Make 'Em Laugh

by Debbie Reynolds

  President Nixon sent us each an autographed picture. Carrie’s was signed “To Carrie, May all your dreams come true.” She said she wanted to write him back a letter saying “I dreamt that you were impeached.” Thank goodness she never got around to it.

  Carrie had another encounter with Nixon when she was recording one of her audiobooks. Both she and the former president were working with the same producer, who took word back to Nixon that she was working with Carrie. Nixon sent Carrie another picture, this one with the inscription “For Carrie—from one of her fans, Richard Nixon.”

  Today those pictures of President Nixon are proudly displayed in her bathroom—right next to a framed picture of the front page of a New York newspaper with her wedding picture with Paul Simon.

  The first time I met Richard Nixon, he was President Eisenhower’s vice president. Nixon arrived at the Burbank airport, where I was waiting to present him with a scroll that made him an honorary member of my Thalians charity.

  In February 1973 I was touring with my Broadway show Irene before we opened in New York. We had already taken the show to Toronto and would be heading for Philadelphia, then on to Broadway. That was a bumpy ride for me. Sir John Gielgud was our director and the show wasn’t working. We were getting bad reviews. I finally hired my old MGM friend choreographer and director Gower Champion to replace Sir John, and things began turning around.

  Here I am making Vice President Nixon an honorary member of my favorite charity, the Thalians.

  Carrie had to be dragged kicking and screaming to her visit with President Nixon. Now she keeps a copy of this picture displayed proudly in her bathroom.

  While we were in Washington, DC, President Nixon came to see the show, along with his entire family. Afterward they came backstage. The president not only complimented us on the play, he predicted that it would be a big hit on Broadway. He was very gracious to the entire cast, taking time to greet everyone individually.

  I may have mentioned to him that I would love for my daughter to have a tour of one of our nation’s most important places, and that was how we got that invitation. She didn’t want to go, but when she did, she wound up with a souvenir picture for her bathroom she wouldn’t have otherwise.

  So if you are ever invited to visit the White House, you really should go. Who knows what you might get out of it!

  UNEXPECTED MEETINGS WITH GREAT WOMEN

  A few years ago I was in New York with Carrie.

  “You want to stop off at Bette Midler’s? She’s having a party,” she said, on the way back to where we were staying.

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  Bette has a beautiful penthouse apartment with a winding staircase up to a big terrace overlooking Central Park and the city. The gathering was informal. She had great music playing. I remember a lot of books and a lot of laughs. Carrie and I enjoyed ourselves with the other guests.

  At one point a woman came up to me and said, “I’m John Saxon’s sister.”

  In 1958 John and I had starred together in the Universal movie This Happy Feeling. Forty-six years later we did A. R. Gurney’s two-character play Love Letters at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. I liked working with him. Now here was his sister. I was delighted to meet her; I wish I could remember her name. I was so fond of John.

  Miss M really is one of our great performers. I heard Bette on Jimmy Fallon’s show recently talking about keeping chickens on her penthouse roof. She said she named the little cluckers after the Kardashians.

  That may qualify as poultry abuse.

  Thinking about unexpectedly attending Bette’s party with Carrie reminds me of another gathering I went to that I never dreamed would happen, also with a family member: my mother.

  Sydney Guilaroff was one of the greatest movie hairstylists of my lifetime. He worked on hundreds of films, making the beautiful actresses even more glorious for the screen. He was a genius at creating the right looks for the many parts we played. Sydney himself was the most elegant man. He dressed in a white coat with a white necktie while he worked with all the great MGM stars—Garbo, Hepburn, Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor; they all adored him. My children called him Uncle Sydney, as he was as close to us as any member of our family. In the wonderful 1939 movie The Women, all the ladies in the film go to Sydney’s Beauty Salon for beauty and dishing. This was so named for Mr. Guilaroff.

  Sydney stayed friendly with all of us. On one occasion when we were in New York in the early 1970s, he asked a star he’d worked with at MGM if he could bring me to a dinner party at her apartment. I immediately asked Sydney if I could bring my mother along, and was thrilled when he told me the hostess had said yes.

  I knew Mother would love meeting the legendary Greta Garbo.

