The fan magazines called her "The New First Lady of Hollywood" and one of them stated that her salary had risen from $75,000 to the millions. "Maybe," ventured the same source, "the cloud of her break-up from Eddie Fisher had this silver-lining because it won her great public sympathy."

Debbie's brother Bill moved in with her and the children the week after Eddie left.  She said of him at the time: "Bill's a real right arm and a left one, too.  He's like my dad.  They can both build or fix anything.  You should see the work they do around here on a weekend when my mother and dad come over.  In addition to being such a handy man, Bill loves kids and he rough-houses with my Todd and Carrie, which is just what they need."

A lively and playful comedienne, Debbie ventured into a number of romantic comedies which served to showcase her natural comedic skill.  1959 brought Say One for Me, with Debbie as Father Bing Crosby’s most devoted parishioner and the good girl to Robert Wagner's sly wolf; It Started With a Kiss, with Glenn Ford, as a nightclub dancer who marries serviceman Ford right off the bat; and with Ford again in The Gazebo, a comedic spoof of Hitchcockian films.  The day after she'd finished The Gazebo, she was off to Paramount starting work on the impressive film version of Garson Kanin’s The Rat Race (1960).  In this heavier dramatic role, she starred opposite Tony Curtis as a tough girl struggling to survive in the rat race that is life in New York City.

Always a devoted mother, she didn't work at first after the births of her children, and she later lost a picture at Paramount because she refused to work Wednesday afternoons when Carrie's Girl Scout troop met.  It was out of concern for the children that in 1960 she married Harry Karl, a multi-millionaire shoe-manufacturer and business mogul, within a year of her divorce from Fisher.  "I wanted to have a father for my children.  I was also looking for security.  Harry was 18 years older than I, wealthy and not in show business - all good signs.  I thought he would never leave me."

Married for 13 years, they were happy together for the first seven and Karl did indeed prove himself to be a good father.  Though they both wanted children, Debbie had two heartbreaking miscarriages in the early years of their marriage, tragedies later discovered to be caused by an unusual vitamin deficiency.  

Karl was a heavy gambler, and he overextended himself, borrowing millions of dollars.  When his business failed and the bill collectors came knocking, Debbie found herself personally responsible for her husband's debts, owing to the notes she had signed and California's community property law.  "We had a mansion in Beverly Hills, servants, Rolls-Royces, everything.  I took it for granted.  I thought it would always go on, which is the wrong attitude for anyone to take.  You should always protect your money.  You should know where it is and be smart enough so that when your husband hands you papers to sign, you know what they mean.  I didn't."  Her own considerable fortune - estimated at over $15 million - was also gone.  

And Karl himself became of no help.  "He just fell down at the end.  He just left me there to fend for myself and the children.  I resented it very much."

"I was 39 at the time, an age when you should be entering a more comfortable stage in your life.  You have everything you've worked hard for, then suddenly you have nothing.  You have $2 million in debts and children who are still living with you.  The banks took everything - the house, the beach house, all my jewelry and art.  I had to sell it all, and for very little money, because when people know you're broke and desperate, they drive a very hard bargain."

Home may have been devastating, but work was not.  Debbie scored one of the triumphs of her career in 1964 as The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a frontierswoman who rises to wealth and power when her husband strikes it rich in Colorado and goes on to become a heroine when she survives the sinking of the Titanic. Though the part would bring Debbie her only Oscar nomination, she was not the first choice for the role. In fact, she had to fight just to get the director to direct her.

Harve Presnell was a natural for films and would be the only member of the original cast invited to reprise his role on screen. As successful as Tammy Grimes had been on Broadway, however, Hollywood already had an ideal choice for Molly Brown, Shirley MacLaine, and she was eager to play the role. No sooner had she signed than legal complications forced her to withdraw from the role, which was then offered to Debbie. She jumped at the opportunity to star in a big musical of her own, even though she had to accept a lower fee than had been offered to MacLaine.

Debbie's next hurdle was director Charles Walters. Although he had scored a hit directing her opposite Frank Sinatra in The Tender Trap (1955), he had his heart set on casting MacLaine as Molly Brown. He even tried to convince her to turn the part down. When she asked why he thought she was wrong for it, he told her, "You're much too short for the role." Debbie quipped, "How short is the part?" then told him he was just plain wrong. His doubts continued through the location shooting in Colorado. In fact, he gave her so little direction that Debbie turned to her dear friend Lillian Burns Sidney, an accomplished acting coach with whom she had worked in her early days at MGM, to help her with the part. Finally, when the rushes started coming in, Walters conceded that she was right for the role. His doubts came back, however, when it came time to shoot Debbie's biggest dance number, "He's My Friend." He even suggesting cutting it, claiming it was too tough for her to learn, but she insisted. MGM had slashed the film's budget because of cost overruns on Doctor Zhivago, so Walters had to try to get the number in as few takes as possible. As insurance, he had TWO cameras simultaneously film a long take of the seven-minute number, a television technique rarely used on film. Debbie pulled the number off without a hitch, though one of her male dancing partners fainted after it was over.

