MGM Livewire: Debbie Reynolds

As a kid living first in Texas and then Burbank, California, Mary Frances Reynolds (you can call her Frannie, everyone did)
was a tomboy and everyone's kid sister.  She loved playing with boys and doing boy things, especially baseball.  The boys didn't always treat her nicely and she bristled when they accused her of being a girl.  As a result Frannie grew feisty, tough and energized, traits that would be a part of her until her dying day.

She would always crazy love her family-- Mom, Dad and older brother Bill-- and later her two children.  They meant everything to her.  The family was poor but at age seven, Frannie moved with her mom and brother in Los Angeles, joining Dad who had been there for over a year.  Mom was religious (and thought movies were the work of the devil) and Dad did everything he could to make life pleasant for his family.

Joining the Girl Scouts gave Frannie a new way to look at life and for the first time she began enjoying the company of girls her own age.  She still thought boys had it better, however.  

Her mother finally caved and allowed her 10-year old daughter to go to her first movie and she promptly fell under the spell of Betty Hutton.  She loved the actress's zaniness, the goofy way she made faces, and Frannie laughed herself silly.  Without being able to articulate it, she noticed a physical comedy that Hutton accomplished and the youngster would one day use it to perfection.  She learned how to be an exquisite mimic and began a lifetime of being a clown.

She talked of becoming a gym teacher one day but that all changed when she entered the Miss Burbank contest, she said, because all contestants were guaranteed a blouse and a scarf.  She did a Betty Hutton routine for the talent competition and to her astonishment, she won the whole damned thing.   She was 15.

The win came with more than a blouse and a scarf.  There were other perks but the best was a contract with Warner Bros. (MGM had also put in a bid.)  She was a spunky little lass who could seemingly do anything that was asked of her.  They called her The Kid because she was so young, little and cute.  But young, little and cute was not what Jack Warner thought when he summoned her to his stadium-sized office. 

It was for a name change.  He told her from now on she would be known as Debbie Morgan and the 15-year old, new contractee or not, said that would be a big no.  She showed him that steely determination and stamina she would soon be known for and said that she wasn't giving up the family name.  He gave in but added that Debbie is sticking because it's a great name for a cute little girl like you.

That italicized line just made me sit back, ponder and take stock of what I thought about Debbie Reynolds.  What I've come up with is that I thought she was a super talent, dipping her toes in various performing arenas and succeeding in all of them.  She was certainly a cute little girl who, especially the blonder she got, was a knockout.  But she didn't lose that little girl aura or the tomboy or the Betty Hutton mugging and as a result she forfeited sex appeal.  I'm thinking here about her youthful, livewire years at MGM.  

Now listen.  Everyone didn't need sex appeal (which is in the eye of the beholder anyway).  I loved Maureen Stapleton's acting and Geraldine Page's, Karl Malden's and Lee J. Cobb's but as Rodgers and Hammerstein said... they've gone about as fer as they can go.  They didn't have sex appeal.  I believe, by and large, to go the distance in Hollywood in those days, you had to have it.  And yes, there are exceptions.  But Reynolds was at the studio that had Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner,  Lana Turner, Arlene Dahl and Elizabeth Taylor (ooops, too soon?).  How could a cute little girl named Debbie compete with that?  (Maybe if she'd changed her name to Deborah as she got older?  I'm half-kidding.)   And let's not miss the important point in all this... she wanted to compete, yes, she did.  She wanted to be the biggest thing that Hollywood ever saw.  So had Betty Hutton.

Okay, shake it off.  We're gonna get into some singing and dancing now.

The Kid had a small part in a June Haver-Gordon MacRae musical but around the same time Warners decided to draw the curtain on musicals.  MGM called, asking if her contract options would be picked up and Warners decided not.  It was MGM's gain and Reynolds's too.  I'll say.

We've all probably seen a clip of the first thing she ever did at MGM, Three Little Words (1950).  She sang I Wanna Be Loved by You (poo-poop-e-doop) playing oldtime singer Helen Kane who actually did the singing.  Later the same year she appeared as Jane Powell's younger sister in a sweet little confection called Two Weeks with Love (1950).  She got to sing another song, long identified with her (and Carleton Carpenter), Aba Daba Honeymoon.  Migawd I can hear and see them now.

MGM was famous for its schooling... not just its Little Red Schoolhouse with its claim of teaching academics but there were classes all over the lot on horseback riding, shooting, fencing, ballet, singing, elocution, deportment, makeup... you name it.  Reynolds had been coming right along, she thought, until she started to make a new film.  She would come to say that Singin' in the Rain (1952) and childbirth were the hardest things she ever had to do. 

