Popular Actress Passes Away Shortly After Her Daughter’s Death

Debbie Reynolds epitomized the postwar American sunshine on the screen as she danced alongside Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain.” Carrie Fisher embodied the sarcasm and cynicism of the Baby Boomers in her movies, books, and stage shows, even as a princess in “Star Wars.” The mother and daughter, separated by many personal and generational differences, are likely to be remembered together after their deaths on consecutive days.

Reynolds passed away on Wednesday at age 84, just as the world was mourning her daughter Fisher, who died on Tuesday at 60, days after falling ill on a flight.

Many speculated that Reynolds lost her will to live following the tragic death of her daughter, who had a heart attack while flying from London to Los Angeles.

Reynolds’ son Todd Fisher said his sister’s death was “just too much” for his mother. “She said, ‘I want to be with Carrie’,” Fisher told The Associated Press by phone from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where Reynolds had just died after being rushed there earlier in the day. “And then she was gone.”

No cause of death has been revealed for either woman.

Both mother and daughter reached the heights of show business success and endured significant personal struggles. Their relationship fluctuated from strained to non-existent, a theme often explored in Fisher’s writing, but later in life, they became close allies and confidantes in their battles.

Reynolds lost one husband to Elizabeth Taylor, and two other husbands exploited her for millions.

Fisher struggled with addiction and mental illness from an early age.
“There have been a few times when I thought I was going to lose Carrie,” Reynolds said during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2011. “I’ve had to walk through a lot of my tears. But she’s worth it.”

As Fisher tried to distance herself from Reynolds, she barely spoke to her mother for nearly a decade. “It’s very hard when your child doesn’t want to talk to you, and you want to talk to them, and you want to touch them, you want to hold them,” Reynolds told Winfrey. “It was a total estrangement.”

Reaction to Reynolds’ death was swift and emotional. “Debbie Reynolds, a legend and my movie mom. I can’t believe this happened one day after Carrie,” Albert Brooks, who played opposite Reynolds in “Mother,” said on Twitter.

Born Mary Frances Reynolds, she spent her early years in Depression-era poverty in El Paso, Texas. Her father, a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was transferred to California, and the family settled in Burbank, near Warner Bros studio.

The girl excelled as a Girl Scout and athlete, and played French horn and bass viola in the Burbank Youth Symphony. Friends persuaded her to enter the beauty contest for Miss Burbank, and she won over the judges.

She found superstardom quickly. After a few minor roles, MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer cast her in “Singin’ in the Rain,” despite Kelly’s objections.

At 19, with little dance experience, she matched Kelly and Donald O’Connor, two of the screen’s most masterful dancers, step for step. “Gene Kelly was hard on me, but I think he had to be,” Reynolds, who more than held her own in the movie, said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. “I had to learn everything in three to six months. Donald O’Connor had been dancing since he was three months old, Gene Kelly since he was two years old.”

After her transition from starlet to star, Reynolds became popular with teenage girls, especially after marrying Eddie Fisher, the pop singer whose fans were equally devoted, in 1955.

The couple starred in “Bundle of Joy,” mirroring the 1956 birth of Carrie. Their next child was Todd, named after Eddie’s close friend and Taylor’s husband, Mike Todd.

During this period, Reynolds had a No. 1 hit in 1957 with “Tammy,” the Oscar-nominated song from her film “Tammy and the Bachelor.” But the Cinderella story ended after Mike Todd died in a 1958 airplane crash. Fisher consoled the widow and soon announced he was leaving his wife and two children to marry Taylor.

The celebrity world went into an uproar. Taylor was criticized as a husband stealer, Fisher as a deserter. Reynolds won sympathy as the innocent victim. A cover headline in Photoplay magazine in late 1958 read: “Smiling through her tears, Debbie says: I’m still very much in love with Eddie.” Fisher’s singing career never recovered, but Reynolds’ film career flourished.

The 1964 Meredith Willson musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” with Molly’s defiant song “I Ain’t Down Yet,” earned Reynolds her only Academy Award nomination.

She also starred with Glenn Ford in “The Gazebo,” Tony Curtis in “The Rat Race,” Fred Astaire in “The Pleasure of His Company,” Andy Griffith in “The Second Time Around,” with an all-star cast in “How the West Was Won,” and Ricardo Montalban in “The Singing Nun.” She voiced Charlotte in the 1973 animated “Charlotte’s Web,” the same year she received a Tony nomination for her starring role in the Broadway revival of “Irene,” in which her daughter Fisher also appeared.

But marital woes made life outside entertainment difficult.

In 1960, Reynolds married shoe magnate Harry Karl. The marriage ended in 1973 when she discovered that Karl, a compulsive gambler, had devastated her assets.

Reynolds’ third marriage, to Virginia businessman Richard Hamlett in 1984, proved equally disastrous. In 1992, against friends’ advice, she paid $10 million to buy and convert a faded Las Vegas hotel into the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino, where she performed nightly.

Reynolds filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and accused Hamlett of making off with her money.

“All of my husbands have robbed me blind,” she said in 1999.

In her later years, Reynolds continued performing her show, traveling 40 weeks a year. She also appeared regularly on television, portraying John Goodman’s mother on “Roseanne” and a mom on “Will & Grace.” In 1996, she won critical acclaim in the title role of Albert Brooks’ movie “Mother.” Reynolds and her daughter were featured together in the HBO documentary “Bright Lights,” scheduled for release in 2017.

Eventually, she reconciled and teamed up with Taylor, long since divorced from Fisher, and two other veterans, Joan Collins and Shirley MacLaine, for the 2001 TV movie “These Old Broads.” The script, co-written by Carrie Fisher, was about aging, feuding actresses who reunite for a show. Reynolds looked back wryly on the Taylor affair, acknowledging that no man could have resisted Taylor, who died in 2011.

Reynolds found solace and strength in her renewed closeness with her daughter.

“I would say that Carrie and I have finally found happiness,” Reynolds told Winfrey in 2011. “I admire her strength and survival.”