The Unsinkable Molly Brown turned out to be a huge success for MGM, becoming the third highest-grossing film of 1964. The picture garnered six Oscar nominations, including Debbie's Best Actress nod and helped make her the #2 box office draw in the world.

As the studio system gradually disintegrated, Debbie turned to free-lancing.  Next was a weak but amusing comedy directed by Vincente Minnelli, Goodbye, Charlie (Lauren Bacall had done it on stage and 20^th Century Fox had originally bought it for Marilyn Monroe), in which she was again teamed with Tony Curtis.  Then she went on to play what she has described as one of her favorite parts, The Singing Nun (1966), the true story of Sister Ann, a Belgian nun who became a most unusual '60s pop-star with her chart-topping 1963 song - "Dominique" [listen].

Raising her children, as well as three of Karl's from a former marriage, kept Debbie busy and her on-screen work slowly began to decline during the mid-sixties.  Her vehicles continued to be full of good-natured fun, buoyed by her sincere charm and energy; gradually, though, the new frankness in films began to date her image, and when she finally did try Doris Day-style sex farce in pictures like Divorce American Style (1967) and How Sweet It Is (1968), even that vogue was waning.  She was still considered the girl-next-door.  "Unfortunately, even though I'd matured and changed, I was still thought of in those terms," she says, explaining why the casting directors weren't calling.  "The image of me was that strong."  A few television spots and a first try at an NBC sitcom, "The Debbie Reynolds Show" did little to stem the tide.

Fully occupied with an always eventful life off-screen, Debbie stepped off the screen for a time and onto the stage, continuing the popular nightclub act she'd originated in Las Vegas in the early '60s.  She made a return to films in 1971, and also acted as producer for What’s the Matter With Helen?, a camp horror movie co-starring Shelley Winters.  Debbie starred as a sexy, resourceful dance instructor to Winters' psychotic Helen.  The offbeat story, set in 1920's Hollywood, makes it one of the unusual gems of Debbie's filmography, as does Curtis Harrington's directorial flair, not to mention two rousing dance numbers, reminiscent of her early musicals.

Determined to pay back the extensive debts her second marriage had saddled her with but lacking any film offers, she took to the road and embarked on a new phase in her career.  With a number of stage appearances already behind her, including what one Las Vegas columnist touted as being "one of the town's most lucrative contracts", she signed on to star on Broadway in the sensational revival of "Irene", ultimately winning the 1974 Tony Award.  By this time she'd polished the nightclub talent she had first tested in the early '60s and having put together a rousing show, took a solo turn in Australia and made a stop at the London Palladium. In 1977 she teamed with Molly Brown co-star Harve Presnell in "Annie Get Your Gun", which played in San Francisco. 

Having comfortably settled herself in a tiny cottage in North Hollywood with her Broadway earnings, Debbie bought a property in the same area, went to great pains to have it refurbished, and established the Debbie Reynolds Professional Rehearsal Studios, which has since become one of the entertainment industry's leading rehearsal, as well as professional, training studios. Some of Hollywood’s brightest stars and a new generation of Hollywood hopefuls take lessons and rehearse for shows there.

She also basked in the boom of nostalgia for her studio heyday, appearing in the glorious "That's Entertainment" (1974) and "That's Entertainment III" (1994), which served to introduce a new generation of moviegoers to the Golden Age of Hollywood, as did her turn as host of "Debbie Reynolds' Movie Memories" on the cable channel American Movie Classics.  

Never having abandoned her wish to be a gym teacher, Debbie's always been in top physical form, and in 1983 she put together an extremely popular exercise program on video entitled "Do It Debbie's Way".  She commented at the time of its release: "I've had a light workout that I've done forever.  Women would ask me how I stay fit, and I'd say, 'Well, I don't like aerobics, I don't like working hard, I just like looking good.'  This program will let you do it."  Scores of women did it Debbie's way and benefited from the entertaining workout and still continue to do so.   

