Debbie Reynolds, 1932-2016

Carrie Fisher’s death at such a young age (sadly not surprising for someone with a lifetime of substance abuse) is tragic, but it did not resonate too much for me. I never liked the Star Wars franchise, so I haven’t seen her movies in decades and therefore did not feel connected to the arc of her life.

Debbie Reynolds, on the other hand, has been a fixture in my life since my childhood, when I first saw her in Singing in the Rain, a movie I’ve revisited countless times since that first time. Reynolds was so charming in that movie. While nothing she did afterwards measured up to Singing In The Rain, she always gave 100% to every role she did. She was wonderful in Hit The Deck, a movie that managed to waste a lot of really talented performers in an almost unbearably stupid plot. She also threw herself into The Unsinkable Molly Brown, another movie with production values that were far beneath her talent.

As was true for Donald O’Connor, Reynolds’ co-star in Singing In The Rain, she was a true musical comedy talent who had the misfortune to come around at the tail end of the era of great musicals. Both took what work they could, but it was a dying genre and the movies in which they were trapped show it.

Here are a couple of videos by which to remember a very talented lady whose body could not survive the shock of seeing her child die before she did: