Reynolds married singer/actor Eddie Fisher in 1955 and two children would follow, Carrie (1956-2016), and Todd (1958- ) (IMDb 2019). Fisher would make the acquaintance of movie star Elizabeth Taylor when Taylor was a young widow, and eventually Fisher and Reynolds divorced and Fisher married Elizabeth Taylor (IMDb 2019). Reynolds would marry twice more; second husband Harry Karl gambled her fortune away, and as a result she was unable to retire from acting. Her third and last marriage was to Richard Hamlett, and it, too, would end in divorce in 1996.

Reynolds was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Molly Brown, perhaps the most famous survivor of the Titanic, in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) (IMDb 2019). Reynolds won and was nominated for more than one Emmy, Tony, and numerous other awards for acting excellence in television, film, and stage (Debbie Reynolds Filmography 2019). She is best remembered for her musical performances, utilizing her singing and dancing talents.

In a Variety magazine tribute (Yee, 2016) Larry King wrote: “Debbie Reynolds was pure class. She was loving, talented, beautiful, unsinkable. I feel sorry for anyone who never got a chance to meet her.” William Shatner (Yee, 2016) wrote that “Debbie Reynolds was one of the last of Hollywood Royalty. It breaks my heart that she is gone. I’d hoped that my grieving was done for 2016.”

By “hoped my grieving was done” Shatner was alluding at least in part to the death of Reynolds’ beloved daughter, Carrie Fisher, best known as Princess Leia, a role model to millions of girls who saw the character as strong, tough, and resilient—not the image of the Disney princess marketed to little girls when my generation (which was also Fisher’s) were growing up. Fisher had preceded her mother in death on the day before, December 27, 2016. Reynolds’ death from a stroke was believed by many to be the result of the shock of losing her daughter; the two had become inseparable in the last part of their lives, as chronicled in the film Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (2016). The two lived next door to each other, and despite old grudges, loved each other deeply in a relationship that to some might have seemed co-dependent, but to others seemed to show that a love between a mother and daughter outlasts all disagreements.

Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd said, upon the anniversary of her mother’s death, “My momby had an otherworldly obsession with the northern lights, but I never got to see them with her. We journeyed to northern Norway to see if we might “see the heavens lift up her dark skirts and flash her dazzling privates across [our] unworthy irises”. And she did. I love you times infinity.” (2017. Dec. 28). She posted this photo of her mother as a small child with grandmother Debbie Reynolds:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2487302/debbie-reynolds-carrie-fisher-memorial/

Lourd was remembering a mother who was a role model to many, brave in her fight against mental illness and a Hollywood childhood that inflicted lasting scars. Carrie Frances Fisher was born in Burbank, CA on October 21, 1956. Her parents were show business royalty. Best known for portraying Princess (later General) Leia Organa in the Star Wars films, Fisher was also a well-known “script doctor” for Hollywood films, stand-up comedian, novelist and memoirist, and public speaker (IMDb 2019). Fisher once said (IMDb 2019) “I think of my body as a side effect of my mind.” Fisher lived in the Hollywood world where women’s bodies are considered infinitely more important than their minds, so perhaps Fisher’s brilliant mind was undervalued. She often joked about how George Lucas was always trying to get her to lose weight for her role as Princess Leia, and insisted that she go braless in the original film. Although Fisher is gone, fans may still see new work from her as she reprised her role in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017) and she will appear in at least one other Star Wars film. Ah, the magic of Hollywood.

In the documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (2016) finished shortly before their deaths, Fisher recounts her love/hate relationship with Princess Leia. She discusses times when she met the fans at autograph sessions, one of which is depicted in the films. Although she often wondered why so many people loved what she thought of as a rather one-dimensional role, she saw first-hand how much that role meant to people, and was touched by it. So she continued to do personal appearances and sign autographs for Leia fans.

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1349017-international-womens-day

How can we say how much we appreciate that wise-cracking, braless, freedom-loving, in-a-forever-on-and-off-relationship-with-Han-Solo princess? It is an irony that she actually is a Disney princess at last, Disney having bought George Lucas’ Lucasfilm in 2012 (Krantz, M., Snider, M., Della Cava, M. & Alexander, B (2012 Oct. 30). Regardless, no one would ever mistake Leia Organa for Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. Her contemporaries, like myself, saw her as a feminist icon, an antidote to what we were supposed to see as “princesslike” behavior in the earlier Disney films. A popular meme in 2018 shows Princess Leia with the caption “A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance.”

From Carrie Fisher’s one-woman play Wishful Drinking. https://carriefisher.com/about/

In 2007, Fisher performed her one-woman play Wishful Drinking in the Geffen playhouse in Los Angeles (Carriefisher.com 2019). In this photo from the play she is shown satirizing her distinctive hairstyle from Star Wars.