  For everyone who loves the movies, Greta Garbo is one of the most cherished stars. In addition to being a great actress, she had mystique. Famous for the line “I want to be alone” from her 1932 movie Grand Hotel, she really did prefer to live outside the glare of the Hollywood limelight. She gave us other wonderful films like Camille, Anna Karenina, and Ninotchka (directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch). Her last film at MGM was Two-Faced Woman, released in 1941. She was very unhappy with it and retired to New York. She was only thirty-six. After making twenty-eight films and being nominated three times for the Academy Award as Best Actress, there was no “good-bye” or farewell party, no “Thank you, Miss Garbo” or “Good luck, Miss Garbo, thanks for all the movies.” She just vanished to the East Coast to live a quiet life out of the public eye.

  But she did have many friends who kept her company, and Sydney Guilaroff was one of them. Another was financier George Schlee, who lived in the same building as Garbo with his wife, Valentina, a famous couturier who designed dresses for Garbo and Katharine Hepburn and other prominent stars.

  Mother and I were staying at the Plaza Hotel. We were so excited as we got into a taxi with Sydney to go to Garbo’s building at the end of Fifty-Second Street overlooking the East River. We were welcomed into a spacious living room. All of Garbo’s furniture was Louis XIV and other European antiques. She had tapestries, Aubusson rugs, and beautiful crystal. I was in heaven.

  The evening was very quiet and formal—and frightening for me. I was used to Hollywood parties where Sammy Cahn played the piano while Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and any other guest who could carry a tune got up and performed. At least the dinner itself was informal, even though the party wasn’t: a buffet with lovely food.

  The guests all ate sitting around the living room and den of the seven-room apartment. Garbo spent the evening close to the floor, sitting on a rather large, square ottoman. I understand this was her preference, even at other people’s gatherings. She sat upright, holding her head high, rather in profile, and didn’t seem to get tired. She was still quite beautiful, even though she was in her sixties. Mother and I sat on the very comfortable couch. I had a good view of the antiques, which I loved.

  After visiting for a little while, we said our good-byes and thanked Miss Garbo for a lovely evening. I didn’t ask for her autograph, although I was itching to have one. I wasn’t that rude.

  The evening is vivid in my memory. It was like meeting a queen. I felt awestruck and privileged to be there. I knew I would never see her again. Sydney was very gracious, as was Miss Garbo to receive me, and especially to extend the invitation to my mother, who was certainly someone she couldn’t have cared about meeting. I was so happy she didn’t tell Sydney “I want to be alone.” My mother was thrilled as we all went back to the Plaza Hotel and called it a most unforgettable night.

  TWO PRINCESS LEIAS, A TAP DANCER, AND TWO BULLDOGS, OR, “SAY GOOD NIGHT, DEBBIE”

  Being in show business isn’t as easy as it looks. When I was young I planned to go to college to become a gym teacher, even after I’d made several movies, first at Warner Brothers and then at MGM. People at the studio thought I was crazy. Since then, I’ve proven them right. After a few years it became clear that performing wa
s the right career for me. I was having such fun. Still, after more than sixty-five years and countless ups and downs, I understand what my daughter meant when she said, “Celebrity is just obscurity waiting to happen.”

  Carrie and I disagreed about almost everything when she was growing up. She was never interested in doing anything I wanted her to do. (I guess in that respect she was a normal teenager.) Carrie has a beautiful singing voice—strong and deep like her father’s. So of course she chose acting. When I insisted that she attend school to learn how to act, she fought me. So she auditioned for the London Central School of Speech and Drama, won a scholarship there, moved to England, and stopped talking to me for two years. I’d send her friends to visit her in London. They got a wonderful vacation and I got news about my daughter. I thought that was a good exchange.

  Carrie wasn’t crazy about growing up as a movie star’s child, and I guess it’s fair to say that being my daughter was sometimes tough on her. There were perks, of course, but there were also problems—really big ones. Her father left us for Elizabeth Taylor when Carrie was only two years old. She would sit by the window waiting for him to come home. Fortunately Carrie doesn’t remember how the world turned its glaring spotlight on our family. Years later, when Carrie was grown up and Eddie and Elizabeth had long ago gone their separate ways, Carrie confided to Elizabeth that she’d resented her for all the time she didn’t get to spend with Eddie. “You didn’t miss much,” Elizabeth replied. When I did Irene on Broadway, Carrie was in the chorus. Doing the musical was a way for me to work through the nervous breakdown caused by divorcing my second husband. I told Carrie all about Harry Karl’s affairs and gambling, and how he’d bankrupted our family. It was a lot for a teenager to deal with.

