Day after daughter’s death, Debbie Reynolds passes away

Los Angeles, December 29 

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Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds has died one day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, passed away. She was 84. 

On Tuesday, her daughter, the “Star Wars” actress, author and screenwriter Carrie died of complications from a heart attack she had suffered four days earlier while on a flight from London to LA.

“She wanted to be with Carrie,” her son Todd Fisher said. Reynolds was taken to hospital from Carrie’s Beverly Hills house after suffering a stroke.

Born Mary Frances Reynolds in 1932, she got her first break at the age of 16, when Warner Bros. signed the newly crowned Miss Burbank as a contract player and gave her the stage name “Debbie”.

The actress quickly became America’s sweetheart, appearing in “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) and marrying pop idol Eddie Fisher, with whom she had two children.

Fisher left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor in 1958, setting in motion a messy divorce and public relations scandal that Carrie would later liken to the Aniston-Pitt-Jolie saga of the 21st century.

When the Reynolds-Fisher divorce became final on May 12, 1959, Carrie was two and Taylor and Fisher were wed less than four hours later. Taylor would go on to divorce Fisher in 1964 after she fell for Richard Burton on the sets of “Cleopatra” (1963).

Also a singer, Reynolds’ recording of “Tammy” spent five weeks at Number 1 in 1957 and was nominated for an Academy Award for best original song.

She also scored top 25 Billboard hits with “A Very Special Love” in 1958 and “Am I That Easy to Forget” in 1960.

Reynolds had one of the principal roles in 1962’s all-star Cinerama epic “How the West Was Won”.

The actress earned her first and only Oscar nomination in 1964 for the musical comedy “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” and went on to star in her own short-lived NBC sitcom, “The Debbie Reynolds Show”. In 2000, she won an Emmy for her recurring role as Debra Messing’s feisty mom on NBC’s “Will and Grace”.

In 2013, Reynolds released a memoir, “Unsinkable”, and appeared that same year in the HBO movie “Behind the Candelabra”. Reynolds is survived by her son Todd, a TV commercial director from her marriage to Fisher, and granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd. — PTI