Her thinly veiled autobiographical novel, Postcards from the Edge (1987) detailed a woman’s conflict with her mother than was very much like her own. It won the Los Angeles Pen award for Best First Novel, and was made into a hit movie in 1990. (Carriefisher.com 2019). In The Princess Diarist (2016) Fisher worked her journals from the early days of filming Star Wars into a book that illuminated for the fans her first-hand experience of the filming. Star Wars, what would become “Episode IV,” was filmed in 1976. In The Princess Diarist (2016) Fisher recounts some interesting tidbits about that year, the bicentennial for the United States. “Sal Mineo was stabbed to death…Caitlyn Jenner, still Bruce then, won the Gold Medal in the Olympic decathlon and the title “The World’s Greatest Athlete…” Son of Sam killed his first victim…” and other singular facts from the year (p. 2.) Fisher would write seven books altogether.

Fisher was married once, to musical legend Paul Simon. His song “Hearts and Bones” is about their relationship (Wikipedia 2019). She often called Hollywood agent Bryan Lourd, father of her daughter Catherine Fisher “Billie” Lourd, her husband, but they were never married (Wikipedia 2019). He left her for a man. Other relationships would follow, and Fisher would admit in her last years that she had a brief affair with Harrison Ford during the original Star Wars film, when he was 33 and married and she was 19 (Wikipedia 2019). Her friendship with Ford also included heavy drinking, leading her to other substance abuse later on. Like her mother, Fisher was unlucky in love.

It is believed that Fisher died from a massive cardiac arrest which occurred while she was asleep on an airplane. Her official cause of death was reported in the Los Angeles Times as “sleep apnea and other factors, including drug use.” (Winton, R & Dolan, J 2017 June 16). She died after an 11-hour flight from London to Los Angeles. Fisher had battled bipolar disorder as well as alcohol and drug abuse for most of her life. She was believed by her family and friends to be clean and sober at the time of her death, so finding out that this was not true must have been doubly upsetting for them.

As it was for those of us who were her fans, who wished that life had been easier for her. I never met Carrie Fisher, but as with Anthony Bourdain, I always feel something special for celebrities of my own vintage. When they leave us too soon, it leaves an empty place inside. Fisher had said in the past that using drugs helped her feel more “normal,” especially in coping with the manic side of her bipolar disorder (Wikipedia 2019).

I did meet Carrie Fisher’s mother—twice. The first time was in 1970, during the pre-auction viewing at MGM Studios. Reynolds had already offered MGM $5 million for the whole collection; they put it all up for auction instead. That is where I first met Debbie Reynolds, at the public viewing of the memorabilia preceding the auction. I was there with my parents and my grandmother, and my father would eventually attend the auction and buy a gun used in a Western. At the viewing, my grandmother found Reynolds remaking a bed that was on display, and gazing at it as if deciding whether to bid on it. Since she was a huge fan of Reynolds, we encouraged my grandmother to approach her and speak to her. She did so, and Reynolds was very sweet and welcoming, and enthusiastically gave her an autograph.

Reynolds bought as much as she could of the costumes and other memorabilia at the auction. And then she opened the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino, with the Hollywood Museum of her memorabilia onsite.

Las Vegas must hate its own history—I found a lot of conflicting information on the opening date, operation, and even the name of the Hollywood Memorabilia collection onsite. It would take much more digging for me to find reliable sources, but the best I can do is say that I was there for the 1993 opening and met Ms. Reynolds again there. A photo I found with a not-very-accurate article showed both Todd and Carrie Fisher with her, but they were not there when I visited. She was very excited about her new casino—one would think she’d had enough of gambling after Harry Karl—primarily because of its Hollywood Memorabilia collection, and a theatre where she could perform. As I remember, she was gracious and welcoming and very excited about the collection, and about luring film fans to her property, which had formerly been the Paddlewheel Casino, on Convention Way (Clarion Hotel and Casino 2019). Reynolds was known for greeting her fans and signing autographs after her shows.

Although her son Todd Fisher was listed as the manager of the hotel, the hotel quickly lost its funding and casino license due to alleged mismanagement by Jackpot Enterprises (Clarion Hotel and Casino 2019). Frankly, the place never really took off in the popular imagination. The hotel went bankrupt and was sold in 2000, eventually opening as a Clarion Hotel, the only one with a casino (Clarion Hotel and Casino 2019). In what seems like an ominous portent, the building was demolished in 2015, a year before Reynolds and Fisher passed away (Clarion Hotel and Casino 2019).

The world was changing. Film fans changed, and had shorter and shorter memories. There are virtually no Hollywood collections in Las Vegas—even the new Planet Hollywood hotel and casino holds no film-oriented themes whatsoever.
My enthusiasm for Hollywood history has not dimmed, however, and perhaps someday when more serious historians look at the true value of American film as art and as a valuable adjunct to our shared heritage, Reynolds’ collection will once again see the light of day. I know she’d like that. I’d like that too. But I wish Carrie Fisher would be there to poke fun at all of it.

References