The princess of perk, Debbie Reynolds embodied cheerful bounce and youthful innocence from the early 1950s through the mid-60s. With her heart-shaped face and medium-blonde or brunette hair often in a simple bob or ponytail, she was part of a long line of girls-next-door. Reynolds' stock in trade, though, was never the wisecracking edge and working woman's know-how of a Ginger Rogers or the tremulous vulnerability of a Judy Garland. Reynolds was trusting and eager to please but she never really suffered much--problems simply didn't get her down. Though she is closer in type and roughly contemporaneous with Doris Day and June Allyson, she was never as sultry as Day could be, and was more of a showbiz cheerleader and less of a tomboy than either. Reynolds was very at home on the farm when the occasion demanded, but could also tackle city life and was perfect for the postwar suburb. Often cast as a newlywed or one in the throes of puppy love, she was destined for marriage but never became the virgin chased by roues like Day or the placid housewife like Allyson. As sexy as her colleagues, she was paradoxically the most wholesome as well, partly because she seemed the youngest of her type (at least until her successor, Sandra Dee, came along). Middle age and new sexual mores left her image and film career with nowhere to go. But Reynolds survived, proving to be a trouper in nightclubs and a commanding stage performer, and TV lent itself well to a highly talented and versatile professional who had become a comfortable presence in the American fabric, one able to be both self-mocking and nostalgic.Born in Texas, Reynolds moved at age seven to California where, at 16, she was crowned Miss Burbank in a beauty contest. MGM and Warner Bros. were both eager to sign her. The latter won out but Reynolds mostly tread water there for the next two years, though, playing a modest part in "The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady" (1950). That same year, she moved to MGM and made an instant impression in small roles in her first two films, impersonating 20s "boop-oop-a-doop" singer Helen Kane (with Kane's vocals helping) in the songwriter biopic "Three Little Words" and teaming with the equally cute boy-next-door Carleton Carpenter in "Two Weeks with Love" for a high-speed rendition of the novelty smash "Aba Daba Honeymoon". The studio and directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen responded by casting her in a leading role--with star billing--in the brilliant musical, "Singin' in the Rain" (1952). Her pleasant alto voice sold several old-time song standards with brio and Reynolds, not a trained hoofer, literally danced her feet raw to keep up buoyantly onscreen with Kelly and Donald O'Connor. Best of all, her acting conveyed the sincerity of the aspiring neophyte that was both the role and the performer, and a star was born.
During her 50s tenure at MGM, Reynolds performed primarily in musicals, none of which approached the landmark status of her first big success. As was typical of MGM and the studio system as a whole, most ("Athena" 1954; "Hit the Deck" 1955) were too formulaic, though the underrated "Give a Girl a Break" (1953) was full of ideas and energy. A lively and playful comedienne, Reynolds also ventured into romantic comedy, succeeding quite well with "The Tender Trap" (1955) but somewhat overdoing the teen boisterousness in "Susan Slept Here" (1954). A standout in retrospect was her most sober film of the period, indeed one of only two or three dramas she ever acted in, "A Catered Affair" (1956). The film was worthy if not great, but Reynolds did very tender and quietly touching work which her sis-boom-ba roles unfortunately rarely called upon again.
As the studio system disintegrated, Reynolds turned to free-lancing. She enjoyed a big hit with "Tammy and the Bachelor" (1957), whose theme song, the highly sentimental but equally memorable "Tammy", gave Reynolds a second smash hit single (five weeks at Number 1). The film also marked one of the occasional "country girl" roles which she would also play in "The Mating Game" (1958) and "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" (1964; one of her best vehicles, which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination). Reynolds had begun appearing on TV by this time and was a semi-regular on "The Eddie Fisher Show", starring the popular crooner Reynolds had wed in 1955. Her first of several unsuccessful marriages showed its sour side in 1958, when Fisher announced that he was leaving Reynolds for fellow MGM alumna Elizabeth Taylor. The attendant public sympathy for Reynolds meshed well with her wholesome "can do" screen persona, which had fully matured by the time of "This Happy Feeling" (1958) and "The Rat Race" (1960), and she made the exhibitors' poll of top ten box-office stars in both 1959 and 1960.
Raising her two children by Fisher, Todd and Carrie, kept Reynolds busy and her screen career, which relied to some extent on her youthful, girlish qualities, slowly began to decline. Very few of her films became classics, and Reynolds rarely was given the opportunity to work with really distinctive directors; when she did (e.g., Frank Tashlin or Vincente Minnelli) it was never in their best or most typical films. Her vehicles continued to be good-natured hokum, buoyed by her sincere charm and energy; gradually, though, the stickiness which dogged them sometimes became more prevalent (as in "My Six Loves" 1963, in which she adopts six children, or "The Singing Nun" 1966). Worse, the new frankness in films began to date her image, and when she finally did try Doris Day-style sex farce ("Divorce American Style" 1967; "How Sweet It Is" 1968) even that vogue was waning. A few TV spots and a first try at a series, "The Debbie Reynolds Show/Debbie" (NBC, 1969-70) did little to stem the tide. Her last feature acting for over twenty years, though, was striking: "What's the Matter with Helen?" (1971), a late entry in the often unpleasant "aging female star" horror subgenre, but redeemed by a very offbeat story, Curtis Harrington's directorial flair and fine acting. The "showbiz kid who could" even pulled off two dance numbers.
Effectively out of films before age 40, Reynolds, who also had several stepchildren by an unsuccessful second marriage, moved into TV and live performing. She enjoyed a smash success on Broadway with a revival of the old musical chestnut "Irene" (1973), played the London Palladium in a 1975 revue, and polished to a lively sparkle the nightclub talent she had first tested back in 1961. The latter would keep her busiest for the next twenty years, though Reynolds very occasionally played the recurring role of the title character's acerbic mother on the hit sitcom "Alice" (CBS, 1976-85). She did likewise on "Jennifer Slept Here" (NBC, 1983-84), tried another series with the unsuccessful "Aloha Paradise" (ABC, 1981), a "Fantasy Island/Love Boat" rip-off with Reynolds as a female Ricardo Montalban, and enjoyed a feisty role as a woman cop teamed with her son in the TV-movie "Sadie and Son" (CBS, 1987). She also basked in the boom of nostalgia for her studio heyday, appearing in "That's Entertainment" (1974) and "That's Entertainment III" (1994) and hosting "Debbie Reynolds' Movie Memories" on the cable channel American Movie Classics.
Reynolds made her biggest venture into the market for movie nostalgia in the 90s when she purchased a Las Vegas hotel and casino, renovated them, and added on the Hollywood Movie Museum, packed with the memorabilia she had been collecting for decades. She performed constantly at her own hotel's nightclub to make the enterprise fly, but her love of the work and her finely honed presence kept her afloat. Reynolds blithely withstood gossip surrounding actress-writer daughter Carrie's novel "Postcards from the Edge" when wags assumed it "really" about Fisher's relationship with Reynolds, even when Mike Nichols' 1990 film version made the mother into something of a gorgon. She also returned briefly to film acting in Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth" (1993) but a renaissance really began when Albert Brooks cast Reynolds, at Carrie Fisher's suggestion, in the title role of his critically acclaimed "Mother" (1996). Reynolds received raves for her rich characterization of a sunny and loving but subtly disapproving and forbidding parent, and the widespread attention she received helped pave the way for her casting as Kevin Kline's mother in "In and Out" (1997).