The beloved showbiz veteran passed away one day after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher.
The Cowboys & Indians crew would like to bid hail and farewell to Debbie Reynolds, the Hollywood legend who shot to stardom in 1952 after appearing opposite Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain — and passed away Wednesday, just one day after the death of her equally famous daughter, actress-writer Carrie Fisher. “There is nothing harder than having to bury a child,” actor George Takei wrote in a Tweeted tribute. “Debbie died of a broken heart, but she’s with her daughter now.”
In addition to starring in movies as diverse as Susan Slept Here (1954), The Catered Affair (1956), Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), Divorce American Style (1967), and Mother (1996), Reynolds appeared in three films of particular interest to C&I readers: The Second Time Around (1961), a comic western that cast her as a widowed New York native who travels to Arizona in search of work, and improbably becomes a sheriff; The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), in which she played the title role, a resourceful frontier woman who mines a fortune in gold with her husband (Harve Presnell) and survives a journey aboard the RMS Titanic; and the 1962 epic How the West Was Won.
In the latter film, Reynolds loomed large as Lilith, a St. Louis dance hall girl who heads westward in the early 1850s to claim an inheritance — which turns out to be worthless — and winds up catching the eye of a roguish gambler played by Gregory Peck. In this scene, she gets to sing as well as act, offering a lovely rendition of “A Home in the Meadow” — to the tune of “Greensleeves,” with lyrics by Sammy Cahn — that is just sweet enough to make even a diehard cardsharp forget about his high-stakes game.
