Make 'Em Laugh

by Debbie Reynolds

  When my painting was finished, I called Ralph to tell him I didn’t want it, even though I’d already paid for it. I was trying to get rid of things that reminded me of our failed marriage, not add to them. Ralph sent it to me sometime later anyway. That was very nice of him. It’s so beautiful that I’ve had it hanging in my living room for many years.

  So, ladies, if you’re reading this remember: when you’re thinking of a birthday gift for your husband, buy something that you can return—in case he doesn’t.

  Getting back to Phyllis, did I mention that she loves shopping? She often visited me when I was on the road. When I was performing in Irene in 1973, she came to New York. One afternoon while roaming around Bloomingdale’s she spotted a handsome man who looked familiar. She got closer, and realized it was Bob Fallon, an acquaintance of ours from Hollywood. Bob had recently lost his wife, Marie Wilson, an actress most famous for her pinup qualities.

  Phyllis moved right in.

  “You know Debbie Reynolds, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s living in New York now, doing a play. Why don’t you come by for a drink?”

  Phyllis has excellent taste. I’d just gotten a divorce from my second husband and she thought Bob would be a nice man for me to date—which turned out to be true. We hit it off right away. He also hit it off with my Diner’s Club card. From day one he lived beautifully on it. But he was the first lover I really enjoyed having sex with, and he treated me well. He was wonderful company. We went on cruises to Italy, Australia, and Bali, and stayed together for about eight years.

  Unfortunately for me Bob was also a player who felt the need to screw every woman he met. He really believed that it would hurt their feelings if he didn’t have sex with them. Whenever Phyllis found a pair of panties lying around my dressing room, she automatically asked Bob if they were his.

  Hey, nobody’s perfect. In many ways he was ideal for a match made at a department store.

  I have to admit that Phyllis is better at matchmaking than I am. While I was in Hawaii shooting the pilot for my short-lived 1981 TV series, Aloha Paradise, Phyllis came with me. One of the men at the resort we stayed at asked me on a date. His name was Lloyd Berkett. I went out with him only once because all he talked about was tennis and golf. After our date, he asked Phyllis for one. Albert had died years before, as had Phyllis’s second husband.

  “You can’t go out with him,” I insisted. “He’s a total bore.”

  Phyllis enjoyed playing golf, and said she’d have dinner with Lloyd.

  “Make sure he’s attentive to you. He’s asking everybody out on this island. Don’t be nice to him unless he gives you a present of some kind.”

  They’ve been married for thirty-four years now.

  SHE’S MY FRIEND

  Aside from being a sperm bank, Eddie Fisher was good for something. His friend from Philadelphia became my friend for life.

  Margie Duncan knew Eddie in high school. When I met her, she was a dancer in New York City at a theater called the Versailles. Eddie took me to see a show she was in, then out to dinner with Margie and her boyfriend Bernie Rich, Eddie’s best friend from Philly. They’d all been performers on a local radio show there as preteens. Margie and I were wearing the same outfit. We looked like sisters even then.

  Bernie and Margie got married around the same time Eddie and I did. Their first son, Michael, was born October 20, 1956. When Margie went into labor, Eddie and I were in Palm Springs. I was close to having our first baby, so my doctor went to the desert with us. I called Margie when she was in the delivery room; we told the hospital that Debbie and Eddie were on the phone for her. They actually carried a big telephone into the delivery room so we could talk.

  “How does it feel?” I asked Margie.

  Her screams were answer enough. She didn’t need to put it in words, and if she did I couldn’t hear them.

  After we hung up, I felt a pain. The doctor and Eddie thought I was going into labor.

  “No, it’s just sympathy pains for Margie,” I told them.

  Then I had another pain.

  The doctor confirmed that I was in labor.

  We got into the car and drove back to Los Angeles. My daughter, Carrie Frances Fisher, was born the next day, October 21.

