Debbie Reynolds, a showbiz legend known for her roles in films like Singing in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, has died at the age of 84. Her son Todd Fisher confirmed the death to Variety, saying, “She wanted to be with Carrie.” Reynolds’s daughter, the magnetic Carrie Fisher, died on December 27 at the age of 60.
Born Mary Frances Reynolds in 1932, Reynolds would become one of the biggest names associated with the final years of Hollywood’s golden age, entering into the old-school studio system at the age of 16 after she won a beauty contest at Warner Bros. A W.B.. talent executive was reportedly behind changing her first name from Frannie to Debbie. In 1950, Reynolds was released from her contract at Warner and received a long-term contract from MGM. She was officially launched into the limelight when she danced alongside Gene Kelly in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain. Reynolds claimed she didn’t know how to dance when she was cast in the film at 19, but Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen advocated for her to MGM executives.
From there, the multi-hyphenate appeared in films such as 1957’s Tammy and the Bachelor, 1962’s How the West Was Won, and 1964’s The Unsinkable Molly Brown, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. She would star in over 50 motion pictures throughout her career. Between 1969 and 70, Reynolds had a sitcom on NBC called The Debbie Reynolds Show, one of two TV series in which she starred (the second being ABC’s Aloha Paradise).
In addition to her Oscar nomination, Reynolds received two Emmy, five Golden Globe, and a Tony award nomination during her career. In 2014, the Screen Actors Guild presented her with its Life Achievement Award; the following year, she was honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscars. Reynolds was also a notable live performer, having starred in her first nightclub act in 1960.
She continued to act through 2012, but her most recent credit was alongside her daughter in the documentary Bright Lights: Starring Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the film “examines that tetchy but loving relationship in all its glorious complexity more than 25 years on.” Fans first got a glimpse at a fictionalized version of Reynolds and Fisher’s complex relationship in Postcards from the Edge, the latter’s semi-autobiographical novel, which was later adapted into a 1990 movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine and directed by Mike Nichols. Fisher was candid about her experience with mental illness, and her mother was aware of its challenges even before she had a daughter who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In 1955, Reynolds was one of many stars that launched The Thalians, a philanthropic organization dedicated to educating the public about mental illness and fighting the stigma attached to it.
Before Reynolds and her daughter’s relationship made headlines, however, it was Reynolds’s relationship with Carrie’s father, Eddie Fisher, that was in the public glare. The crooner left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor when Carrie and her brother Todd were still young. “I stood no chance against her, Reynolds said in 2013. “I was like Jennifer Aniston with Brad Pitt when he fell in love with Angelina Jolie.” Fisher and Taylor wed in 1959. Their marriage didn’t last, but Reynolds and Taylor eventually repaired their own relationship, which began when they were both under contract with MGM. “Elizabeth and I went on a cruise ship, and we were on the same boat . . . she sent a note to me, and I sent a note to her to say, ‘Let’s just forget about it,’” Reynolds told Access Hollywood in 2013.
Reynolds would later explain why Fisher left her for Taylor: “What chance did I have against Elizabeth, a woman of great womanly experience, when I had no experience at all?,” she recounted in 2013. She was married twice more—to Harry Karl (who “wiped us out financially,” Reynolds wrote in her memoir Unsinkable) and Richard Hamlett (“I’d married the devil”)—but those unions also ended. “I was more interested in raising my children, not in pursuing my husbands,” Reynolds told The Express in 2015, referring to her three failed marriages. What interested Reynolds, above all, was “an audience.” As she said, “I loved music and dance, and that was exciting to me.”
She wrote two candid memoirs, Debbie: My Life (1988) and Unsinkable (2013), and in 2015 published Make ‘Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends, a compendium of stories about her fellow entertainers, who ranged from close friends to quasi-nemeses. The New York Times points to one particularly contentious relationship: that of Reynolds and Milton Berle, who managed to offend the actress by dropping ashes from his cigar all over the new white carpeting in her home.
Reynolds had a lifelong dream of opening a Hollywood memorabilia museum. She bought a large portion of MGM’s costumes and props in the studio’s legendary auction in 1970—including the white dress Marilyn Monroe wore in her 1952 LIFE photospread and the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz—and displayed it at the Debbie Reynolds Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. However, she was forced to sell those tokens of old Hollywood after she filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy when the deal to sell the hotel and casino where the museum was housed in Vegas fell through in 1997. She hoped the memorabilia would find a home in the Academy Museum, but it was rejected. The items were later auctioned and sold off, which helped the actress regain solvency. She held onto an original Maltese falcon, though, telling THR in 2014, “I'm keeping him. He's mine. It's one man that did not get away.” The casino/hotel and museum were just two of her business ventures; she also opened the Debbie Reynolds Studio for dance in 1979.
Reynolds is survived by her son, producer Todd Fisher, and granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd.
