Early life

She was born Mary Frances Reynolds on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Maxine (née Harmon; 1913-99) and Raymond Francis Reynolds (1903-86), who was a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad. She has Scottish-Irish and English ancestry, and was raised in a strict Nazarene church. Reynolds was a Girl Scout and a troop leader (a scholarship in her name is offered to high-school age Girl Scouts).

Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939. At age sixteen, in 1948, while a student at Burbank High School (not Burroughs High as has been misreported), she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. Soon after, she had a contract with Warner Bros, and acquired a new first name. Her older brother Bill Reynolds graduated from Burbank High School in 1947.

Music career

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) as a duet with Carleton Carpenter) was a top-three hit in 1951. Her most high-profile film role was in Singin' in the Rain (1952) as Kathy Selden. In Bundle of Joy (1956), she appeared with her then-husband, Eddie Fisher.

Her recording of the song "Tammy" (1957; from Tammy and the Bachelor), earned her a gold record, and was the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957. It was number one for five weeks on the Billboard pop charts. In the movie (the first of the Tammy film series), she co-starred with Leslie Nielsen.

In 1959, Reynolds recorded her first album for Dot Records, simply called Debbie, which included her own selection of twelve standards including "S'posin'", "Moonglow", "Mean To Me", and "Time After Time". Bing Crosby paid tribute to Reynolds in the sleeve notes accompanying the album thus:

Someone recently said, and with reasonable accuracy I would think, that good singers make good actors. Evidence in support of this belief is available in the recent performances of Sinatra and Martin, for instance, but I would like to put forth also the proposition that the reverse is quite true: good actors make good singers. Assuming they can carry a tune. We all know that Debbie is better than a good actress—she's VERY good, and we all know she can sing with a lilt and a listenable quality that's genuinely pleasant and agreeable. Witness "Tammy". It was small surprise to me then that when I listened to this beautiful album she has etched for Dot, I found myself captivated and enchanted. Quite obviously Debbie had spent a great deal of time selecting the songs to be included, because she's made them her own, and invested them with a sincerity that's inescapable—of contrasting moods to be sure, but the moods are there, and to me, mighty effective. And that, mes amis, is artistry.

Reynolds also scored two other top-25 Billboard hits with "A Very Special Love" (#20 in January of 1958) and "Am I That Easy to Forget" (#25 in March 1960)—a pop-music version of a country-music hit made famous by both songwriters Carl Belew (in 1959), Skeeter Davis (in 1960), and several years later by singer Engelbert Humperdinck. She has released several albums of both her vintage performances and her later recordings.

During these years, she also headlined in major Las Vegas showrooms. Reynolds last CD was a Christmas Record with the late Donald O'Connor entitled "Chrissy the Christmas Mouse". It received rave reviews and was arranged by Angelo DiPippo and produced by Dr. Fillardi.

Film and television

Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She then portrayed Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun (1966). In what Reynolds has 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 eponymous television series; NBC canceled the show.

Reynolds continued to make 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. From 1999 to its 2006 series finale, she played Grace Adler's theatrical mother, Bobbi Adler, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000. She plays 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.She made 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.

Film history preservation

Reynolds has amassed a large collection of movie memorabilia, beginning with the landmark 1970 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer auction, and displayed them, first in a museum at her Las Vegas hotel and casino during the 1990s and later in a museum close to the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. On several occasions, she has auctioned off items from the collection.

The museum was to relocate to be the centerpiece of the Belle Island Village tourist attraction in the resort city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but the developer went bankrupt. The museum itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009.

Todd Fisher, Reynolds' son, announced that his mother was "heartbroken" to have to auction off her collection. It was valued at $10.79 million in the bankruptcy filing. The Vancouver Sun reported that Profiles in History has been given the responsibility of conducting a series of auctions beginning in June and continuing into December 2011. Among the "more than 3500 costumes, 20,000 photographs, and thousands of movie posters, costume sketches, and props" to be sold are Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat and Marilyn Monroe's white "subway dress", whose skirt is lifted up by the breeze from a passing subway train in the film The Seven Year Itch (1955).

Business ventures

In 1979, she opened her own dance studio in North Hollywood. In 1983 Reynolds released an exercise video titled Do It Debbie's Way!.

She purchased the Clarion Hotel and Casino, a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, in 1992 and renamed it the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel, but it was not a success. In 1997, Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy. In June 2010 she replaced Ivana Trump answering reader queries for the weekly paper Globe.

Marriages and later life

Reynolds has been married three times. Her first marriage was to singer Eddie Fisher in 1955. They are the parents of Carrie and Todd Fisher. The couple divorced in 1959 when Fisher had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor shortly after the death of Taylor's then-husband Mike Todd, which caused a serious public scandal. In 2011, first on The Oprah Winfrey Show only weeks before Elizabeth Taylor's death from congestive heart failure, Reynolds explained that she and Taylor happened to be traveling on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth at the same time when they made up. Reynolds sent a note to Taylor's room, and Taylor sent a note in reply asking to have dinner with Reynolds and end their feud. The two reconciled, and, as Reynolds put it, "...we had a wonderful evening with a lot of laughs". The 1990 film Postcards from the Edge was written by her daughter Carrie Fisher and was semi-autobiographical, with the character of "Doris Mann" based on Reynolds.

Her second marriage, to millionaire businessman Harry Karl, lasted from 1960 to 1973. He was previously married to Marie McDonald. Reynolds later found herself in financial difficulty because of Karl's gambling and bad investments.

Reynolds was married to real estate developer Richard Hamlett from 1984 to 1996. In 2010, she appeared in her own West End show Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous. Since 1955, Reynolds has been active in The Thalians, a charitable organization, devoted to children and adults with mental health issues. In 2011 she stepped down after 56 years of involvement, and is now an emerita member.

Reynolds was hospitalized in October 2012 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, due to an adverse reaction to medication. She canceled appearances and concert engagements for the next three months.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1948	June Bride	Boo's Girlfriend at Wedding	Uncredited
1950	Daughter of Rosie O'Grady, TheThe Daughter of Rosie O'Grady	Maureen O'Grady
1950	Three Little Words	Helen Kane
1950	Two Weeks with Love	Melba Robinson
1951	Mr. Imperium	Gwen
1952	Singin' in the Rain	Kathy Selden
1952	Skirts Ahoy!	Debbie Reynolds	Uncredited
1953	I Love Melvin	Judy Schneider / Judy LeRoy
1953	Affairs of Dobie Gillis, TheThe Affairs of Dobie Gillis	Pansy Hammer
1953	Give a Girl a Break	Suzy Doolittle
1954	Susan Slept Here	Susan Beauregard Landis
1954	Athena	Minerva Mulvain
1955	Hit the Deck	Carol Pace
1955	Tender Trap, TheThe Tender Trap	Julie Gillis
1956	Meet Me in Las Vegas	Debbie Reynolds	Uncredited
1956	Catered Affair, TheThe Catered Affair	Jane Hurley
1956	Bundle of Joy	Polly Parish
1957	Tammy and the Bachelor	Tammy
1958	This Happy Feeling	Janet Blake
1959	Mating Game, TheThe Mating Game	Mariette Larkin
1959	Say One for Me	Holly LeMaise aka Conroy
1959	It Started with a Kiss	Maggie Putnam
1959	Gazebo, TheThe Gazebo	Nell Nash
1960	Rat Race, TheThe Rat Race	Peggy Brown
1960	Pepe	Cameo
1961	Pleasure of His Company, TheThe Pleasure of His Company	Jessica Anne Poole
1961	Second Time Around, TheThe Second Time Around	Lucretia 'Lu' Rogers
1962	How the West Was Won	Lilith Prescott
1963	My Six Loves	Janice Courtney
1963	Mary, Mary	Mary McKellaway
1964	Unsinkable Molly Brown, TheThe Unsinkable Molly Brown	Molly Brown
1964	Goodbye Charlie	Charlie Sorel / Virginia Mason
1966	Singing Nun, TheThe Singing Nun	Sister Ann
1967	Divorce American Style	Barbara Harmon
1968	How Sweet It Is!	Jenny Henderson
1971	What's the Matter with Helen?	Adelle
1973	Charlotte's Web	Charlotte A. Cavatica	Voice
1974	Busby Berkeley		Documentary
1974	That's Entertainment!		Compilation film
1987	Sadie and Son	Sadie	TV Movie
1989	Perry Mason: The Case of the Musical Murder	Amanda Cody
1991	The Golden Girls	Truby	1 episode
1992	Battling for Baby	Helen	TV Movie
1992	Bodyguard, TheThe Bodyguard	Debbie Reynolds	Cameo as herself
1993	Jack L. Warner: The Last Mogul		Documentary
1993	Heaven & Earth	Eugenia
1994	Wings	Dee Dee Chapel	TV
1994	That's Entertainment! III		Compilation film
1996	Mother	Beatrice Henderson
1996	Wedding Bell Blues	Herself
1997	In & Out	Berniece Brackett
1997	Roseanne	Audrey Conner
1998	Kiki's Delivery Service	Madame	Voice (Disney English dub)
1998	Zack and Reba	Beulah Blanton
1998	Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie	Mrs. Claus / Mitzi - Rudolph's Mother / Mrs. Prancer - School Teacher	Voice
1998	Halloweentown	Splendora Agatha "Aggie" Cromwell
1998	Christmas Wish, TheThe Christmas Wish	Ruth	TV Movie
1998	Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas	Herself	Voice only
1999	A Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story	Shirlee Allison	TV Movie
1999	Will & Grace	Bobbi Adler	Some appearances
1999	Keepers of the Frame		Documentary
2000	Rugrats in Paris: The Movie	Lulu Pickles	Voice
2000	Virtual Mom	Gwen	TV Movie
2000	Rugrats: Acorn Nuts & Diapey Butts	Lulu Johnson	Voice
2001	These Old Broads	Piper Grayson	TV Movie
2001	Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge	Splendora Agatha "Aggie" Cromwell	TV Movie
2002	Cinerama Adventure	Herself (Interviewee)	Documentary
2002	Generation Gap		TV Movie
2004	Connie and Carla	Herself
2004	Halloweentown High	Splendora Agatha "Aggie" Cromwell	TV Movie
2006	Return to Halloweentown	Splendora Agatha "Aggie" Cromwell	TV Movie Cameo Appearance
2006	Lolo's Cafe	Mrs. Atkins	Voice
2007	Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project	Herself (Interviewee)	Documentary
2008	Light of Olympia	Queen	Voice
2008	Jill & Tony Curtis Story, TheThe Jill & Tony Curtis Story	Herself	Documentary
2008	Blaze of Glory		Voice
2008	Brothers Warner, TheThe Brothers Warner		Documentary
2008	Fay Wray: A Life		Documentary
2010	The Penguins of Madagascar	Granny Squirrel	Voice
2012	One for the Money	Grandma Mazur
2012	In the Picture	Aunt Lilith	Short
2013	Behind the Candelabra	Frances Liberace	TV Movie