  More babies arrived and several years passed. My son, Todd, was born in February 1958 and Margie’s son Mark was born three weeks later. She had one more baby, a little girl named Elisa.

  We both had traumatic divorces and we both kept going. When Margie was on her own again with children to support, she found a job. Most recently, she had worked for several costume designers, including Bob Mackie and, later, Paul Whitney, who had a store on Sunset Plaza Drive in Hollywood.

  Margie came to visit me with Elisa in 1963 when I was getting ready to do the film of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. We talked about the movie. Margie told me that Paul Whitney had just closed his shop.

  I got an idea.

  “Why don’t you come work on the movie with me?”

  I had just gone through a stillborn pregnancy and needed a “dance-in.” A “dance-in” is a dancer who works out a number with the choreographer in place of the star until it is set. They then teach it to the dancer who will perform it on-screen. The girl who was usually my film “dance-in” had just gotten married and her new husband wouldn’t let her work. (It was 1963—the good old days when married women were housewives and mothers and that’s all.) I needed a replacement, and knew Margie could do it.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, surprised. “I’m so out of shape.”

  “So am I,” I told her. “We’ll get back into shape together.”

  Margie reported to the studio to work, and was told that they already had my dance-in. They’d hired someone else to work with me without my knowledge. They started to show me my part with a person I’d never met.

  “Where’s Margie?” I asked. “She’s supposed to be doing this.”

  They explained that Margie had gone home because she wasn’t needed.

  “Well, when Margie learns the number, I’ll be back.”

  As the song in Molly Brown says, “She’s my friend.” I’d promised my friend the job and I stuck up for her.

  Margie started getting frantic calls from people at the studio who said they’d been looking for her for days. Margie had been home with her children the whole time, so she knew they were just trying to cover their asses. She came in to work and learned the number and several others.

  Peter Gennaro was the choreographer on Molly Brown. His routines were tough but terrific. He really worked us to capture the wild times in the Gold Rush era when the story takes place. In the opening dance number, Molly sings that she “Ain’t Down Yet” while climbing a thatched-roofed building, walking along the roof, stepping backward on the side of the roof, then back to the top again. During rehearsal Margie and Peter kept dancing on the rooftop to set the number. On the last try, one of the straw shingles came loose. Margie toppled off the roof, over a log on the ground, and into the dirt. She wasn’t hurt but those shingles were nailed down by the time I showed up.

  In rehearsal for the famous “Belly Up to the Bar” routine, Margie was doing the number where Molly gets everyone up to the bar. When she had to jump onto the bar, every dancer in the company volunteered to lift her because there was a pay bump for dancers who did lifts. Someone suggested that there be glasses for the bartender to pull back when Molly lands on the bar. On their first try at this new business, a dancer named Alex Plasschaert gave Margie a kick in the face with his cowboy boot. Everyone was concerned. But Margie didn’t complain, even though she was seeing stars.

  The next day, Margie showed up for work without a mark on her face. The assistant director was our friend Hank Moonjean, who worked with me on several of my films, including The Catered Affair. He had an idea for a joke. The makeup man would do some special makeup on Margie so it would look like she had really been injured. He put a bruise on
her face and even created a split-skin effect. When director Chuck Walters came in, he took Margie’s chin in his hand and looked at the mark.

  “That’s not so bad,” he declared.

  Everyone concurred, including me when I got to the set.

  The only person who felt bad was Alex, who thought he’d put his boot print on Margie’s cheek. Margie finally confided in him that it was makeup, put there as a joke.

  When I no longer had dance-in work for Margie, I hired her to be my assistant. In 1979 I bought a former post office to house DR Studios and put her in charge of the daily operations while the workers were building the rehearsal spaces. She still runs DR Studios, which is a big success.

  To this day, Margie continues to be the sister I never had, a most loyal friend, and the gatekeeper to my business.

