Debbie Reynolds: Endearing, enduring Hollywood actress

Hollywood’s endearing and enduring actress, Debbie Reynolds, 84, is smiling and shining in another world. Death (of stroke) came to Debbie a day after her own beloved daughter, Carrie Fisher, 60, died of heart attack. They were buried alongside each other.

Debbie’s called one of the last of Hollywood’s Royalty, first attracting attention in 1950 in the Jane Powell starrer Two Weeks with Love, singing Aba Daba Honeymoon. From then on, Debbie’s ever smiling and refreshing face was a loved and adored presence in American showbiz, her popularity reaching beyond its shore.

Among her important movies include Singin’ in the Rain (one of Hollywood’s greatest musicals), Tammy and the Bachelor, The Singing Nun, The Gazebo, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which earned Debbie an Oscar nomination in 1965. In 2015, the Screen Actors Guild gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award, which she received with daughter Carrie, who earned worldwide fame as Princess Leia in the Star Wars films.

But behind the smiling face is a wounded heart. She lost one husband, Eddie Fisher, to a best friend, Elizabeth Taylor. Debbie’s two other husbands, Harry Karl and Richard Hamlett, made off with her fortune, forcing her to file for bankruptcy.

Debbie eventually reconciled with Liz — long since divorced from Fisher. They even teamed up with Joan Collins and Shirley Maclaine in the 2001 TV movie These Old Broads, about aging and feuding actresses who get together for a reunion.

Through the peaks and valleys of career and personal life, Debbie remained an optimist, looking at the bright side of life. But the death of daughter Carrie devastated Debbie, who was no longer in the best of health.

All of Hollywood mourned her death.

She was born Mary Frances Reynolds on April 1, 1932 in El Paso, Texas. — RKC