Short subjects:

• A Visit with Debbie Reynolds (1959)
• The Story of a Dress (1964)
• In the Picture (2012)

Stage work

Reynolds made her Broadway debut in 1973 in a revival of Irene, a musical first produced 60 years before. For that production, she received a Tony nomination. She toured with Harve Presnell in Annie Get Your Gun, then wrapped up the Broadway run of Woman of the Year in 1983. In the late 1980s, Reynolds repeated her role as Molly Brown in the stage version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, first opposite Presnell (repeating his original Broadway and movie role) and later with Ron Raines.

• Best Foot Forward (1953) (Dallas)
• Irene (1973) (Broadway and US national tour)
• Debbie (1976) (Broadway)
• Annie Get Your Gun (1977) (San Francisco and Los Angeles)
• Woman of the Year (1983) (Broadway) (replacement for Raquel Welch)
• The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1989) (US national tour)
• Irene (2008) Perth Western Australia

Awards and honors

Reynolds was the 1955 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year. Her foot and hand prints are preserved at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6654 Hollywood Boulevard for live performance and a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars dedicated to her. In keeping with the celebrity tradition of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival of Winchester, Virginia, Reynolds was honored as the Grand Marshal of the 2011 ABF that took place from April 26 to May 1, 2011.

In November 2006, Reynolds received the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from Chapman University (Orange, California). On May 17, 2007, she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nevada, Reno, (Reno, Nevada) where she had contributed for many years to the film-studies program.

Awards and nominations

Year	Association	Category	Nominated work	Result
1951	Golden Globe Awards	New Star of the Year - Actress	Three Little Words	Nominated
1956	National Board of Review	Best Supporting Actress	The Catered Affair	Won
1957	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy	Bundle of Joy	Nominated
1965	Academy Awards	Best Actress	The Unsinkable Molly Brown	Nominated
1965	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy	The Unsinkable Molly Brown	Nominated
1970	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress - Television Series Musical or Comedy	The Debbie Reynolds Show	Nominated
1996	American Comedy Awards	Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy	Herself	Won
1997	American Comedy Awards	Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy	Herself	Won
1997	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy	Mother	Nominated
1997	Satellite Awards	Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture	Mother	Won
1998	Blockbuster Entertainment Awards	Favorite Supporting Actress - Comedy	In & Out	Nominated
2000	Daytime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Performer in a Children's Special	A Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story	Nominated
2000	Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series	Will & Grace	Nominated
2014	Screen Actors Guild	Life Achievement Award	Herself	Won

See Also

• List of American film actresses
• List of people from California
• List of people from Texas

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[ Source: Wikipedia ]