  9

  Family Matters

  When people ask Carrie what it was like growing up with famous parents, she usually responds, “Compared to what it was like when I grew up with other parents?” My own upbringing was very strict, and it was difficult to raise my kids in a world that was so different from the one I knew as a child. But I am blessed to have exceptional children, and somehow we managed!

  SEE YA LATER, ALLIGATOR

  Animals have always been an important part of our family’s lives. We usually have dogs but sometimes we have more exotic pets. My daughter-in-law, Catherine, is very attached to her pet rooster, Nugget. On the ranch that she shares with my son, they have animals of every description.

  When we lived on Greenway Drive in Beverly Hills, the back of our house was right up against the Los Angeles Country Club. There was a small lot behind the house where the kids played.

  One of our housekeepers left us to move back to Florida to live with her family. She sent Todd a small alligator as a present. Todd was only about seven or eight at the time, and he was thrilled with his new pet. We got an aquarium for the little reptile. I thought it would stay little, like the small turtles you can keep as pets in a glass bowl.

  Todd’s alligator began to grow . . . and grow.

  Before long it outgrew its little tank. (I say “it” because no amount of coaxing could get me to check under an alligator’s tail to see if we should paint its room pink or blue.) After a series of larger and larger glass tanks, we decided to let the alligator live in the bathtub for a while.

  It was growing at an astonishing rate.

  Soon we realized that the alligator would have to be relocated. Todd was upset. He cried and cried about losing his friend, who was becoming large enough to have Todd for lunch.

  My husband Harry intervened, offering Todd a hundred dollars for his pet alligator. This just made Todd more upset as the reality of losing his slimy buddy set in. It also upset Harry, who thought that anything could be handled with cash.

  Our security guard, Zinc, was given the task of taking care of the alligator. Zinc loaded Todd’s pet into the back of the station wagon and took off. I didn’t ask any questions.

  Life post-alligator went back to normal. Todd didn’t say much about his pet. None of us thought much about it again.

  One morning there was a blurb in the newspaper about golf balls disappearing at our neighboring golf club. No one could figure out who was stealing all the balls from the course. A few days later, the paper mentioned an alligator sighting at the club.

  Oh, dear.

  Soon after that, news broke that the staff at the club had captured the alligator with an appetite for golf balls. The paper said it was going to live at the LA Zoo.

  Most exotic creatures are better off in the zoo. Except for Lady Gaga.

  CURSES!

  Warning: This section contains language that may not be suitable for young audiences.

  When I was growing up, there was no swearing in our house. When my daddy accidentally cut off the tip of his finger in the woodshop and blood was gushing all over, all he said was “Damn.” Then, motioning toward the fingertip on the floor: “Go pick that up.” We went to the doctor’s to get it sewn back on, but Daddy always had a crooked finger after that.

  When I became a parent of young children myself, in spite of all that went on in our house, I never swore in front of them. And I never used dirty words.

  When Todd was eight or nine years old, his friend John Courtney dared him to swear in front of me, to see what my reaction would be. Todd told John that I would never put up with it. John convinced Todd that I wouldn’t punish him, and my son decided to try me.

  That afternoon I was busy setting the table for a dinner party in the evening. Todd came into the dining room and let loose with a string of obscenities. Without missing a beat, I raised my arm and backhanded him without turning around.

  “You don’t do that,” I said.

  Todd just stared at me, then went into the kitchen with his friend John and said, “See? I told you she wouldn’t take it from me.”

  He was happy I hit him. I was so upset that I started crying after he left the room. I had never slapped my child before, but I felt his behavior needed to be corrected.

  Todd and John just went on playing.

  One day I picked Carrie up at school. She got in the car and said, “Mom, someone wrote the word F-U-C-K on the handball court. What does it mean?”

  “I’ll tell you later when I can draw you a diagram,” I answered.

  Needless to say, I never drew that picture for my little girl. I don’t have the artistic ability to draw a picture like that . . . or the memory.