Five years later, Debbie published her widely popular memoir entitled simply, "Debbie, My Life".  In an interview on its publication she explained: ''I wanted to write a woman's story, I wanted to explain that you can suffer and be taken in by men and still survive.'' This magnificent autobiography serves to reassure readers that despite her travails, the sunny, upbeat Debbie on the big screen is not so far from the truth.  In Turner Classic Movie's recent interview, she discussed the idea of updating the last quarter of the book and retitling it "Unsinkable Debbie".

Unsinkable everyone calls her - a title all too frequently nabbed by every Tom, Dick and Harry penning a Reynolds article - yet it is the essential adjective that simply must be used to describe her.  She is a survivor.  Her strong faith and sense of humor have helped her weather the storms in life, including three marriages gone wrong, grand-scale financial setbacks, and, in recent years, the passing of loved ones.

"Surviving is a question of struggling through lift," she explains.  "I don't believe in giving up.  You can be knocked down, as I have been.  But you're down only if you want to stay down ... You have to believe in the fact that you can survive.  If you have faith - and a sense of humor - you can survive anything."

Since the early 1970's Debbie has been actively involved in a project close to her heart, the collection and preservation of memorabilia from Hollywood's first half-century of film making, gathering thousands of costumes, props and mementos of Hollywood's studios and their greatest stars.  Debbie made her biggest venture into the market for movie nostalgia in the '90s when she and husband number three, Richard Hamlett, a Virginia real estate developer, purchased a Las Vegas hotel and casino, renovated them, and added on the Hollywood Movie Museum, packed with the memorabilia she had been collecting for decades. She performed constantly at the hotel's nightclub to make the enterprise fly, but it was sadly beset with financial woes.  Her love of the work and her finely honed presence kept her afloat.  The marriage to Hamlett ended in divorce in 1994, partly because of the problems involving the casino venture.  With help from his friends, she says, he caused her hotel to go broke. She's spent $3.9 million suing him, and it isn't over yet.  "I went down in a blaze. I spent eight years of my life and probably $12 million lost."  Todd Fisher remained at her side and dropped his own career to help his mother. Debbie called him "the only man who has never left me."  

In 1992 Debbie appeared briefly as herself in the Whitney Houston/Kevin Kostner hit The Bodyguard, and a small role in Oliver Stone's 1993 Vietnam tale Heaven and Earth marked her second tentative step towards returning to Hollywood on a regular basis.  In a famous quote, she said of her absence from the screen: "I stopped making movies because I don't like taking my clothes off. Maybe it's realism, but in my opinion, it's utter filth."

A celluloid Reynolds Renaissance began when writer/director/actor Albert Brooks threw out his casting net in search of an older actress who hadn't been seen in movies in recent years for his hysterically funny script, Mother (1996). He had met with Nancy Reagan and Esther Williams (but offered neither the role), and had sought Doris Day, but discovered she was retired. In the course of checking out more than 300 actresses, Brooks called old friend Carrie Fisher one day and asked about casting her mother as the difficult title character Beatrice Henderson. "Carrie said, 'What is the part - a lovable monster?'" Brooks recalls. "I said yes. Carrie said she'd be perfect." Carrie then sent her mother the script, but Debbie, who'd been appearing nightly at her Las Vegas theatre, didn't read it for weeks.

"I don't like picking up my mail," Debbie explains, "It's always so much. It's very heavy. And those big Federal Express packages require me finding a butcher knife, and I've never figured out how those arrows work. So I let them sit there."

Carrie pestered her until Debbie agreed to read the script. She loved it, but again Carrie had to badger her into flying to Los Angeles and auditioning for Brooks. "I had never auditioned in my life," she said. "I was under contract to MGM for 17 years and when you're under contract, they just put you in the picture."  

Brooks was so impressed by her audition that he cast her after she read only two scenes.

Beatrice Henderson provided an ideal showcase for Debbie. At once sunny and edgy, matronly and a little sexy, Debbie's slyly understated performance scored her a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy and the widespread attention she received helped pave the way for her casting as Kevin Kline's mother in the highly acclaimed In and Out (1997). 

But Debbie offers something for the kids, too.  From the beloved story of Charlotte's Web (most people under 30 are invariably shocked to learn that Debbie Reynolds was the voice of Charlotte) to her recent work in the Rugrats television and film series as well as the celebrated Halloweentown movies, she is continually a hit among children - an enduring inspiration for scores of young fans who appreciate her wise-cracking sense of humor and a seemingly never-ending supply of vim and vigor.

Sadly, the millennium brought the deaths of Debbie's mother, Maxene, at 86, and Lillian Burns-Sidney, her friend, coach and adviser for over 45 years.  "My mother had seven strokes and not much quality of life," she says. Her father, Ray, who had Alzheimer's disease, passed away in 1986.

