The Pleasure of Her Company

What makes a movie star a movie star? Is it aloofness, or is it accessibility? It can be either, depending on the personality.

Throughout the years, audiences have certainly responded to aloofness. That’s why Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich were stars in the 1930s, Grace Kelly owned the ‘50s, Faye Dunaway dominated the ‘70s, and Angelina Jolie remains a household name. Somehow they seem untouchable, like goddesses.

Keeping a distance is easy. But gaining the trust of an audience, and seeming like one of us – that’s harder to do. We may want to place some stars on a pedestal, but we also want to spend time with a friend who makes us feel comfortable, who shares the laugh, lets us in on the gag.

If there was ever a star who was accessible, it was Debbie Reynolds. Whether she was hoofing in a musical, hamming in a comedy, or having a genuine dramatic moment (which she most certainly could do when given the chance), she was always someone audiences could identify with.

For men, she was the girl next door who could also jump out of a barn window, land in a pile of hay, and roll out laughing. But they knew that when she cleaned up, she cleaned up nice. For women, she was a like a trusted best pal they could turn to when they shared their hopes, dreams, and values of life and love. Debbie would understand.

She came along at a transitional time in Hollywood. The old studio system structure was beginning its decline in power and influence by the late 1940s. Reynolds was a fresh face at MGM when she made her debut in 1948, and she was groomed to be a star who could help the moviemakers compete with the looming threat of television. She got small roles in big productions, and prominent parts in smaller features. It was clear from the start that she could light up the screen with a ten-megawatt charisma.

She really hit it big with “Singin’ in the Rain” in 1952. Although Gene Kelly ran the show, the movie made her a star, and she’s a big part of why it remains one of the best – if not the best – musical of that era. 

In 1955, Frank Sinatra was in a career resurgence, and it said a lot about Reynolds’ box office appeal that she was his co-star in the sophisticated musical comedy “The Tender Trap.” While she’d made a name for herself up to then in frothy musicals, a year later she appeared in the drama “The Catered Affair,” which gave her a chance to show her acting chops. As a lower-middle-class girl whose impending wedding becomes the cause of family dysfunction, she is wonderful.

Unsinkable

The next year put her back on bright Technicolor musical footing with “Tammy and the Bachelor.” By this point, Reynolds was being typecast as good girls with a heart of gold and dirty knees, so often did she play tomboys. “The Mating Game” in 1959 was no exception. In this film, she’s a farm girl who falls for stuffy government guy Tony Randall. He steals the show, but she has lots of pratfalls that demonstrate her physical comic timing.

She took a dramatic turn the next year in “The Rat Race,” giving a biting performance as an embittered New York City show girl who takes up with an aspiring musician (Tony Curtis). This is another overlooked dramatic performance that should have led to better material.

Instead, she was cast in a series of cute little comedies, and she gamely romped with a number of handsome straight-laced guys, including Glenn Ford, Robert Wagner, Cliff Robertson, and others. The stand-out at this time was 1961’s “The Pleasure of His Company,” a witty comedy that was really more a comeback for Fred Astaire as Reynolds’ estranged rascal of a father. It’s a delightful film, and she's adorable in it.

She was part of a sprawling big-name cast in “How the West Was Won” in 1962, in which she had to age several decades. Then, after a few duds, Reynolds hit gold with the rousing musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” perhaps her best-remembered film. As the titular Molly Brown – famous for surviving the Titanic – Reynolds drew upon every trait that made her a star in the first place: a big voice and vibrant dancing, a spunky earthiness, and touching humanity. She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for its year, 1964.

a la Jackie

America was changing by the mid-1960s. A film like “The Singing Nun” in 1966 probably seemed hopelessly anachronistic to the young people it was targeted to. By that time, a president had been assassinated, the Vietnam war was on, the civil rights movement was in full force, women’s liberation was percolating and sexual revolution was on the horizon. 

That may be why her next film, “Divorce, American Style” (1967), worked so well. It took the wholesome images of its stars (Reynolds and Dick van Dyke) and flipped them upside down. They played an unhappily married couple going through the motions of upper-middle-class California suburbia. The film remains a funny, yet scathing, commentary on the American dream gone sour.

The end of the ‘60s was also the end of Reynolds’ film career. Her sunny, optimistic style simply was not a part of the changing times and tastes. (It’s the same reason that Doris Day, whose career tracks Reynolds’ almost exactly, also retired from films around this time.)

But it’s not that she stopped. From 1970 on, she tried her hand at a television sitcom, and then spent the remainder of the 1970s doing live Vegas shows. In the ‘80s and '90s it was more television, including such popular sitcoms as “Golden Girls, “Roseanne,” and “Will & Grace," and an occasional movie as a funny old lady or in cameos - playing herself in Vegas mode, such as 1992's "The Bodyguard."

 Golden Girl

She kept busy to the end, ever the trooper, ever the entertainer who just wanted to make us smile. She also reconciled with her estranged daughter, Carrie Fisher, forging a public story of mother-daughter love that resonated strongly, especially last December when they passed away one day apart.

Although Debbie Reynolds was one of our final links to Hollywood’s incredibly creative, if restrictive and hard-driving, studio era, it seemed to me that she would keep on singin’ forever, in the rain or not. 

Of course, that wasn’t meant to be. But the films in which she starred for over 20 years live on as a reminder of a specific period in movies, and in America, and represent her discipline and hard work, beauty and brass, her joy, her spontaneity, and her love of the business.

So, let the stormy clouds chase, everyone from the place. A movie with Debbie means I'm going to spend at least an hour and a half with a marvelous broad. Happy again.

Here's a top-notch dance sequence from "Singin' in the Rain," with Debbie, Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. She worked so hard in rehearsals that her feet bled. The payoff? Perfection. 

Hollywood History Footnote: In the early 1970s, MGM held an auction of its holdings of costumes and props from its glory days. The studio wanted to divest itself of these old musty properties and make some fast cash. Debbie Reynolds knew their inherent value, and began buying and collecting this vital memorabilia of the studio era. She sold off most of her collection in 2011, but her vast archive is preserved. Her effort to save not just the stuff of her own dreams of stardom, but the very costumes and props she used in her films, demonstrates that she thought beyond herself and saw the value in keeping these mementos alive. She loved not just her work, but the industry that gave her a career. You can read about it here.