Studio head Louis B. Mayer (who was about to be ousted) decided on Reynolds for what some have said is the best musical ever made.  It is for sure the best movie Debbie Reynolds would ever make.  That's not to say her best performance although it was a good one.  Mayer informed co-director & choreographer Gene Kelly that she was his leading lady and he about keeled over.  Who are you?  Can you sing?  Can you dance?  Her answers didn't  satisfy the surly perfectionist.

She was scared of Kelly who was hard on her during the making of the film.  She said it was physically, emotionally and mentally hard.  She had to learn tap routines in three months that should have taken a far longer time but there was no time.  She had to learn Kelly's particular moves and also Donald O'Connor's and their moves weren't similar and she had to be as good as they were.  She worked on the dancing for eight hours a day with three alternating teachers... all who reported to Kelly.  She was dead tired, irritable, frightened.  This was just the dancing and singing (her voice would later be dubbed) and then came the acting.

I suppose the whole world took Singin' in the Rain to its collective bosom.  (Well, except my partner.)  I never thought it was the best musical ever made but it did have some of the best dancing.  I thought Kelly/O'Connor/Reynolds were movie magic.  Our pretty ingenue was on her way because she pulled off all she needed to in this film.  She showed them all what a trouper she really was.

I guess she must have moved pretty well because MGM rushed her into one musical-comedy after another.  She reteamed with O'Connor in I Love Melvin.  Bob Fosse was in that as well and he joined her and Bobby Van in The Affairs of Dobie Gillis and she had MGM-favorite dancers Marge and Gower Champion in Give a Girl a Break, all 1953.  Also in 1953 and then 1954 she joined her birthday-buddy Jane Powell in Athena and Hit the Deck.  

None of these films was a huge box office success but Reynolds had become a lively comedienne and a movie star and as far as Modern Screen was concerned, the #1 girl in its pages.  Little Miss Burbank beat out Grace, Liz, Doris, MM, Powell and others.

In 1955 she married singer Eddie Fisher.  They had been dating for two years.  He had a 15-minute TV show called Coke Time (now there's a prescient title) where  he sang his heart out.  I heard it often and loved his voice and especially liked his recording of Anytime.  Someone asked him (perhaps some gimmick for the show) what girl he would like to meet and he said Debbie Reynolds.

More newspaper and magazine ink has been used to detail the exploits of Debbie and Eddie than anybody except Tony and Janet who were pals.  Natalie and RJ would soon cash in on some of that action but I almost stopped reading these magazines because I was sick of reading about the silly everyday things (who gave a damn about what jam they used on their toast?).  Could Eddie/Debbie leave their Barbie/Ken at home and give me something juicy?  I guess I was being pretty silly myself.  

A more adult Debbie appeared opposite Frank Sinatra in The Tender Trap (1955) which I didn't care for and I thought they were a mismatch, little chemistry.  She made a decent foray into drama with The Catered Affair (1956) co-starring with Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine as her parents.  Gore Vidal adapted the Paddy Chayefsky play about poor Bronx parents who somehow plan to throw a ritzy wedding for their newly-engaged daughter.  It has glorious words and the critics loved it but not so the public. 

It seems odd that MGM didn't jump on the Eddie-Debbie craze but Howard Hughes and his RKO did.  They thought a musical remake of 1939's Ginger Rogers-David Niven-starrer Bachelor Mother was the ticket.  Bundle of Joy (1956) was still about a single sales clerk who finds a baby and causes a ruckus.  Fisher gave himself top billing in the first of the only two films he made and he readily proved he needed to stick to singing.  It did Reynolds no harm.  Could anything do that?

Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) became one of her most successful films but not at first.  The story is corny but delightfully so.  A Louisiana moonshiner's granddaughter who spouts folksy wisdom goes to work for a wealthy family and falls for the son despite his engagement.  After the release of the film, Reynolds recorded Tammy, a song she sang in the film, and all hell broke loose.  It became a top-seller (she would get a gold record), the film was re-released to raves and Fisher with his umpteen gold records was jealous of his wife's recording success.

One would never have known it from the press but the Fisher marriage was in trouble.  Fisher tended to ignore his wife whenever he could.  Things picked up a bit when it was discovered she was pregnant but the truth of the matter was Fisher had insinuated himself into the marriage of his best friend, bombastic producer Mike Todd, and Reynolds's MGM buddy Elizabeth Taylor.

As the Fisher marriage was crumbling, in early 1958 Reynolds gave birth to her second child, a son, and Fisher was apparently ecstatic.  A month or so later Mike Todd was killed in a plane crash and Taylor nearly lost her mind.  She needed Fisher to comfort her and he certainly did.

The press went wild...  le scandale had begun.  It went on forever and every juicy tidbit was savored.  Reynolds, as I see it, played up the wronged wife for all it was worth, Fisher was shown as the rat he always was and Taylor was a tramp.  Of course, Fisher and Taylor were briefly married until she began an on-set affair with Richard Burton which made the Reynolds-Fisher-Taylor one seem like child's play.  I expect everyone snickered a bit when Reynolds  next hit record was Am I That Easy to Forget?

