Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds was an American actress, singer, and businesswoman.
60 Facts About Debbie Reynolds
2.
Debbie Reynolds was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words.
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Debbie Reynolds starred in Singin' in the Rain, How the West Was Won, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a biographical film about the famously boisterous Titanic passenger Molly Brown.
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In 1969, she starred on television in The Debbie Reynolds Show, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.
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In 1973, Debbie Reynolds starred in a Broadway revival of the musical Irene and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical.
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At the turn of the millennium, Debbie Reynolds reached a new, younger generation with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney's Halloweentown series.
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Debbie Reynolds had several business ventures, including ownership of a dance studio and a Las Vegas hotel and casino, and she was an avid collector of film memorabilia, beginning with items purchased at the landmark 1970 MGM auction.
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Debbie Reynolds served as president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental-health causes.
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Debbie Reynolds continued to perform successfully on stage, television, and film into her 80s.
10.
In January 2015, Debbie Reynolds received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
11.
Debbie Reynolds died following a hemorrhagic stroke on December 28,2016, one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.
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Mary Frances Reynolds was born on April 1,1932, in El Paso, Texas, to Maxene N "Minnie" Harman and Raymond Francis "Ray" Reynolds, a carpenter who worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
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Debbie Reynolds was of Scottish-Irish and English ancestry and was raised in a strict Nazarene church of her domineering mother.
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Debbie Reynolds had an older brother, William, who was two years her senior.
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Debbie Reynolds was a Girl Scout, once saying that she wanted to die as the world's oldest living Girl Scout.
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Debbie Reynolds was a member of The International Order of Job's Daughters.
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Debbie Reynolds's mother took in laundry for income, while they lived in a shack on Magnolia Street in El Paso.
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When Debbie Reynolds was a 16-year-old student at Burbank High School in 1948, she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest.
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Debbie Reynolds can serve as an inspiration to all young American womanhood.
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Debbie Reynolds came up the hard way, and she has a realistic sense of values based on faith, love, work, and money.
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Debbie Reynolds was one of 14 top-billed names in How the West Was Won but she was the only one who appeared throughout, the story largely following the life and times of her character Lilith Prescott.
22.
Debbie Reynolds's starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
23.
Debbie Reynolds noted that she initially had issues with its director, Charles Walters.
24.
Debbie Reynolds next portrayed Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun.
25.
In what Debbie Reynolds once called the "stupidest mistake of my entire career", she made headlines in 1970 after instigating a fight with the NBC television network over cigarette advertising on her weekly television show.
26.
When NBC explained to Debbie Reynolds that banning cigarette commercials from her show would be impossible, she kept her resolve.
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Debbie Reynolds said later she was especially concerned about the commercials because of the number of children watching the show.
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Debbie Reynolds played the title role in the Hanna-Barbera animated musical Charlotte's Web, in which she originated the song "Mother Earth and Father Time".
29.
Debbie Reynolds continued to make other appearances in film and television.
30.
Debbie Reynolds played Helen Chappel Hackett's mother, Deedee Chappel, on an episode of Wings titled, "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother", which originally aired on November 22,1994.
31.
Debbie Reynolds played a recurring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie Halloweentown film series as Aggie Cromwell.
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Debbie Reynolds made a guest appearance as a presenter at the 69th Academy Awards in 1997.
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In 2000, Debbie Reynolds took up a recurring voice role on the children's television program Rugrats, playing the grandmother of two of the characters.
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Debbie Reynolds had a cameo role as herself in the 2004 film Connie and Carla.
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Debbie Reynolds's recording of the song "Tammy", earned her a gold record.
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Debbie Reynolds enjoyed live shows, though that type of performing "was extremely strenuous," she said in 1966:.
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Debbie Reynolds had started doing stage impersonations as a teenager; her impersonation of Betty Hutton was performed as a singing number during the Miss Burbank contest in 1948.
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Debbie Reynolds didn't realize she was a movie star all of a sudden.
39.
Debbie Reynolds starred in the 1973 revival of Irene, a musical first produced 60 years before.
40.
Debbie Reynolds toured with Harve Presnell in Annie Get Your Gun, then wrapped up the Broadway run of Woman of the Year in 1983.
41.
Debbie Reynolds amassed a large collection of movie memorabilia, beginning with items from the landmark 1970 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer auction, and she displayed them, first in a museum at her Las Vegas hotel and casino during the 1990s and later in a museum close to the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles.
42.
Todd Fisher, Debbie Reynolds' son, announced that his mother was "heartbroken" to have to auction off the collection.
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In 1979, Debbie Reynolds opened her own dance studio in North Hollywood.
44.
Debbie Reynolds purchased the Clarion Hotel and Casino, a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, in 1992.
45.
The couple divorced in 1959 when it was revealed shortly after the death of Elizabeth Taylor's husband Mike Todd that Fisher had been having an affair with her; Taylor and Debbie Reynolds were good friends at the time.
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In 2011, Debbie Reynolds was on The Oprah Winfrey Show just weeks before Elizabeth Taylor's death.
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Debbie Reynolds explained that Taylor and she happened to be traveling at the same time on the ocean liner some time in the 1960s when they reconciled.
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Debbie Reynolds sent a note to Taylor's room, and Taylor sent a note in reply asking to have dinner with Debbie Reynolds and end their feud.
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Debbie Reynolds did give me two great children and for that I will ever be grateful.
50.
Debbie Reynolds later found herself in financial difficulty because of Karl's gambling and bad investments.
51.
In 2011, Debbie Reynolds stepped down after 56 years of involvement in The Thalians, a charitable organization devoted to children and adults with mental-health issues.
52.
Debbie Reynolds was hospitalized in October 2012 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles due to an adverse reaction to medication.
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Debbie Reynolds cancelled appearances and concert engagements for the next three months.
54.
Later that afternoon, Debbie Reynolds was pronounced dead in the hospital; she was 84 years old.
55.
Todd Fisher later said that Debbie Reynolds had been seriously affected by her daughter's death, and that her grief was partially responsible for her stroke, noting that his mother had stated, "I want to be with Carrie", shortly before she died.
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Debbie Reynolds added, "she didn't die of a broken heart" as some news reports had implied, but rather "just left to be with Carrie".
57.
Debbie Reynolds was the 1955 Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year.
58.
Debbie Reynolds has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6654 Hollywood Boulevard, for live performance and a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars dedicated to her.
59.
In keeping with the celebrity tradition of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival of Winchester, Virginia, Debbie Reynolds was honored as the Grand Marshal of the 2011 ABF that took place from April 26 to May 1,2011.
60.
On November 4,2006, Debbie Reynolds received the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Chapman University.