Two studios flipped a coin to decide who got Debbie Reynolds
In 1948 a sixteen-year-old tomboy from Burbank won a local beauty contest, and scouts from both Warner Bros. and MGM wanted to sign her on the spot. Unable to settle it any other way, they tossed a coin. Warner won, renamed Mary Frances Reynolds as Debbie, and set her on a road to Singin' in the Rain.
She came from real hardship. Born in El Paso, Texas, in 1932, she lived in a shack while her mother took in laundry and her father, a railroad carpenter, sometimes hunted jackrabbits in the desert to feed the family. Reared in a strict Nazarene church, she moved with her family to California in 1939. A school friend recalled that she wore plain clothes, had no car and was asked to only one dance; Reynolds admitted she began with no money, no taste and no training.
Warner kept her for two years and then stopped making musicals, so she moved to MGM. Her duet Aba Daba Honeymoon, from a 1950 film, became the first soundtrack recording to earn a gold record, and the studio rewarded her with the lead opposite Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain in 1952. She later credited Kelly with teaching her, at 18, how to dance and how to work relentlessly. Her song Tammy topped the Billboard charts, and her turn as the unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964 drew an Oscar nomination.
Her career stretched across stage, cabaret and television. She earned a Tony nomination for the 1973 Broadway revival of Irene, headlined in Las Vegas for a decade, and won new, younger fans decades later in Disney's Halloweentown films and as Grace's mother on Will and Grace.
Off screen she was a businesswoman and preservationist. She opened a dance studio in North Hollywood in 1979, owned a Las Vegas hotel and casino, and built a vast collection of film memorabilia that began with purchases at MGM's landmark 1970 auction. She died in December 2016, a day after her daughter, the actress Carrie Fisher.
Source: Debbie Reynolds
