Debbie Reynolds

At 84 years old, Debbie Reynolds has this physical status:

Career

Reynolds was discovered by talent scouts from Warner Bros. and MGM, who were at the 1948 Miss Burbank contest. Both companies wanted her to sign up for their studio, but they had to flip a coin to see which one had her. Warner Bros. was the coin toss, and she had been with the studio for two years. When Warner Bros. stopped producing musicals, she moved to MGM.

Reynolds, who appeared in film musicals in the 1950s, had several hit songs during the period. "Aba Daba Honeymoon" (featured in the film Two Weeks with Love (1950) and performed as a duet with co-star Carleton Carpenter) was the first soundtrack recording to reach top-of-the-chart gold record, debuting at number three on the Billboard charts, debuting at number three.

Her role in the film impressed the studio, which gave her a co-starring role in Singin' in the Rain (1952), a satire on Hollywood film-making during the transition from silent to sound pictures. Gene Kelly, a "great dancer and cinematic genius," appeared on the film co-starring Gene Kelly, who later said, "He made me a star." "I was 18 years old at the time, and he taught me how to dance, how to work hard, and be committed." She appeared in the musical Bundle of Joy with her then-husband Eddie Fisher in 1956.

Reynolds was one of 14 top-billed names in How the West Was Won (1962), but she was the only one to appear throughout the story, largely following Lilith Prescott's life and times. She performed three songs in the film: What Was Your Name in the States? As her pioneering family's westward journey, Ruckus Tonight, beginning a party around a wagon train camp fire; and, three times, Home in the Meadow; Sammy Cahn's lyrics;

Her role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Reynolds explained that she had trouble with its company's chief, Charles Walters, right from the start. "He didn't want me," she said. Shirley MacLaine was a girl who was unable to play the part at the time, "He wanted her to marry her." "You are absolutely wrong for the role," he said. However, six weeks into production, he changed his mind. "I must admit that I was wrong," he told me. You're doing a good job. "I'm thrilled." Reynolds appeared in Goodbye Charlie, a 1964 comedy film about a callous womanizer who gets a monetary reward. It was based on George Axelrod's play Goodbye, Charlie, and also starred Tony Curtis and Pat Boone.

In The Singing Nun (1966), Jeanine Deckers appeared again. Reynolds, the "stupidest mistake of my entire career," made news in 1970 after instigating a controversy with the NBC television network over cigarettes on her weekly television show. Despite being the television's highest-paid female entertainer at the time, she resigned from the show for violating its terms: she was the highest-paid female actress at the time, but she left the show for the wrong reason:

When NBC told Reynolds that blocking cigarette advertisements from her show would be impractical, she maintained her resolve. The program attracted mixed reviews, but it gained nearly 42% of the nation's viewing audience, according to NBC. She expressed her dissatisfaction with the advertisements later because of the number of children watching the program, which she said later. After about a year, she did not return the show after she said she had lost more than $2 million: "Maybe I was a fool to leave the show," she said. I am not a phony or pretender. It wasn't a question of money, but honesty, for me. "I'm the one who must live with myself." If she hadn't resigned, the controversy would have become moot and in Reynolds' favour; by 1971, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act (which had been passed before she left the show) would have banned all radio and television advertisements for tobacco products;

Reynolds appeared in Charlotte's Web (1973), in which she created the song "Mother Earth and Father Time" (1973). Reynolds continued to make other appearances in film and television. Deedee Chappel, Helen Chappel Hackett's mother, appeared on "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother," which first aired on November 22, 1994.

She appeared on Grace Adler's dramatic mother, Bobbi Adler, on NBC's Will & Grace, earning Reynolds her first Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000. Aggie Cromwell, a recurring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie Halloweentown film series. In 1997, Reynolds made his first appearance as a host at the 69th Academy Awards.

Reynolds appeared on the children's television show Rugrats as the grandmother of two of the characters in 2000. In 2001, she co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine, and Joan Collins in The These Old Broads, a television film directed for her by her daughter, Carrie Fisher. In the 2004 film Connie and Carla, she appeared as herself in a cameo role. She appeared in Behind the Candelabra in 2013 as the mother of Liberace.

