Debbie Reynolds

The Sweat Behind the Technicolor

Mary Frances Reynolds won a beauty pageant in Burbank purely by chance in 1948. She wasn't looking to become an actress, but Warner Bros. talent scouts saw something in the sixteen-year-old who played the trumpet in her high school band. The studio changed her name to Debbie against her will and paid her sixty-five dollars a week.

In 1952, she got the opportunity that nearly destroyed her physical health. Gene Kelly did not want her in the cast of Singin' in the Rain because she did not know how to dance professionally. The young Reynolds rehearsed until her feet bled on the MGM sets to match the rhythm of her fellow dancers.

That shoot was a war of endurance.

Fred Astaire found her crying under a piano and decided to help her with the most complicated steps of the choreography. By the end of production, Debbie had accomplished the impossible. She convinced audiences she had been tap dancing her whole life alongside two giants of the musical genre. That physical effort cost her months of recovery, but it placed her at the front line of the Hollywood industry.

Debt, Casinos and Secondhand Gowns

In 1958, her husband Eddie Fisher left her for Elizabeth Taylor in the middle of a media circus that gripped the United States. But Debbie didn't stop. She took on any role she could to pay off the debts left by her three failed marriages. For decades she worked in Las Vegas to support her children and fund her true obsession.

Because her passion was not only acting but also preserving the history of film that the studios were throwing in the trash. She spent millions of dollars at auctions to buy the white dress worn by Marilyn Monroe or the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Her dream of opening a permanent museum failed several times due to a lack of institutional support in California.

And the bet only paid off partially.

She had to sell much of her private collection in 2011 to prevent the total bankruptcy of her businesses. The auction raised more than twenty-two million dollars in a single day of frenzied bidding. That money helped balance her accounts, but it meant the breakup of the largest collection of film costumes in the world.

In 2013, she played Liberace's mother in Behind the Candelabra under the direction of Steven Soderbergh. She appeared on screen with a facial prosthetic and a carefully crafted Polish accent that moved her far from her usual girl-next-door image. It was her last major work in front of the camera before her health definitively began to decline.

Reynolds died on December 28, 2016 from a massive stroke. It happened just twenty-four hours after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher. Her remains rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, beneath a white marble sculpture.