Actress Debbie Reynolds is used to making comebacks. She overcame a strict childhood spent in poverty in Texas, the well-publicized break-up of her marriage to Eddie Fisher, and becoming saddled with her second husband`s gambling debts. Reynolds talks about how she turned crises into successes-and why she`s still able to take chances. See Cover Story inside.
Debbie Reynolds never goes camping. Having slept on dirt floors as a child, she simply doesn`t see the attraction. ”And,” she says, ”I don`t buy jeans with tears in them. That`s what I had to wear growing up.”
Reynolds` formative years were spent in a strictly religious, very poor but loving family where wearing makeup was prohibited and show business was looked upon as a guarantee of a life of sin.
The family literally had nothing in El Paso, Tex., living mostly on beans and rabbits, and eggs from the chickens that they kept in the back yard. Her father worked odd jobs as a carpenter and her mother took in washing.
Their lot began to improve when her father got a job with the Work Projects Administration and they moved to a real house, and improved even more when they moved to Burbank, Calif.
The next big change in Reynolds` life came when she won the Miss Burbank bathing beauty contest (in order to get a free blouse and scarf) when she was 16.
”Before that my life was average, a normal family, Girl Scouting, baton twirling,” says Reynolds. ”The real life, I would call it. What we call in show business `the civilian life.”`
But after she won that contest in 1948 there was to be little more of
”the real life.” The contest brought her a contract with Warner Bros., and she was thrust into a new world and soon gave up her childhood ambition of becoming a gym teacher. The studio was her university, where she learned about dancing and singing and cosmetics, she says.
”I began absorbing the new life at age 16,” she says, ”and by 19 I rather liked it. But I didn`t know what I was getting into and I don`t think anybody does. Everybody wants to be a star and dreams of going into show business. But when you hit it big at a young age you`re simply not prepared. And I was raised in such an old-fashioned and protected family environment that I had to learn so much in a very short time.
”I was in the star system (on contract to the studios). I just kept working and learning. I was doing about eight films a year, so I really didn`t have time to think if I was unhappy or happy. It was like going to a university for 17 years, which is how long I was making films in the system.” Her career has been a source of pleasure that her personal life never has equaled, Reynolds says. Certainly the most dramatic events in her life, though they have been played out largely in public, haven`t been part of any movie or play.
First there was her romance and marriage to Eddie Fisher, father of her children, Carrie and Todd. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons dubbed them
”America`s Sweethearts” in 1954. An adoring public watched as newspapers and magazines chronicled their every move.
When Fisher deserted her and the children to marry Elizabeth Taylor (he didn`t see the children again until they were grown) she was devastated, and the world watched that as well.
Reynolds, 59, says now that she made ”poor choices.” Fisher was a first love, she says, but it ”didn`t work out.” At 28, she married shoe magnate Harry Karl because she thought he would make a great father, a wonderful husband and that she would be protected.
Karl-who was 28 years older than Reynolds-did provide a safe and idyllic marriage, or so she thought for 14 years. Unfortunately, though, Karl, a compulsive gambler who enjoyed tipping parking lot attendants with $100 bills, all that time was gambling away his fortune and her considerable income from her non-stop movie-making and Las Vegas appearances.
”When I was 39 I was broke. I lost my homes, my cars, everything. Our divorce settlement left me with half of Harry`s debts. All I had were my children. And Harry`s three children, whom I was raising after their mother,
(actress) Marie McDonald, died. I just started all over again.”
Reynolds faced this crisis by starting a new career on Broadway. She got the lead in a revival of ”Irene.” The musical was experiencing problems in out-of-town tryouts when the late Gower Champion was brought in to direct and made sweeping changes.
”Gower Champion`s involvement in the play was a turning point for me. By coming into the production, he guaranteed our success. And without that success I wouldn`t have had the money to survive and pay off my debts. And I wouldn`t have been able to prove that a Hollywood starlet can make it on Broadway. That enabled me to get top jobs in nightclubs, which has carried me through until now.”
Reynolds was nominated for a Tony award before the play even opened in New York in 1973.
She says she`s fortunate to have a career where she can pick and choose and work as much as she wants to. ”It`s important in this business to look good,” she says. ”I work out and take care of myself. I don`t want my fans to be disappointed when they see me.”
She says she`s not afraid to take chances. And she says that when there`s a crisis, a door opens and there`s another road that works out.
Even now, Reynolds is still busy with work, including her nightclub act, and still taking chances. After years of avoiding television, she made a pilot for a half-hour situation comedy on CBS written by daughter Carrie. Reynolds will be starring in a half-hour comedy for CBS tentatively called ”Esme`s Little Nap.”
And she continues to introduce movies and do interviews on the American Movie Classics cable channel, which shows old movies in their original form and without commercial interruptions.
Her personal life finally took a turn for the better. After 14 years as a single, she married real estate developer Richard Hamlett eight years ago.
”We really are having a good time,” she says. And she now has someone she trusts to help her with the business area of her career.
Never again, however, will she sign something without reading it or allow others to make business decisions for her, a lesson she learned from her marriage to Karl.
Taking care of others always has been a big part of her life, no matter how serious her problems, and still is, she says. In this she is typical of most women, who are generally expected to be the caregivers, she says.
”When you`re young, it`s your children. I raised my own children and cared for Harry`s too, especially his youngest daughter, Tina, who was in my care until she married, in her 20s.”
”Women were given this role of caregiver,” she says, ”and it`s exhausting and impossible to meet. You have to be the mother, the wife, the nurse, the teacher, the psychiatrist, the lover. All of this attention that you have to give your husband and your children is very depleting.
”Forget the husband`s middle-age crisis. The reason he has it is the wife is so tired she can`t keep up with all his sexual desires. She needs a break and he needs to give her a few years to rest up and have the kids grow out of the house, which will give her the time to pay attention to him. Then that love would be stronger than ever.”
Even with the children grown, the caregiving goes on. Now Reynolds looks after her mother, Maxene, and Lillian Sidney, her long-time mentor and acting coach, whom Reynolds considers a second mother.
Her final advice: Women have to work at growing older and not let themselves fall to pieces.
”Women have so many more changes, physically, than men have. It`s much harder for women to get older. Stemming the tides of time is the hardest part of getting older-facing the physical challenges. We have to seek out the best way to fight it.”
Reynolds, who has her own workout video, says that keeping physically active is the answer to many of the problems of aging. And going back to school, ”even if you have to take a loan,” is the best way to keep yourself competitive with younger people, she advises.
And oh, yes. Nurture yourself.
”Now that you`ve nurtured your children, ask yourself: What can I do for myself? And who am I? What`s in me that I can bring out of myself? Never give up and never be bored.”
