Debbie Reynolds: Personal Memories

Except for a handful on the pages of specific films or performers over the years, starting threads is something I just don't do, and have never done here on the CFB. But the passing of Debbie Reynolds, a woman of uncommon resilience and determination and an indefatigable performer of endless versatility, so soon after the untimely death of her beloved daughter Carrie hurts just too damned much not to attempt some amelioration through an appreciative remembrance of a force (appropriate word) to be reckoned with.

Exactly one week and one day before the phenomenon that was Star Wars burst upon audiences, Debbie Reynolds opened in a Gower Champion-directed revival of Annie Get Your Gun at San Francisco's Orpheum Theater. My squeeze at the time, a dancer-singer-actor named Marc, was in the company, and I had flown from L.A. to see it, and him. And that night backstage, I encountered Reynolds (only a quick "hello") for what turned out to be the first of many times.

The next was the following Sunday, when the show was dark. Debbie had insisted that, while in San Francisco, we all had to see the drag show at the city's legendary Finocchio's. During it, an apologetic Debbie leaned over and groaned acerbically to Marc and me, "This used to be SO much better...these guys are dogs." She wasn't being mean. She was being honest, and merely hated anything less than tip-top showmanship. Above all, her concern seemed to be for our enjoyment rather than hers. I remember her saying once, "Every audience deserves the very best any performer can give."

The following Friday, I met Carrie Fisher backstage at the Orpheum: "This is Debbie's daughter, Carrie." That's all I knew about her until that Sunday, when Debbie said, "I wanna go see Carrie's movie." Yes, that movie. "But," she added, "I don't want to stand in line for hours."

"Why don't you just call the theater and talk to the manager," Marc suggested, "I'm sure he'll be happy to accommodate you in some way."

"No, I don't want anybody making a fuss," Debbie said, "and I'll go there as early as I have to. I don't mind waiting as long as everybody else, I just want to avoid doing it out on the sidewalk."

Marc said, "Well, we were planning to see it too," so it was arranged that he and I would go stand in line, which we did, and that she would arrive 15 or 20 minutes before showtime. When we saw her pull into the parking lot in her '71 Chevy sedan, Marc went to meet her, and moments later returned: "C'mon."

The manager was delighted to have her, and allowed us all into the lobby until the previous show let out. He then insisted on escorting Debbie (and us) to the best seats in the now-empty house before letting the line in (over Debbie's protests of, "No, no, just open the doors and we'll find seats along with everybody else," but he wouldn't hear of it). Weird thing is, Marc and I were so dazzled by the film that I honestly don't recall what Reynolds had to say about it amidst our excited buzzing. Funny, the things you remember...and the things you don't (in the words of another great screenplay).

In July, Annie Get Your Gun had moved to Los Angeles' Dorothy Chandler Pavilion before a hoped-for Broadway run. During rehearsals for fine-tuning, I had gone down to have lunch with Marc one day. In the house, 20-something dancers and singers were sprawled on the stage, huffing and puffing after the morning's work. On her way out, the fresh-as-a-daisy and twice-their-age human dynamo Debbie said, "I can't understand how these kids are so tired."

There were other encounters in the following weeks at dinners and parties, but my last one occurred eight years later, when I was working at a company that was producing a "Best Of Broadway" show for PBS's Great Performances. Midway through taping, technical difficulties halted the proceedings. While luminaries such as Angela Lansbury, Chita Rivera, Ethel Merman, Robert Morse, Jerry Orbach and others retreated to their dressing rooms to wait out the delay, Reynolds took the stage by herself, and kept the audience entertained for 45 minutes with impromptu stories, jokes, impressions, Q&A and everything else she could think of, and it was better than anything that ended up in the finished show. She was a ham in the best sense of the word, by which I mean this: an audience was there to see a show, and she was damned if she was going to let them sit there staring at an empty stage for three quarters of an hour.

She was the ultimate embodiment of the word, "trouper," and was simply born to entertain. And how she did. As a review of that Annie Get Your Gun production said at the time, "It leaves one to wonder what the true limits of Reynolds' talent are."

I remember the disbelief I felt when a coworker came into my office one morning two years later and said sadly, "Fred died," and I knew exactly who he meant. There had always been Astaire, and it was inconceivable that, suddenly, there wouldn't always be Astaire. The concept of death and that of Fred Astaire somehow didn't fit together.

Same with Debbie Reynolds: it's just beyond imagination that this bundle of endless energy and talent will no longer be with us.

But of course, she, like Fred, always will.

Debbie Reynolds seemed one of the immortals while she lived, and now she's truly among them.





Poe! You are...avenged!