  When she was around fourteen, asshole became one of Carrie’s favorite words. One night at the dinner table, she kept using that word over and over. Finally I reached the end of my patience.

  “Say it one more time and I’m going to leave,” I warned her—like that was a threat to a rebellious teenager.

  In response, Carrie mouthed the word asshole.

  So I stood up, clutching the buttons of my robe at the neck, and walked out of the room. At least she saw that I was serious.

  When Carrie was seventeen she was cast in her first movie, Shampoo. Warren Beatty was the cowriter, producer, and star. He plays a Hollywood hairdresser who has sex with every woman who will let him. Warren himself was a famous womanizer. He is the brother of my friend Shirley MacLaine. I first met him when he tried to pick me up while I was under a hair dryer at MGM, reading a book. He lifted the lid, said he’d always wanted to meet me, and asked me to have dinner with him. He was in his early twenties and had already broken Joan Collins’s and Leslie Caron’s hearts, among others. I was between husbands, but I wasn’t about to be his next conquest.

  “You’re a very forward young man,” I said.

  “Age has nothing to do with it,” he responded.

  “No, thank you,” I said, and sent him on his way.

  Now my daughter had shown up with a script in which her character was supposed to have an affair with Warren. Even worse, her character instigates it. Carrie’s first words to Warren are “Wanna fuck?”

  I told Carrie that I objected to her using that word.

  “Mother, I say ‘fuck’ every day,” she said. “It’s no big deal to me.”

  She begged me to let her do the movie, and I knew I had to. It was important for her to be more than just the daughter of Debbie Reynolds.

  Carrie told Warren about our conversation and he called me. I told him I would prefer it if he had her character say something else.

  “How about ‘screw’?” he suggested with an edge to his voice.

  “Okay, how about it?” I said.

  “Because it won’t work for the script. ‘Fuck’ is ‘fuck.’”

  “Maybe it isn’t just the word, Warren,” I admitted. “Maybe that’s not what’s bothering me. You know Carrie is very mature for her age, but she’s really just a child.”

  He said I was being ridiculous and Victorian.

  “That’s what I am.”

  “No, you’re not, and she isn’t, and you can’t hold her back. She’s
anxious to do this and she’ll be damned good.”

  He promised that he would only be her producer and her uncle, that he would pick her up every morning and bring her home each evening. And he did. Carrie would fly out the door a very excited young girl, being picked up and brought home by her gorgeous producer. She has assured me for many years she was unscathed, as you might say.

  A couple of years later, Carrie and I were in London, where we performed together at the Palladium. Someone cursed at me as we were walking down the street.

  “Did you hear that, Carrie?” I said. “That fucker just used the f-word.”

  Carrie looked at me in shock.

  “Please stop swearing around me,” I said, “because I’m starting to use those words myself.”

  When I was younger I felt that it wasn’t necessary to use curse words. If you want to use colorful language, find another, more creative way of expressing yourself. It still upsets me when someone takes the Lord’s name in vain. I don’t tolerate that to this day. I’m a square and always have been. But now that I’m older, I realize that sometimes you need a good cussword to make a point.

  A TRICKY DICK

  Around the time of Watergate, Carrie and I were invited to the White House. President Nixon had been elected to a second term in 1972 but there was a definite dark cloud over his administration. Carrie was sixteen. She wasn’t interested in politics, and some of her friends had explained President Nixon’s troubles to her. When I told her we were going to visit the president, Carrie’s reaction wasn’t subtle.

  “No! I won’t go,” she cried.

  “We’re going. It’s a chance to visit our First Family’s home.”

  “I won’t go. No. No. No.”

  Neither one of us remembers what I did to bribe or threaten her to visit the president.

  Carrie and I dressed very nicely, me in a coatdress and she in a velvet dress with a high lace collar. We had a short visit. It was in the winter, so we didn’t get to see the Rose Garden. Although Carrie is smiling in the pictures that were taken, she wasn’t a happy girl.