Now, Debbie is nearly as famous for being Carrie Fisher's mother as for being Debbie Reynolds.  The two worked together last year in their much-anticipated television project, These Old Broads.  Written by Carrie and Elaine Pope of Seinfeld fame, the movie features Debbie, Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins as feuding actresses who are unhappily reunited and turned into cult icons when one of their old films is re-released. Even after all these years, their rivalries remain as fresh as their mouths - and their looks. "We all tried hard to look good in the movie," Debbie said. "We don't look like young girls, but we look like terrific broads, which is what we're playing."  Elizabeth Taylor, in what amounted to a small role, plays the actresses' agent, who is as legendary as her clients. She lands them a lucrative new deal, but rehearsals quickly dredge up old rivalries that jeopardize their renewed fame.  While it occasionally had its funny moments, These Old Broads ended up a disappointment, yet managed to top the competition, drawing 15.2 million viewers, becoming the fifth highest watched TV movie of the season.

Between concert tours and the occasional film, Debbie often pops up on television: she has appeared on Alice, The Love Boat, Wings, The Golden Girls, Roseanne, Touched By An Angel; and currently she's a member of the guest cast of the award winning NBC comedy Will and Grace. She received an Emmy nomination for her performance as Bobbi Adler, the flamboyant mother of title character Grace Adler, played by Deborah Messing.

"I play Grace’s Mommy ... They wrote the mother really, I don’t know the right words . . . fiesty’s not it, but she’s full of it. I like to play a role where the woman is full of spirit and funny and combative and almost hen-pecky with her daughter because I think it gives a lot of pizzazz. The show is so funny. You don’t want to go on and just be a straight character. You want to be a bit wacko yourself. They are all really nice kids. They all work very well together. They have a great improvisational feeling for one another, very gifted. Sean plays the piano and Eric sings and Megan, too. Anything goes, definitely."

She has been a life-long supporter and fund raiser for the Girl Scouts, and founder-president of the Thalians, a charitable organization which has raised millions for emotionally disturbed children.  The Thalians hold a glitzy ball every year in Los Angeles that is always packed with dozens of stars, with one singled out as the guest of honor - Phyllis Diller got her turn in 2002 and was treated to a wacky impression of herself by Debbie.

Debbie's also fund raising and working to find a permanent home for her memorabilia collection that has been displaced since the loss of the Las Vegas complex in 1997.  By continuing her concert circuit she's able to pay for the tremendous storage costs that the valuable assemblage demands.  But finding a suitable site for the collection has been an endless struggle and carries a high financial cost.  "It's a very tough sell today," she says. "This is war time, and not an easy time to raise money. But that still doesn't stop you trying to achieve."  She hopes that with luck, she'll have the collection permanently on display by 2004.

Today Debbie is involved in a number of activities, entertaining and public speaking, aside from film and television work.  But she focuses primarily on her nightclub act. She's performed in concert in every major American city, not to mention venues abroad, touring on the average of forty-two weeks a year in a variety show that blends laughter, song, and dance - including a screened review of her most famous films, Broadway show tunes, classic movie blooper reels, a tribute to Judy Garland, and top-notch impressions of stars such as Katharine Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dolly Parton, Cher and an occasional Jimmy Stewart.  Her splendid Bette Davis imitation is outstandingly funny.  Accompanied only by piano, a canned orchestra and an ever-ready percussionist, Debbie continually reveals her notorious zest for fun, ad-libs like crazy, and has the audience at her feet, clamoring for more.  

"I’m having fun, and I’m doing what I love to do," she says. "It’s quite simple, really. A long time ago, when I was young, I realized that I loved to sing, dance, and make people laugh. The trick is finding something that you like and sticking with it," she muses. "You know, age is kind of a surprising experience to me. Just yesterday, it seems, I was 39. Then, 52. Now, all of a sudden, I’m 70. But I like that. It means that I’m doing the right things. I don’t define my life and my happiness on a number."

Happiness abounds though - Debbie is embraced by a lively bunch - a tight-knit and loving family of which she is very proud.  In 1992, Carrie made Debbie a grandmother, giving birth to a beautiful baby girl, Billie Catherine.  Debbie says of Billie: "My granddaughter likes Tammy and the Bachelor. She calls me Aba Dabba instead of Grandma ... she already does dialects like me, and impressions, and she loves to sing." 

A bundle of energy and charm and beauty, Debbie Reynolds remains a highly talented and versatile actress, a celebrated American fixture, a genuine personality, and one who stands today as a symbol of sweeter times, still enriching the lives of millions with her laughter.