The Full Biography
Debbie Reynolds. Actress. Dancer. The El Paso kid MGM taught to smile on cue, who then spent a lifetime working after the smile had to earn its keep.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is Kathy Selden in a yellow dress, or a rain-soaked Hollywood street that Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor made look easy while a nineteen-year-old learned in public. The year was 1952. The picture was Singin’ in the Rain. What the still cannot show is Mary Frances Reynolds of El Paso and Burbank, a beauty-contest winner who had never tap-danced at that level, a woman whose husband left her for Elizabeth Taylor in the loudest divorce of 1958, and a later life of Vegas, bankruptcy, a daughter named Carrie, and a death one day after that daughter’s.
She was born on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, and raised in Burbank when the family followed work. Warner, then MGM, after a Miss Burbank title that was supposed to be a lark. The studio wanted a kid who could be America’s good news. She was seventeen. Singin’ in the Rain is the door and the trial: Kelly was exacting, the dancing was a crash course, and the picture became the musical people use to explain why musicals exist. She was not, at first, in on the joke of how hard it had been. She learned. Tammy and the Bachelor gave her a song. The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) gave her an Oscar nomination and a character who refused to go down, which is too neat a metaphor except that she kept using it.
Eddie Fisher married her, had Carrie and Todd with her, and then left for Taylor, who had been a friend. The country took sides as if the marriage were a World Series. Reynolds played the good sport because that was the job and, in part, the person. She kept working. She kept the children. She said, years on, that the story was more complicated than the magazines allowed, including her own peace with Taylor. The peace is in the file. So is the humiliation. Both are true.
She collected Hollywood costumes when the studios were throwing them away, a second career as a preservationist that cost her money and saved objects the town then pretended it had always loved. A Las Vegas hotel and a museum plan went wrong. Bankruptcy arrived. She sang anyway. She did television, voice work, Mother for Albert Brooks, a late sitcom, anything that was work. Carrie became Princess Leia and a writer who told the truth about the mother and the famous house. Their public was a duet: love, friction, punch lines, care.
If you’re going to be a survivor, you have to be willing to look ridiculous and then go on.Debbie Reynolds
MGM had more for her than the rain. I Love Melvin (1953). The Tender Trap (1955) with Frank Sinatra. The Catered Affair (1956), for Richard Brooks, let her play a Bronx daughter instead of a sunbeam. Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) gave her a song the radio would not put down. The Mating Game. The Rat Race. How the West Was Won (1962). Then The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), Charles Walters directing, an Oscar nomination for a woman who refuses to go down — too neat a metaphor except that she kept using it. The Singing Nun (1966) was a pious misfire. Divorce American Style (1967) arrived after the Fisher headlines had already taught the country the plot. The contract system was ending. She did not end with it.
Eddie Fisher married her in 1955. Carrie was born in 1956, Todd in 1958. In 1958 Fisher left for Elizabeth Taylor, who had been a friend, and the columns ate the household in public. Reynolds played the good sport on cue and kept the children. She married Harry Karl, the shoe heir, in 1960; that union lasted until 1973 and took a large piece of her money with it. She married Richard Hamlett in 1984; that one ended in 1996 after the Las Vegas hotel and museum plan had gone wrong. Three marriages. Two children. A nightclub act that became the actual job: Vegas, Atlantic City, the rooms that still paid a woman who could sing the Tammy song and then tell the divorce as a joke she owned.
She collected when the studios were throwing the century away. Costumes from The Wizard of Oz, from Monroe, from the lots that treated wardrobe as landfill. She stored, insured, dreamed a museum, and watched the money fail to follow the virtue. Bankruptcy arrived in 1997. She sang anyway. Albert Brooks cast her as the title character in Mother (1996) and she was nominated for a Golden Globe — a late proof that the kid from Burbank could still act when the part was a person. In & Out (1997). The Halloweentown pictures for a new generation of children. A recurring run as Bobbi Adler, Grace’s mother, on Will & Grace. Steven Soderbergh used her as Frances Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013). She worked into her eighties because the calendar still had dates and she still knew how to hit a mark.
The turn is the long grind after MGM — not a single comeback, but a refusal to treat the end of the contract system as the end of her. She became a nightclub professional, a collector, a mother of a difficult genius, a woman who could still hit a mark at eighty. On December 27, 2016, Carrie died. On December 28, Debbie died, of a stroke, at her son Todd’s house. He said she had said she wanted to be with Carrie. That sentence is too perfect for a press agent and too human to cut.
The Miss Burbank title of 1948 was supposed to be a lark. Warner signed her, then MGM took her, and the studio put a seventeen-year-old into the machine that made America’s good news. June Bride. The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady. Three Little Words (1950). Two Weeks with Love and “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” a novelty that sold. Then Kelly, O’Connor, and Singin’ in the Rain — a crash course in tap that a conservatory would have spread across years. She has said the shooting was brutal. The picture looks easy. That gap is the job. She spent the next decade being the studio’s sunny product and, when Brooks and others allowed it, a girl from a Bronx kitchen or a Western wagon. The smile was assigned. The work was learned.