One thing was for sure, she had grown up.  No longer The Kid or the MGM starlet or the little upstart that Gene Kelly berated, she was a tough customer.  Her wholesome image would never really leave her but Tammy she was no longer.

Throughout all the marital mess, she made some misfires in 1959-60.  The Mating Game with a miscast Tony Randall as the love interest (ugh!) might have been the best.  Say One for Me with Bing Crosby and her longtime pal Robert Wagner was too corny to contemplate.  It Started with a Kiss and The Gazebo might have had more to do with Reynolds's romance with costar Glenn Ford and The Rat Race allowed her to go dramatic alongside Tony Curtis.  I thought she was good, too, in the latter although the film left me cold.

Somewhere in the 1959-60 period I worked (my first job) for a wonderful couple who owned and ran a pony ride within an amusement park on Pico Blvd. in West Los Angeles.  Movie stars brought their kids all the time.  One day there was a small entourage waiting at the entrance gate and I expect that it was obvious to everyone that it was Reynolds.  Perhaps the mink she was wearing tipped off everyone.

She had her two kids with her. both of whom were very young and very cute with huge eyes.  The ponies were untethered as they were worked around a track.  Usually I stood in the roped-off center and used a whip to gently guide the animals around the ring three times.  There were always 6-7 ponies with young riders at one time but there were three pairs of ponies that could never be out at the same time because they would fight and perhaps injure a rider.

The rules were strict.  Reynolds loudly insisted that her children be aboard the two pintos in the group.  Unfortunately they were two who fought with one another so we explained things to her and offered that each child could have those ponies but they would have to go out at different times.  Perhaps tired of being pushed around so much in her personal life, she went off like a madwoman, creating quite a scene.  Here was one time her determination failed her and she sulked.

Also around this same time, Reynolds was involved with The Thalians.  It was originally just a bunch of movie stars who liked to party but they turned it into a fund-raising, charitable organization that did a lot of good for mental health.  This was how Reynolds met Harry Karl, homely, millionaire shoe retailer who would become her second husband in 1960.

Now came a few years of good films.  Oddly neither she nor Tab Hunter were what interested me about 1961's The Pleasure of His Company.  Rather it was Fred Astaire and especially Lilli Palmer as wealthy, divorced parents who are brought back together for the San Francisco wedding of their daughter.  In the western comedy The Second Time Around, also 1961, Reynolds is an Arizona sheriff (uh-huh) with Steve Forrest and Andy Griffith competing for her affections.

As the scrappy pioneer woman in How the West Was Won

In 1962 I think she gave her strongest and my favorite of all her performances in How the West Was Won.  It is the king of all-star spectacles and Reynolds had the largest role in the historical, Cinerama western.  Her character, Lily Prescott-Van Halen, is the tough and resilient daughter of Karl Malden and Agnes Moorehead, sister of Carroll Baker, sister-in-law of Jimmy Stewart, aunt of George Peppard and wife of Gregory Peck.  She worked for that tough old s.o.b. director Henry Hathaway, and should have gotten stunt pay for the things he required her to do.

Mary, Mary (1963) showcases Reynolds nicely as an about-to-be-divorced woman, already involved with another man, who discovers that she still may be in love with her ex-husband who is about to remarry.  She received good notices for the role but the movie never particularly caught fire.

I expect that the The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) is the film she is most remembered for besides Singin' in the Rain.  It is funny how identified she is with the role when one considers that the director (also her director for The Tender Trap), Chuck Walters,  didn't want her because he thought she was all wrong for the part.  (He changed his mind.)  

Molly at ease

She played a fictionalized version of a real-life poor mountain girl and dreamer who strikes it rich, survives the sinking of the Titanic and triumphs over the snobs who live around her in Denver.  It is one of the few roles that she actually campaigned for.  She knew she was right for it.

The whole damned film is big, boisterous and rousing.  For Reynolds it was very physical, lots of jumping around, lots of singing and dancing and acrobatics, all very reminiscent of her early films and she wasn't a kid any longer.  She received a well-deserved Oscar nomination.  It's not a surprise that it is her favorite role.

She is paired with the big-voiced Harve Presnell who had been in the Broadway production and was making his movie debut.  What is too bad is that the songs aren't as catchy and didn't acquire the fame of those in other musicals.

After the filming completed, Reynolds left MGM.  Her contract had expired and the studio was not only not going to be making her kind of movies much anymore but the Golden Age of Hollywood had come to an end.  MGM was letting much of its staff go.  I think she would have agreed that her movie career would never again be quite the same.

