March 25-29 | 31 Movies
In April 2013, I had the honor of experiencing a Q&A with the legendary Debbie Reynolds at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. The 81-year old star held court in front of 600+ fans doing what she did best: putting on a show. She wandered through the audience taking questions, surveyed the cameras capturing her in the front row, caught up with a high school friend in the crowd and even hugged a fan. Reynolds shined as she discussed her seven-decade career and her passion for show business did, too. High-spirited, hard-working, hilarious, honest, humble; those are just a few words to describe the resilient icon, TCM’s Star of the Month for March. (And that’s just praise that starts with ‘H’!)
Born on April 1, 1932 in El Paso, Texas, Mary Frances Reynolds grew up in a poor, rigid Nazarene religious household. In a 1963 interview, she spoke of how being poor taught her “to appreciate good fortune and the value of a dollar” and how the idea of “poverty holds no fear for you because you know you've gone through it and you can do it again.” She’d lean on these foundational ideas throughout her life.
In 1939, she moved with her parents and brother to Burbank, California. “You name it, I was in it,” she wrote in her 1962 book “If I Knew Then.” That included being an honors student, doing gymnastics, playing French horn and participating in Girl Scouts, among other endeavors. (Her mother was her Girl Scout leader, and years later Reynolds assumed the same position for her daughter’s troop.)
A free blouse, scarf and meal was enough to entice the 16-year old to sign up for the 1948 Miss Burbank contest. She participated with a patched-up swimsuit, borrowed heels and a Betty Hutton impersonation—and won. Reynolds’s comfort in front of an audience and her candor translated into an endearing, entertaining presence that had MGM and Warner Brothers representatives in the audience fighting over her. They tossed a coin, WB won and after completing a screen test, Reynolds signed on at $60 a week. “Girl Wants Blouse—Gets Film Contract,” the Los Angeles Times declared. Jack Warner bestowed the name “Debbie” upon her, and instantly, the tides turned for the girl who wanted to be a gym teacher when she grew up.
The new name lasted, but her tenure at WB didn’t. After her first speaking role in The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady (1950), the studio didn’t have much to give Reynolds and dropped her. MGM stepped right in and signed her, and the actress’s wholesome charisma, perfect for the postwar period, defined her early work in MGM musical comedies like Three Little Words (1950), Two Weeks with Love (1950) and Mr. Imperium (1951). Reynolds’s persona as the clean-cut girl next door endeared her to young fans. She embodied those homespun values, and despite her burgeoning fame, Reynolds kept a low profile, lived at home and wore dresses her mother made for her through the mid-1950s.
Life imitated art with the role that made Reynolds a star. She impressed executives and directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen enough to cast her in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) as the ambitious chorus girl who Don (Kelly) falls for against the backdrop of Hollywood’s transition to sound. There was just one issue: she couldn’t dance. “I recall that first meeting when Mr. Kelly said, ‘Do you dance?’ and I said, ‘No,’” Reynolds remembered in an interview for the book “Hollywood Heyday.” “‘Can you do a Maxie Ford?’ and I said, ‘Is that a car?’ He wasn’t thrilled.” Tasked with learning fast enough to keep up with Kelly and Donald O’Connor, which meant three arduous months of rehearsal with three teachers, almost broke her; at one point she ended up crying under a piano. Fred Astaire encouraged her and allowed her the rare privilege of watching him rehearse to demonstrate how tough it was even for the greats. She pushed through the grueling practice and production, the film was a smash hit and the rest is history. “Debbie is surely one of the neatest and most stimulating youngsters we have seen for some time,” Picturegoer observed.
Reynolds was a star, and MGM responded by casting her as perky young women in more musical comedies. While nothing could match Singin’ in the Rain’s popularity, MGM’s programmers were solid enough to keep Reynolds working. She reunited with O’Connor in I Love Melvin (1953), co-starred with Bobby Van and Bob Fosse in The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), shared top billing with Jane Powell in Athena (1954) and Hit the Deck (1955) and kept up with veterans Frank Sinatra, David Wayne and Celeste Holm in The Tender Trap (1955). Reynolds also occasionally hung up her dancing shoes, playing an energetic teen who turns things upside down for Dick Powell in Susan Slept Here (1954) and bringing some dramatic flair to The Catered Affair (1956) alongside Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine and Rod Taylor. In the latter, director Richard Brooks didn’t think Reynolds had the dramatic chops for the part of a newly engaged daughter caught between her parents’ clashing desires for her wedding, but luckily she found protectors and mentors in Davis and Borgnine.
America’s Sweetheart soon became one off-screen with her highly publicized courtship and marriage to singer Eddie Fisher in 1955. Fisher made his film debut alongside his wife in Bundle of Joy (1956), a musical remake of Bachelor Mother (1939), just as the couple welcomed their own bundle of joy, daughter Carrie, that same year. Though Reynolds scaled back her film work the next few years to focus on motherhood, she made a splash in Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), which also brought her a number one hit with the Oscar-nominated title song “Tammy.” The lighthearted comedy This Happy Feeling (1958), making its TCM premiere this month, found the new mother playing a fresh-faced, bubbly teen caught in a romantic triangle with a retired actor (Curd Jürgens) and his young neighbor (John Saxon).
