Midway through Debbie: My Life one begins to feel genuine respect for this game Hollywood trouper. She spares us none of the agony of her financial and emotional betrayal by her second husband, the shoe-business king. THE DEBBIE REYNOLDS who emerged from the Eddie Fisher disaster was tougher but not yet wiser. Mouths hung open while forks and spoons were suspended in midair. 'Who the hell cares about Eddie Fisher?'Īnd then, folks, Debbie and Liz and their respective swains made a grand theatrical entrance into the ship's dining room. 'Just look how you lucked out and I lucked out!' toasted Queen Liz with a glass of Dom Perignon. Some years later, when Liz had Richard Burton in tow and Debbie was married to the shoe-business mogul Harry Karl, the two queens of the screen had a shipboard reconciliation.

'The separation and divorce from Eddie made me big box office,' she coolly admits.Īs every student of the popular culture knows, Fisher was not to stay long in Elizabeth's sun. 'I guess you can even feel Elizabeth should always have a lover, even if he's yours.'Įventually she came to see the bright side in her public humiliation. 'You can actually feel pressure when Elizabeth Taylor tells the world that you're depriving her of a lover,' she writes. Will Debbie divorce Eddie so Eddie can marry Liz? The nation wanted to know. Enter Elizabeth Taylor, numb and bereft from the death of Mike Todd. Will Debbie marry Eddie? Of course Debbie will marry Eddie - all MGM musicals had happy endings, so how was the cute kid from Burbank to know that life does not always imitate art?ĭebbie's career prospered. Enter Eddie Fisher, the teen-agers' hearthrob. The nation needed some harmless diversion during those stuffy years. Mayer won out, and earnest, dutiful Debbie, braced by Kelly and Donald O'Connor, another seasoned pro, tapped her way up the stairs, down the stairs, up the couch and over the couch and into the hearts of America's fans in that now classic number, the deliriously happy 'Good Morning.' The tomboy who had set her sights on becoming a gym teacher survived her trial by fire to become one of MGM's most durable stars.Īll right. When MGM, home of the great movie musicals, picked up her option, her obvious lack of training offended Gene Kelly, who did not want her as his dancing partner in Singing in the Rain. She resisted more strenuously when Jack Warner changed her first name to Debbie. Her ears stuck out at an awkward angle, but they were easily fixed. She had a natural flair for light comedy, was moderately musical, and could light up the screen with a winsome smile. SHORT, BLOND and cute - and above all, virginal - like the proverbial girl next door, Mary Frances Reynolds, a local kid from Burbank, was custom-made for Hollywood in the '50s. DEBBIE: My Life By Debbie Reynolds with David Patrick Columbia Morrow.

Unsinkable by Debbie Reynolds