Reynolds, Debbie,
1932-2016, American actress, singer, and dancer, b. El Paso, Tx., as Mary
Frances Reynolds. Reynolds’ family relocated from El Paso to Burbank,
Ca., when she was seven years old. She won the Miss Burbank beauty contest
in 1948 while still in high school, leading to her being signed to Warner
Brothers studio, and then moved to MGM. Her first notable appearance was in
Two Weeks with Love (1950), in which she sang
“Aba Daba Honeymoon” (#3, Billboard pop charts). This led to
her breakout role in Gene Kelly’s satire of early
Hollywood, Singin’ in the Rain (1952). She married
singer Eddie Fisher in 1955 and the two appeared in the film Bundle
of Joy (1956); they divorced in 1959. In the late
‘50s-early ‘60s, she also had several pop hits, most notably
“Tammy” (1957, #1 Billboard). She continued to appear in
films, including the Cinerama classic, How the West Was Won
(1962), and the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964).
She made her Broadway debut in the revival of the musical
Irene (1973), which also featured her daughter Carrie
Fisher. She spent
much of the next decades appearing on television, including a stint as Bobbi
Adler on the sitcom Will and Grace (1999-2006), for which
she earned an Emmy Award (2000), and touring in various musical revivals and
starring in revues in Las Vegas. She made a notable appearance portraying
Albert Brooks’s mother in his film, Mother (1996).
Among her awards and honors were the Screen Actors Guild’s Life
Achievement Award (2014), and the Oscar’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian
Award (2015).
See her autobiographies (1988, 2013); biography by G. C. Andrews (2013).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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