The Fisher year, 1958, is the wound the country treated as entertainment. Taylor had been a friend. The columns needed a saint and a thief. Reynolds was assigned the saint and had to live as the person. She kept Carrie and Todd. She kept working. She made a peace with Taylor years on that the feud-industrial complex did not want. Harry Karl’s money, then the loss of it, is the second wound. Hamlett and the Vegas hotel is the third. The costume collection is the civic answer she tried to build out of the town’s trash: Monroe’s dress, Oz, the lots’ landfill, stored in warehouses a nightclub act was paying for. When the museum failed and the auction came, the objects lived and the shrine did not. She sang the next night anyway.
Carrie’s books — Postcards from the Edge among them — are part of the file whether the mother enjoyed every page or not. A daughter who loved her and refused the official smile is a harder monument than a yellow dress. Todd has had to hold both monuments since December 2016. The consecutive dates are now a paired search. The work, from Kelly’s rain to Soderbergh’s Frances Liberace, is a woman who treated the end of MGM as the start of a longer grind. That grind is the life. She was still booking rooms in the year she died. The calendar did not know it was a last year. Todd did, the next morning.
Six things most people never knew
- She learned Singin’ in the Rain as a crash course, not as a conservatory graduate. Nineteen. Kelly’s standard. The ease is acted and trained in a hurry.
- The Fisher–Taylor divorce was a national entertainment. 1958. She had to play the good sport while being the person.
- She reconciled with Taylor. The feud the columns needed did not get the last word.
- The costume collection was a rescue mission that nearly sank her. Studios discarded. She stored. The money did not always follow the virtue.
- Carrie Fisher’s books are part of the biography. A daughter who loved her and refused the official smile.
- She died the day after Carrie. December 28, 2016. Todd’s house. A stroke. The duet ended on consecutive days.
Todd Fisher has kept the archive and the story. The grandchildren — Billie Lourd among them — are the house that remains. Friends describe a woman who could do a two-show night and then sit up with a child’s crisis, who was tougher than Tammy and less protected than Molly Brown’s mythology. The smile was a tool. It was also, often, real.
The later years
Home, in the last decades, was Los Angeles, with Todd nearby and Carrie in and out of the same weather. The clubs were still the job. She did two-show nights when the rooms would have her. She tweeted, when Twitter was still a novelty for a woman who had outlived her own studio, and a new public decided it loved the grandmother who could still land a punch line. HBO’s Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, filmed while both women were alive and aired after both were gone, is the document of the duet: love, friction, care, a house full of costumes and unfinished sentences.
The collection was the second monument and the second wound. She had saved what the lots discarded. She tried to house it in Las Vegas, at a Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel that did not hold. Bankruptcy in 1997. Auctions in 2011, through Profiles in History, sent Monroe’s dress and the other rescued objects into other people’s museums and living rooms. She had wanted a public shrine. She got a sale. The objects survived because she had been stubborn when the town was not. The money did not always follow. She sang anyway. She took Will & Grace, the Halloweentown witches, Soderbergh’s Frances Liberace, anything that was work. She was, at eighty, still a nightclub professional who happened to have been Kathy Selden.
Carrie died on December 27, 2016, after a flight from London. Debbie died the next day, December 28, of a stroke, at Todd’s house. She was eighty-four. He said she had said she wanted to be with Carrie. There is no long widowhood after a daughter. There is one day. Then a stroke. Then the town, for once, had nothing cute to say. Burial was at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills, mother and daughter in the same weather they had never quite escaped. She worked until the week she died. That is not a slogan. It is the calendar.
The 2000s and 2010s were clubs, voice work, and a public that had decided, at last, to be fond. She played the Hollywood Memorabilia Collector on late-night sofas and meant it. She played grandmother parts because she was a grandmother. Billie Lourd was coming up. Carrie was writing books that refused the official smile and still, in the same chapter, loved the woman who had taught her the mark. Their house was a duet the cameras only half understood: punch lines, care, friction, a mother who could do two shows and then sit up with a child’s crisis. Bright Lights caught the rooms. It did not catch every night. No film does.
Todd kept the archive when the museum plan failed. He has had to be a son and a curator on consecutive days in December 2016 and on every day since. Forest Lawn has the two dates. El Paso and Burbank share the plaque. The yellow dress still walks into film school. The costumes she saved are in better hands because she was stubborn when the lots were not. There is no long last chapter after Carrie. There is one day, a stroke, and a town that, for once, had nothing cute to say.
After she was gone
Singin’ in the Rain still teaches. The yellow dress still walks into film school. The costumes she saved are in better hands because she was stubborn when the lots were not. Carrie and Debbie are now a paired search: mother and daughter, consecutive dates. El Paso and Burbank share the plaque.
She came out of El Paso, won a title, learned to dance under Kelly, smiled through a divorce the country ate, saved the dresses the studios threw away, raised a writer who would not lie, and died the day after that writer. If you only remember the rain, you have the picture. If you remember the crash course, the collection, and December 28, you have her.
Portrait: Bob Beerman and Bert Parry · Public domain (publicity still, 1954) · via Wikimedia Commons