Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds: Profile

As star of more than thirty motion pictures, two Broadway shows, two series, as well as dozens of television appearances, here and abroad, in 2011 Debbie Reynolds celebrates her 63rd year in show business.

Debbie made her screen debut with Jane Haver and James Barton in The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady. Her first big break came in an MGM musical starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton, Three Little Words, in which she portrayed Helen Kane, the "Boop-boop-a-doop" girl of the late 1930s. A subsequent performance in a Busby Berkley musical, Two Weeks With Love, convinced the legendary L.B. Mayer to choose her for the leading female role in what became one of the greatest screen musicals of all time, Singin’ In The Rain.

Over a ten year period, Debbie made more than twenty-five films, including How The West Was Won, The Unsinkable Molly Brown (for which she was nominated for an Oscar), Susan Slept Here, The Tender Trap, Tammy and The Bachelor, The Pleasure of his Company, Mary, Mary, Divorce American Style and Good-bye Charlie.

Her recordings of "Abba Dabba Honeymoon" (from "Two Weeks with Love") and "Tammy" both sold more than a million copies. In the mid-1960s Debbie put together her first nightclub act which debuted at the Rivera Hotel in Las Vegas. In the twenty-five years since, she has been a headliner on the casino circuit from Reno and Tahoe and Las Vegas to Atlantic City to the famed London Palladium, as well as in concert in every major American city, touring on the average of forty-two weeks a year.

In 1973, she took a break from her nightclub appearances to star in the Broadway revival of "Irene," breaking all previous box office records for a Broadway musical. After an enormously successful national tour of the show, Debbie returned to the musical stage with another hit revival, Irving Berlin’s "Annie Get Your Gun," directed by the late Gower Champion (who also directed "Irene"). In 1983, she returned to Broadway again to star in the hit musical, "Woman of the Year." In 1989, a National Tour of the "Unsinkable Molly Brown."

Debbie’s off screen, off-stage life has been as active and versatile. Mother of two children, actress/writer, Carrie Fisher and son Todd Fisher. In 1992, Carrie made her a grandmother, giving birth to beautiful baby girl, Billie Catherine.

She has been a life-long supporter and fund raiser for the Girl Scouts, and founder-president of the Thalians, a charitable organization which has raised millions for emotionally disturbed children.

Since the late 1960s she has also been actively involved in a project closest to her heart, the collection and preservation of memorabilia from Hollywood’s first half-century of film making gathering thousands of costumes, props and mementos of Hollywood’s studios and their greatest stars.

In 1987, Debbie published her widely-read memoir, Debbie, My Life, (co-written with David Patrick Columbia) with William Morrow & Company Publisher.

More recently, the made-for TV movie THESE OLD BROADS, written by (daughter) Carrie Fisher and Elaine Pope was a 2001 hysterically memorable treat, starring Debbie, Shirley MacLaine, Joan Collins and Elizabeth Taylor. On the NBC sitcom, WILL AND GRACE, Debbie has played a recurring roll as Bobbi Adler, the mother of "Grace" (placed by Debra Messing) for which she received an Emmy nomination. In March of 2003, Debbie was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the 82nd Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. She is the first woman to receive this award honoring her outstanding contributions to Hollywood. In the 2004 film, CONNIE AND CARLA, Debbie plays herself.