Happiness existed alongside heartbreak during this time. In 1958, the couple welcomed son Todd, named after their close friend Mike Todd, less than a month before the latter died in a plane crash. Todd’s widow, Elizabeth Taylor, leaned on Fisher, and before long, all three made front page news as Fisher left his wife for Taylor. The ensuing publicity and outpouring of public sympathy for Reynolds elevated her fame; in fact, in 1959, she was voted Photoplay’s most popular star. On her own with two young children in tow, Reynolds threw herself into work to provide for her family.
The end of her MGM contract in 1959 allowed Reynolds to branch out. She starred with Glenn Ford in the black comedy The Gazebo (1959) and played her first true dramatic role as a dancer who’s been kicked around so much that she takes dire measures in The Rat Race (1960). She also ventured West for the first time in the comedy The Second Time Around (1961), in which she portrayed a widow who moves her children to Arizona and gets elected sheriff. Reynolds also made an impression in the sprawling Cinerama Western epic How the West Was Won (1962); in fact, she was one of only two actors to appear in three of the movie’s five sequences. These roles, while sometimes lighter in nature, showcased a new maturity and strength that the events of the last few years undoubtedly instilled in Reynolds.
Whether it be a personal or professional hardship, the star was nothing if not determined. That tenacity made her a perfect fit for the lead in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a role Reynolds actively campaigned for. Director Charles Walters felt Reynolds wasn’t the right type to play the famous Titanic survivor, and he even told her she was too short in an attempt to dissuade her. “You know, Chuck, it’s possible that you could be wrong,” she responded. He was. Reynolds went above and beyond—even after suffering a miscarriage during filming—meeting with MGM acting coach Lillian Burns to get the direction she wasn’t receiving on set. Once Walters saw the dailies, he backtracked. “Debbie worked like the blazes!” he admitted. The film earned Reynolds her first and only Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. “Debbie Reynolds gives what is probably the outstanding performance of her career as the title character,” Variety commented. It remained her favorite role.
Reynolds, by now re-married to millionaire Harry Karl, soon found her wholesome image a thing of the past in 1960s America. She entered new territory with a series of films over the next decade, such as the sex farce Goodbye Charlie (1964), which makes its TCM premiere this month. Co-starring with Tony Curtis, Reynolds played the female reincarnation of a womanizer (Harry Madden) murdered by a movie producer (Walter Matthau). The unbelievable plot was a little much, with Variety commenting that the “kooky comedy reaches too far out for popular appreciation.” Meanwhile, Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke satirized the institution of marriage in Divorce, American Style (1967), and Reynolds tried her hand at horror with Shelley Winters in What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971), portraying mothers of convicted murderers who move to Hollywood to start a dance school. (That ends up being a deadly decision!) What’s the Matter with Helen? would be Reynolds’s last film appearance for 20 years. In 1969, she explained she was leaving Hollywood “because I won’t take off my clothes. Maybe it’s realism but I think it’s utter filth.”
Reynolds didn’t retire, though. In fact, she couldn’t, because Harry Karl gambled away both his fortune and her’s. They divorced in 1973, leaving her severely in debt. Knocked down once again, the trouper turned to Broadway, making her debut in an acclaimed revival of “Irene” in 1973 and earning a Tony nomination in the process. She spent the rest of the decade on the stage, with highlights including her self-titled revue, “Debbie,” in 1976 and “Woman of the Year” in 1983.
Reynolds also dove into the world of television starting in 1969 with her own series, The Debbie Reynolds Show, playing a housewife who dreams of being a reporter. NBC cancelled the series following its first season, partially because Reynolds fervently objected to cigarettes being advertised. In the ensuing decades, she’d appear on many shows, including The Love Boat and Will & Grace. She also made a triumphant return to the big screen in the 1990s with memorable performances in films like Mother (1996) and In & Out (1997).
Outside of acting, Reynolds was well known for her humanitarian endeavors. An early advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, she frequently appeared at AIDS fundraisers in the early 1980s. Additionally, Reynolds co-founded The Thalians, an organization committed to raising awareness for mental illnesses, in the mid-1950s. At one time she served as the group’s president, and she remained active with the organization for over 50 years.
“The biggest fan of all time is me,” Reynolds quipped in a 2015 interview—and she put her money where her mouth was. Over the years, Reynolds amassed a vast movie memorabilia collection, including costumes from Singin’ in the Rain, a statue of the Maltese Falcon, Marilyn Monroe’s infamous dress from The Seven Year Itch (1955) and thousands of more pieces. A lot of the material came from MGM’s 1970 auction, which she attended every day. “I think it’s our fault that we don’t protect our own culture,” she lamented. Reynolds purchased a Las Vegas hotel, mainly to showcase her memorabilia in 1992. Unfortunately, the endeavor faced financial difficulties and closed in 1996. After repeated efforts to find her collection a home, she was forced to auction off the material in 2011 and 2014; the sales made over $30 million. “I’d been right about the value of my collection,” she wrote in her 2013 memoir “Unsinkable.” “Everyone who’d rejected it or told me I was crazy to want to preserve it… had been proved wrong.”
A fighter with a true passion for entertaining, Reynolds boasted she’d never retire, and she remained a public figure through her 80s. Nominated for several big awards with no wins, she was finally recognized with a Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2014 and the Academy’s prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2015. Reynolds passed away on December 28, 2016 at the age of 84, one day after her daughter Carrie. “Carrie put it best,” Reynolds’s son Todd recalled. “She said, ‘Debbie is Christmas.’ Debbie was just a big, giving thing. There was just no end to that gift.”
