This is an AP photo from 1997.
Actress Debbie Reynolds,
shown with her daughter Carrie Fisher in this1997 file photo. (AP Photo/Rene Macura)
April 26, 1981
Film and Broadway actress Debbie Reynolds
always attributes her tomboy roots to El Paso, where she, as Mary
Frances Reynolds, spent the first eight years of her life, playing and
competing with her brother and four young uncles.
Her father, who
worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was transferred to Burbank,
Calif., in 1940.
Winning a Burbank beauty contest in 1948 lead to a
movie contract and a suggested name change from Frannie to the more
pixieish Debbie.
Soon she was a sought-after ingénue in a string of
movies.
She married crooner Eddie Fisher in 1955, divorcing him when he
left her and their two small children for Elizabeth Taylor three years
later.
The divorce caused a minor scandal and fueled gossip magazines
for months. Fisher’s career started a downhill slide, but the public
was on Ms. Reynolds’s side.
She married multimillionaire shoe magnate
Harry Karl in 1960, divorcing him in 1974 after he was earmarked as a
major victim in a gambling and cheating scandal at a Los Angles Club.
Just before her second divorce, Ms. Reynolds started reviving a lagging
career with her Broadway hit “Irene.”
An attempt to continue her
Broadway success with one-woman show in 1977 flopped.
Since then, the
singer-actress-comedienne-dancer has been doing dinner shows and
performing at nightclubs.
But recently, admitting she had become a
“has-been,” she launched another series, “Aloha Paradise.” Whether the
critics – and more importantly, the television viewers – like the
combination “Love Boat” – “Fantasy Island” remains to be seen.
More articles:
Comments