Debbie Reynolds
Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds was an American actress, singer and entrepreneur. Her acting career spanned almost 70 years. Reynolds performed on stage and television and in films into her 80s.
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. Her other successes include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, Susan Slept Here, Bundle of Joy, The Catered Affair, and Tammy and the Bachelor, in which her performance of the song "Tammy" topped the Billboard music charts. In 1959, she starred in The Mating Game with Tony Randall, and released Debbie, her first pop music album. She starred in Singin' in the Rain with Gene Kelly, How the West Was Won, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, where her performance as the famously boisterous Titanic passenger Margaret "Molly" Brown earned Reynolds an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Her other films include: The Singing Nun, Divorce American Style, What's the Matter with Helen?, Mother and In & Out. She was known for voicing Charlotte A. Cavatica in Charlotte's Web. Reynolds was also known as a cabaret performer; in 1979, she opened the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood.
Her television series The Debbie Reynolds Show earned her a Golden Globe nomination in 1969. She starred in the 1973 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. 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 as Bobbi, the mother of Grace Adler. Reynolds would reach a new, younger audience with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney's Halloweentown series.
Reynolds also had several business ventures besides 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. After receiving the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2015 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2016, she made her final film performance in the biographical retrospective Bright Lights. Reynolds died following a hemorrhagic stroke on December 28, 2016, one day after the death of her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher.
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. She was of Scottish-Irish and English ancestry and was raised in a strict Nazarene church of her domineering mother. She had an older brother, William, who was two years her senior. Reynolds was a Girl Scout, once saying that she wanted to die as the world's oldest living Girl Scout. Reynolds was also a member of The International Order of Job's Daughters.Her mother took in laundry for income, while they lived in a shack on Magnolia Street in El Paso. "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."
Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939. When Reynolds was a 16-year-old student at Burbank High School in 1948, she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. Soon after, she was offered a contract with Warner Brothers and was given the stage name "Debbie" by studio head Jack L. Warner.
One of her closest high school friends said that she rarely dated during her teenaged years in Burbank.
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." Her friend adds:
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. 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" was the first soundtrack recording to become a top-of-the-chart gold record, reaching number three on the Billboard charts.
File:Singin' in the Rain trailer.jpg|thumb|Gene Kelly, Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor during the Singin' in the Rain trailer
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, a satire on movie-making in Hollywood during the transition from silent to sound pictures. 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." In 1956, she appeared in the musical Bundle of Joy with her then-husband, Eddie Fisher.
Reynolds was one of 14 top-billed names in How the West Was Won 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.
Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. 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.'" 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. In what Reynolds once 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 weekly television show. Although she was television's highest-paid female performer at the time, she quit the show for breaking its contract:
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. 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." The dispute would have been rendered moot and in Reynolds' favor anyway had she not resigned; by 1971, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act would ban all radio and television advertising for tobacco products.
Reynolds voiced Charlotte in the Hanna-Barbera animated musical Charlotte's Web, where she originated the song "Mother Earth and Father Time." Reynolds continued to make other appearances in film and television. She played Helen Chappel Hackett's mother, Deedee Chappel, on the Wings episode "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother," which first aired November 22, 1994.
From 1999 to 2006, she played Grace Adler's theatrical mother, Bobbi Adler, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, which earned Reynolds her only Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000. 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.
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. 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.
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. It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. The television premiere was January 7, 2017, on HBO. According to USA Today, the film is "an intimate portrait of Hollywood royalty... 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."