Actress and star of Singin’ in the Rain

Born: April 1, 1932;

Died: December 28, 2016

DEBBIE Reynolds, who has died aged 84 a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher, was an actress, singer and cabaret performer who, like Fisher, suddenly became a huge star when she was still just a teenager. In Fisher’s case, the film that did it was Star Wars; in Reynolds’ case, it was Singin’ in the Rain, the romantic comedy that was only a modest hit when it was first released but is now considered one of the greatest movie musicals of all time.

In the film, Reynolds plays a young chorus girl who ends up working for a silent film star making his first talkie. The creator and star of the movie was Gene Kelly, the great musical and dance star, whose dance routine performed in the pouring rain has become much celebrated, spoofed and repeated. Reynolds, on the other hand, had only had a few small parts in movies before she was chosen for Singin’ in the Rain and had to learn to keep up with Kelly and co-star Donald O’Connor.

It was not easy for Reynolds – Kelly and O’Connor were trained dancers and she was not ¬ but her performance in the film is charming, cute and affecting and led to her becoming one of the biggest movie stars of the 1950s and 60s, mainly in musicals and lighter romantic comedies - in 1964, she was nominated for an Oscar for The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a fictionalised version of the life of Margaret Brown, who survived the sinking of the Titanic

However, Reynolds also had some success in straight roles – the epic How The West Was Won, for instance, and The Catered Affair with Bette Davis ¬ but in later years, with the popularity of musicals drooping, she became better known as a cabaret star in Las Vegas. Her personal life also attracted attention: her first husband, the singer Eddie Fisher, left her for her best friend Elizabeth Taylor, and her second husband, Harry Karl, gambled away both his and Reynolds’ fortunes and left her bankrupt.

Reynolds was born Mary Francis Reynolds on April 1 1932, in El Paso, Texas, where her father worked as a mechanic for the railways. When he lost his job in the Great Depression, the family moved to Burbank in California where Reynolds’ father found a job with the Southern Pacific railroad.

Reynolds’s first brush with acting came after she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest and was spotted by Warner Bros, who offered her a contract while she was still just 16 years old. Her first role was a bit part in the 1948 Bette Davis comedy June Bride; she then won a Golden Globe nomination for most promising newcomer for Three Little Words with Fred Astaire in 1950.

Her role as Kathy Selden in Singin’ in the Rain came the following year. It was a risk for Gene Kelly, who was the creative force behind the film, as Reynolds had never danced before, but from her first number – jumping out of a giant cake to sing All I Do is Dream of You – she was charming and loveable. “I had to learn all of that in six months,” said Reynolds. “I had to keep up with the boys.”

The film centred on Kelly’s character Don Lockwood, a silent film star making his first talkie, but its memorable numbers - Make 'Em Laugh, Good Morning, as well as the title song – have made it one of the most loved movies from the Golden Age of musicals.

Reynolds also believed that her role in the movie worked because the character was a lot like her. “It relates to young people,” she said. “They like it because it has life and the story is so simple – it’s boy meets girl. The character was also a lot like me at the time – I was 17 – this was a young girl who wanted to be in movies. I was just lucky that they put me in a part that suited me.”

Although not immediately the huge success that it would become, Singin’ in the Rain established the young Reynolds as a star and a series of hit roles followed including Pansy Hammer in The Affairs Of Dobie Gillis (1953), Jane Hurley in The Catered Affair (1956), Tammy in Tammy and the Batchelor (1957), Molly Brown in The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Sister Ann in The Singing Nun (1966), a biopic of the Belgian nun Soeur Sourire who composed the song Dominique. She also appeared in The Tender Trap as a woman determined to trick a bachelor, played by Frank Sinatra, into marriage.

Reynolds made The Tender Trap the same year she married the 27-year-old crooner Eddie Fisher. Sinatra warned her off Fisher (“singers are never loyal,” he told her) but Reynolds was smitten and the couple became the constant front-page stars of the fan magazines. They had two children: Fisher, who was born in 1956, and her brother Todd, born two years later.

The marriage ended sourly though when Fisher left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor, whose husband Mike Todd had died in a plane crash. Reynolds and Taylor had been close friends so it was a bitter blow for Reynolds even though her seemingly perfect marriage had been in trouble before Taylor became involved.

Many years later, Reynolds and Taylor were also able to repair their friendship when they happened to be on the same cruise. “I went on a boat trip,” said Reynolds, “ and there was a lot of luggage arriving and I said ‘who has that much luggage?’ and it was Elizabeth. I sent a note saying “let’s not have a problem with all this, let’s just talk and have dinner together” and we went to dinner.”

Reynolds eventually divorced Fisher in 1959 and she continued to have a loving relationship with her ex-husband's children. She also married again, first to businessman Harry Karl, and then Richard Hamlett in 1984.

The marriage to Karl ended particularly badly. He had a hairdresser visit him every morning but it emerged later that he was actually a pimp and was procuring girls for Karl. Karl was also a terrible gambler and managed to lose his, and Reynolds’ fortunes.

“He was a zillionaire, and I had a lot of my own money, so I never worried about it but somehow during our marriage he lost all of his money gambling and all of my money – it just disappeared and shattered our lives,” said Reynolds. “It’s as if somebody swallowed your stomach and your heart – everything’s gone.” At its worst, Karl owed $10million which Reynolds had to pay off.

Asked why it had happened, Reynolds’ said it was because she had a very traditional approach to marriage. "I really can't give you an answer, other than to say financially I'm very Victorian,” she said. “I believe the man is supposed to run the business downtown, and the woman takes care of the family uptown. I always turned my money over to the husband. Shows you how dumb you are, and that's why I don't date or go out, and I would never marry again."

As for Reynolds's career, by the late 1960s and 70s, the Hollywood musical was dead and she had re-invented herself as a cabaret performer. She also appeared on television, including in her own eponymous show, an I Love Lucy style comedy that ran in the late 1960s.

She also had a successful career on Broadway, making her debut in 1973 in a revival of the 1919 musical hit Irene. It ran for 18 months and gained Reynolds a Tony nomination; she also appeared in successful runs of Annie Get Your Gun and a stage version of one her biggest movie hits, The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1989.

Reynolds also continued to make films intermittently, carving a niche for herself from the 90s onwards as the eccentric mother. In 1997 she appeared in In and Out, a romantic comedy starring Kevin Kline as a teacher coming to terms with his sexuality and in 2013, she played Liberace’s mother in Michael Douglas’s biopic of the performer, Behind the Candelabra. On television, Reynolds also had a recurring role as the mother of Grace in the sitcom Will & Grace.

Away from acting, Reynolds was known for her charity work, devoting 56 years to The Thalians mental health charity, from its foundation in 1955 until 2011.

In the last few days, Reynolds had paid tribute to her daughter Carrie Fisher after her death. She wrote: "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carrie's Mother."

While planning the funeral, Reynolds then suffered a suspected stroke and emergency services were called to her son's Beverly Hills home. Todd Fisher said the death of Carrie had been too much for his mother. “She said, 'I want to be with Carrie'. And then she was gone."

Debbie Reynolds is survived by her son.