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Debbie Reynolds

Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds (born April 1, 1932) is an Academy Award-nominated American actress, singer, and dancer.

Biography

Early life

Reynolds was born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas, the second child of Maxine N. (née Harmon; 1913-1999) and Raymond Francis Reynolds (1903-1986), who was a carpenter for Southern Pacific Railroad. 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. While a student at John Burroughs High School, at age sixteen, Reynolds won the Miss Burbank Beauty Contest, a motion picture contract with Warner Brothers, and acquired her new first name.

Career

Reynolds regularly appeared in movie musicals, most notably Singin' in the Rain, during the 1950s and chalked up several hit records despite an only intermittent career as a recording artist. Her song "Aba Daba Honeymoon" (featured in the 1950 film Two Weeks With Love as a duet with Carleton Carpenter) was a top 3 hit in 1951. She is also remembered for her smash recording of the theme song "Tammy" which earned her a gold record and was the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957 and was number one for 5 weeks on the Billboard pop charts. Reynolds also scored two additional top 25 Billboard hits with "A Very Special Love" in 1958 and 1960's "Am I That Easy to Forget", a pop version of a country hit made famous by both songwriter Carl Belew in 1959, Skeeter Davis in 1960 (interestingly, Davis' real first names are also Mary Frances), and several years later by Engelbert Humperdinck.

During the 1950s, Reynolds also starred in numerous movies, such as Bundle of Joy (1956), with her then husband, Eddie Fisher, recorded hit songs (most notably "Tammy" from her 1957 film Tammy and the Bachelor, playing opposite Leslie Nielsen, the first of the series of Tammy movies), and headlined in major Las Vegas showrooms. Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) led to an Oscar nomination, but she lost to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins. She played Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun.

In what Reynolds called the "stupidest mistake of my entire career", she made big headlines in 1970 after instigating a fight with NBC over cigarette advertising on her TV show. NBC canceled the show.

She is still making appearances in film and television, one of the few actors from MGM's "golden age of film" (along with Mickey Rooney, Lauren Bacall, Margaret O'Brien, Jane Powell, Rita Moreno, Leslie Caron, Dean Stockwell, Angela Lansbury, Russ Tamblyn and June Lockhart) who are still active in filmmaking. From 1999 to its 2006 finale, she played the recurring role of Grace's ditzy mother Bobbi Adler on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. She also plays a recurring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) Halloweentown series as Aggie Cromwell. Reynolds made a guest appearance as a presenter at the 69th Annual Academy Awards.

Reynolds has several CDs on the market of both vintage performances and later recordings.

Awards and nominations

Reynolds won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1956 for her role in The Catered Affair. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a Golden Globe for The Debbie Reynolds Show on television (1970), a Golden Globe for the motion picture Mother (1996), and a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for In & Out (1997). In 1997, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy.

Reynolds' foot and hand prints are preserved at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6654 Hollywood Boulevard.

In November 2006, Reynolds received the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from Chapman University in Orange, California. On May 17, 2007, she was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nevada, Reno, where she had contributed for many years to the film studies program. In her acceptance speech, she referred to the University as "Nevahda...Arizona".

Filmography

Feature films

June Bride (1948)
The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950)
Three Little Words (1950)
Two Weeks with Love (1950)
Mr. Imperium (1951)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Skirts Ahoy! (1952)
I Love Melvin (1953)
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953)
Give a Girl a Break (1953)
Susan Slept Here (1954)
Athena (1954)
Hit the Deck (1955)
The Tender Trap (1955)
Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956) (Cameo)
The Catered Affair (1956)
Bundle of Joy (1956)
Tammy and the Bachelor (1957)
This Happy Feeling (1958)
The Mating Game (1959)
Say One for Me (1959)
It Started with a Kiss (1959)
The Gazebo (1959)
The Rat Race (1960)
Pepe (1960) (Cameo)
The Pleasure of His Company (1961)
The Second Time Around (1961)
How the West Was Won (1962)
Mary, Mary (1963)
My Six Loves (1963)
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)
Goodbye Charlie (1964)
The Singing Nun (1966)
Divorce American Style (1967)
How Sweet It Is! (1968)
What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)
That's Entertainment! (1974)
The Bodyguard (1992)
Heaven & Earth (1993)
That's Entertainment! III (1994)
Mother (1996)
Wedding Bell Blues (1996)
In & Out (1997)
Zack and Reba (1998)
Connie and Carla (2004)

Television

The Eddie Fisher Show (occasional regular from 1957-1959)
A Date with Debbie (1960)
...And Debbie Makes Six (1968)
The Debbie Reynolds Show (1969-1970)
Debbie Reynolds and the Sound of Children (1969)
Aloha Paradise (1981) (canceled after 8 episodes)
Sadie and Son (1987)
Perry Mason: The Case of the Musical Murder (1989)
Movie Memories with Debbie Reynolds (1991-1992)
Battling for Baby (1992)
Halloweentown (1998)
The Christmas Wish (1998)
Will & Grace (Grace's Mother 1999-2006)
A Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story (1999)
Virtual Mom (2000)
Rugrats (frequent regular from 2000-2004) (voice)
These Old Broads (2001; written by Reynolds' daughter Carrie)
Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001)
Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales (2003)
Kim Possible (frequent regular from 2003-2007) (voice)
Pryor Offenses (2004)
Halloweentown High (2004)
Lolo's Cafe (2006) (voice)
Return to Halloweentown (2006)

Other work

(Short subjects, documentaries, and animation)

A Visit with Debbie Reynolds (1959) (short subject)
The Story of a Dress (1964) (short subject)
Busby Berkeley (1974) (documentary)
Jack L. Warner: The Last Mogul (1993) (documentary)
Keepers of the Frame (1999) (documentary)
Cinerama Adventure (2002) (documentary)
Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (2007) (documentary)
Fay Wray: A Life (2008) (documentary)
The Brothers Warner (2008) (documentary)
Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age (2008) (documentary)
Charlotte's Web (1973) (voice)
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) (voice in 1998 English-dubbed version)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie (1998) (voice)
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (2000) (voice)
Blaze of Glory (2008) (voice)

Personal life

Reynolds married and divorced three times. She and first husband Eddie Fisher wed in 1955. They are the parents of Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher. A public scandal ensued when Eddie and Elizabeth Taylor fell in love, and the Fishers were divorced in 1959. Reynolds' second marriage, to millionaire businessman Harry Karl, lasted from 1960 to 1973. At the end, she found herself in financial difficulty due to Karl's gambling and bad investments. (Under the community property laws of California, both spouses in a marriage are legally responsible for debts incurred by either.) Reynolds was married to real estate developer Richard Hamlett from 1984 to 1996. They purchased a small hotel and casino in Las Vegas, but it was not a success. In 1997, Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Reynolds has been active in the Thalians Club, a charitable organization. She is a member of the Church of the Nazarene.

She has amassed a large collection of movie memorabilia 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, California. She has on several occasions auctioned off items from the collection. The collection will re-open in the Gatlinburg TN area in the future.

She currently resides in Los Angeles next door to her daughter Carrie, and her granddaughter, Billie.