Reynolds appears in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a 2016 documentary about the two families' close friendship. It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. On HBO, the first television premiere occurred on January 7, 2017. According to USA Today, the film is "an intimate portrait of Hollywood royalty [it] closely chronicles their lives through interviews, photographs, video, and vintage home movies. It culminates in a touching scene, just as Reynolds is about to receive the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, which Fisher gave to her mother."

Tammy and the Bachelor's recording of the song "Tammy" (1957; Tammy and the Bachelor) earned her a gold record. In 1957, it was a number one single on the Billboard pop charts. She co-starred with Leslie Nielsen in the film (the first of the Tammy film series).

Reynolds also scored two other top-five Billboard hits, "A Very Special Love" (number 20 in January 1959), Skeeter Davis (in 1960), and many years later, singer Engelbert Humperdinck.

Debbie Reynolds' album The Best of Debbie Reynolds was released in 1991.

She worked in Las Vegas's Riviera Hotel for ten years. She loved live shows, but this style of performing "was very strenuous," she said in 1966: she loved live shows but not so much.

Reynolds was known for doing impressions of celebrities such as Eva and Zsa Gabor, Mae West, Barbra Stache, and Bette Davis as part of her nightclub appearance. Davis' impersonation was inspired by her co-starring roles in the 1956 film The Catered Affair. Reynolds had been performing stage impersonations as a child; her impersonation of Betty Hutton was performed as a singing number at the Miss Burbank competition in 1948.

Reynolds' last album, titled Christmas with Donald and Debbie, was produced and directed by Angelo DiPippo.

Reynolds was also a French horn player. "There were times when Debbie was more interested in playing the French horn in the San Fernando Valley or attending a Girl Scout meeting, she didn't know she was a movie star all of a sudden," Gene Kelly said of Reynolds' sudden fame.

Reynolds declined to make her Broadway debut with limited film and television opportunities on her way. She appeared in the 1973 revival of Irene, a musical first performed 60 years ago. When she inquired why she waited so long to appear in a Broadway play, she answered: 'Why bother waiting so long.'

Reynolds and her daughter Carrie made their Broadway debuts in the production. According to reports, the show broke records for the highest weekly income of any musical ever. She was nominated for the role. Debbie Reynolds appeared in a self-titled Broadway revue in 1976. She appeared in Annie Get Your Gun and then wrapped up the Year of the Year campaign in 1983. Reynolds reprised her role as Molly Brown in The Unsinkable Molly Brown stage version, first opposite Presnell (repeating his first Broadway and film role) and later with Ron Raines.

Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous, a 2010 West End display.

Reynolds amassed a significant collection of movie memorabilia, beginning with items from the historic 1970 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer auction in Las Vegas, then on a museum near the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.

The museum was supposed to relocate to be the centerpiece of the Belle Island Village tourist attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but the developer went bankrupt. In June 2009, the museum filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Reynolds' collection was the museum's most valuable asset. Todd Fisher, Reynolds' son, said that his mother was "heartbroken" to have to sell off the collection. In the bankruptcy filing, it was valued at $10.79 million. Profiles in History, a Los Angeles auction house, was given the opportunity to conduct a sequence of auctions. Among the more than 3500 costumes, 20,000 photographs, and thousands of movie posters, costume sketches, and props included in the sale were Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat and Marilyn Monroe's white "subway dress," whose skirt is lifted by the breeze from a passing subway train in the film The Seven Year Itch (1955). The dress went for $4.6 million in 2011; the final auction took place in May 2014.

Reynolds founded her own dance studio in North Hollywood in 1979. Do It Debbie's Way, an exercise film made in 1983. In 1992, she purchased the Clarion Hotel and Casino, a Las Vegas hotel and casino. Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel was renamed by her to the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel. It was not a success. Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1997. She replaced Ivana Trump's answering reader questions for the weekly newspaper Globe in June 2010.

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