By 1966 Reynolds was back at MGM to film The Singing Nun.  It wasn't what anyone hoped and Reynolds called it the stupidest mistake she ever made although she was happy to work again with her great friend, Moorehead, and also Greer Garson and former costar Ricardo Montalban.  

With close friend Agnes Moorehead

I very much enjoyed the comedy-drama Divorce, American Style (1967) but then the cast, including Dick Van Dyke, Jean Simmons, Jason Robards and Van Johnson, was right up my alley.  It concerns the breakup of the Reynolds-Van Dyke marriage with results that aren't unlike those in Mary, Mary.  The producers hoped the title would get folks into theaters as Divorce Italian Style had done.

She had been doing big Vegas shows since the early 60s and as her film career sagged a bit, those shows were the tonic she needed.  In 1969 she had her own television show.  It felt like a reworked I Love Lucy and only lasted a year.  She and NBC went to war over the network allowing cigarette commercials.  When she lost the battle, she quit the show.

MGM sold off much of what it owned in 1970 and Reynolds was there to buy props, posters, photos, costumes... just about anything she could.  And after doing so, she rallied her friends, former colleagues and other Hollywood types to turn over anything they may have that falls into the same categories.  She thought she might like to open a museum. 

In 1971 Reynolds decided to try out the horror field with one of those titles that poses a question.  What's the Matter with Helen? 
(Shelley Winters is Helen) concerns two mothers of sons who committed a heinous murder.  The women open up a dance school for kids and then the troubles begin.  I enjoyed it, I think, far more than the critics did.

She divorced her snake of a husband in 1973.  Karl was always such an attention-seeker, a womanizer and he gambled or otherwise foolishly spent all of his fortune and hers.  It couldn't help but remind Hollywood and others of Doris Day (an actress with a similar personality and career to Reynolds) who went through much of the same experience six years earlier.

The ever-talented Reynolds broadened her horizons when she performed in Irene on Broadway and captured a Tony nomination.  Two other times she would return to the Great White Way for her one-woman show in 1976 and then in 1983 replacing Lauren Bacall in Woman of the Year.

Beginning in  the early 70s and for the rest of her life, she worked mainly in television, often in TV movies, and in frequent guest roles on hit series.  I will always remember watching her imitate Zsa Zsa Gabor on The Tonight Show and laughing myself sillier.  

In 1984 she married a real estate developer and before long they opened a casino-hotel-movie memorabilia museum in Vegas.  It went belly-up in the late 90s and was moved to Hollywood near the Kodak Theater.  Ultimately the extensive collection had to be sold and it broke Reynolds's heart. 

In 1988 her autobiography Debbie was published to much acclaim.  It seems everyone wanted to read it.

Reynolds was one of those Hollywood stars who was never out of the limelight.  There were some years when she and her daughter didn't get along so well and much of it became public.  Carrie Fisher wrote about her family and drugs and fame in Postcards from the Edge which was turned into a film in 1990.  Shirley MacLaine would play the Debbie role.  

She played herself in a quick cameo in The Bodyguard  (1992).  She had a small role in Oliver Stone's little-seen Vietnam story, Heaven and Earth (1993) and the title role in Albert Brooks's comedy, Mother (1996).  A year later she was Kevin Kline's mother from In and Out (1997), a fun role in a very funny film.

From 1999-2006 she played Grace's mother on Will and Grace.  In 2001 she did a not-so-good TV movie that attracted a huge audience.  Carrie Fisher wrote These Old Broads (2001) for her mother and Shirley MacLaine, Joan Collins and (gasp!) Elizabeth Taylor joined the movie version.  Reynolds had forgiven Taylor saying she probably did me the biggest favor in my life.

I was glad I saw her last movie in 2013 when she played Liberace's no-nonsense mother in the TV movie Beyond the Candelabra.  I had not seen her in anything for years.  It was a small role but a dramatic one and it reminded me of something she once said...  drama's unhappy and playing someone unhappy would make me unhappy.  Ain't for me, Honey.

She spent a lifetime as a singing-dancing-comedy star, a clown, a cutup and she did it very well.  It's what MGM wanted from her.  She had done her best Betty Hutton and did it more successfully.  Still, I believe as she got older, folks never really cut her any slack, keeping her pigeon-holed as MGM's livewire.  She added to it, as well, by not making that transition into dramatic roles to any serious degree.

Nonetheless, she was one of Hollywood's greatest ambassadors.  She loved the movies, loved most everything about them.  She was a star who never stopped being a fan.  She was always a very determined person and in a town where it was necessary...  a tough survivor.

On December 27, 2016, Carrie Fisher died from medical complications she'd experienced four days earlier on a flight.  She was 60.  The following day Debbie Reynolds died of a stroke at age 84.  Her son, Todd, said that shortly before his mother's death she told him she wanted to be with Carrie.  

That determined lady knew what she wanted.  I found it very moving.



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