-star Carleton Carpenter) was the first soundtrack recording to become a top-of-the-chart gold record, reaching number three on the Billboard charts.^[20]

Her performance in the film greatly impressed the studio, which then gave her a co-starring role in what became her highest-profile film, Singin’ in the Rain (1952), a satire on movie-making in Hollywood during the transition from silent to sound pictures.^[19] It co-starred Gene Kelly, whom she called a “great dancer and cinematic genius”, adding, “He made me a star. I was 18 and he taught me how to dance and how to work hard and be dedicated.”^[21] In 1956, she appeared in the musical Bundle of Joy with her then-husband, Eddie Fisher.^[22]

Reynolds was one of 14 top-billed names in How the West Was Won (1962) but she was the only one who appeared throughout, the story largely following the life and times of her character Lilith Prescott. In the film, she sang three songs: What Was Your Name in the States?, as her pioneering family begin their westward journey; Raise a Ruckus Tonight, starting a party around a wagon train camp fire; and, three times, Home in the Meadow – to the tune of Greensleeves with lyrics by Sammy Cahn.^[23]

Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.^[24] Reynolds noted that she initially had issues with its director, Charles Walters. “He didn’t want me,” she said. “He wanted Shirley MacLaine,” who at the time was unable to take the role. “He said, ‘You are totally wrong for the part.” But six weeks into production, he reversed his opinion. “He came to me and said, “I have to admit that I was wrong. You are playing the role really well. I’m pleased.”^[25] Reynolds also played in Goodbye Charlie, a 1964 comedy film about a callous womanizer who gets his just reward. It was adapted from George Axelrod‘s play Goodbye, Charlie and also starred Tony Curtis and Pat Boone.

She next portrayed Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun (1966). In what Reynolds once called the “stupidest mistake of my entire career”,^[26] she made headlines in 1970 after instigating a fight with the NBC television network over cigarette advertising on her weekly television show. Although she was television’s highest-paid female performer at the time, she quit the show for breaking its contract:^[26]

I was shocked to discover that the initial commercial aired during the premiere of my new series was devoted to a nationally advertised brand of cigarette (Pall Mall). I fully outlined my personal feelings concerning cigarette advertising … that I will not be a party to such commercials, which I consider directly opposed to health and well-being.^[27]

When NBC explained to Reynolds that banning cigarette commercials from her show would be impossible, she kept her resolve. The show drew mixed reviews, but according to NBC, it captured about 42% of the nation’s viewing audience. She said later she was especially concerned about the commercials because of the number of children watching the show.^[28] She did quit doing the show after about a year, which she said had cost her about $2 million of lost income: “Maybe I was a fool to quit the show, but at least I was an honest fool. I’m not a phony or pretender. With me, it wasn’t a question of money, but integrity. I’m the one who has to live with myself.”^[29] The dispute would have been rendered moot and in Reynolds’ favor anyway had she not resigned; by 1971, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act (which had been passed into law before she left the show) would ban all radio and television advertising for tobacco products.

Reynolds played the title role in the Hanna-Barbera animated musical Charlotte’s Web (1973), in which she originated the song “Mother Earth and Father Time“.^[30] Reynolds continued to make other 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.^[31]

From 1999 to 2006, she played Grace Adler‘s theatrical mother, Bobbi Adler, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace,^[32] which earned Reynolds her only Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000.^[33] She played 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.^[34]

In 2000, Reynolds took up a recurring voice role on the children’s television program Rugrats, playing the grandmother of two of the characters. In 2001, she co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine, and Joan Collins in the comedy These Old Broads, a television movie written for her by her daughter, Carrie Fisher.^[35] She had a cameo role as herself in the 2004 film Connie and Carla. In 2013, she appeared in Behind the Candelabra, as the mother of Liberace.^[36]

Reynolds appears with her daughter in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a 2016 documentary about the very close relationship between the two.^[37] It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. The television premiere was January 7, 2017, on HBO.^[7] According to USA Today, the film is “an intimate portrait of Hollywood royalty … [it] loosely chronicles their lives through interviews, photos, footage, and vintage home movies… It culminates in a moving scene, just as Reynolds is preparing to receive the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, which Fisher presented to her mom.”^[38]

Credits:

Wikipedia