  My son played a Cub Scout in one of my television specials, Debbie Reynolds and the Sound of Children—not a big stretch for a ten-year-old boy. But that was enough for Todd. Afterward he wanted nothing to do with acting. Seven years later I took him to see Yul Brynner’s 1976 revival of The King and I. Todd kept asking questions about the technical aspects of the show. He wound up being interested in lighting, sound, and especially production—but still in show business.

  Other stars have children who chose to follow them into this crazy business. Tom Hanks’s son, Colin, and Tippi Hedren’s daughter, Melanie Griffith, have both done very well as actors. Melanie’s daughter with Don Johnson has also grown up to be an actor; Dakota Johnson is the female lead in the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. (I’m doing the senior version—Fifty Shades of Grey Hair.) Michael Douglas is as famous now as his father, Kirk Douglas, was at the height of his career, while Jeff and Beau Bridges may be more famous than their father, Lloyd Bridges, was at his height. Martin Sheen also has two famous actor sons, Charlie Sheen (who might better be called infamous) and Emilio Estevez (who graduated from being a member of the Brat Pack to being uncontroversial). Meryl Streep’s daughters Grace and Mamie are both well-regarded actors now, and Bette Midler’s daughter, Sophie von Haselberg, is in Woody Allen’s 2015 movie, Irrational Man.

  So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that my granddaughter, Billie Lourd, is playing a small role in Star Wars: Episode VII–The Force Awakens.

  Carrie says now that she wouldn’t have taken the part in Star Wars if she’d known how it would affect her life. It made her world famous at the age of eighteen, but to many people she will always remain Princess Leia, no matter how many other things she’s excelled at and accomplished. Her daughter is handling being in a Star Wars film well. Billie has already graduated from New York University and is very talented with the piano and guitar. She is grown up but to me she will always be my little granddaughter. I used to sing “Aba Daba Honeymoon” (my first hit song) to Billie when she was a toddler, and ever since then she’s called me “Aba Daba” instead of “Grandma.” She went from diapers to cute little dresses to a galaxy far away.

  My dream was to have a healthy, beautiful grandchild. It came true when Carrie gave birth to Billie in July 1992. I wanted to help raise her but I was always on the road and the years have passed all too quickly. I could never have enough time with our Billie. I didn’t know what she would want to do after she finished college. Now that she has a small part in the new Star Wars movie, her heart’s been opened and she’s interested in acting (ironic, since Carrie was so upset about being a movie star’s daughter). Billie is lovely, talented, sweet, and gracious. She’s her own person, doing what she wants. In spring 2015 she began acting on TV in Scream Queens. Carrie and I are so proud of her.

  I guess it makes sense that we would one day wind up working together in the family business.

  Las Vegas has been a big part of my life since the 1960s. As movie roles went to younger actors and my MGM days came to an end, going from musicals to concerts was a natural way to earn my living. I’ve more or less been on the road ever since. Now that I’m in my eighties, I want to sit down and smell the roses. There’s no way I want to do a whole ninety-minute show anymore.

  I’d been booked for a three-day engagement in early November 2014 at the South Point Hotel and Casino for a while before I made this decision. As the date approached, I asked if I could do two days instead. They weren’t having it. Michael Gaughan, the owner, has been very good to me, as was Roy Jernigan, the entertainment director. Michael hired me for many years when he was with the Orleans Casino. Now he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Besides, all three shows were sold out. I couldn’t get out of doing it but I was happy about that at least.

  So I called on my family for help, and Carrie and Billie agreed to share the stage with me. My usual soundman had another job, so Todd agreed to set up my sound system. Hopefully it would be a nice way to end my Vegas days.

  Carrie was just finishing shooting Star Wars the week before my engagement. She flew in from London on Monday knowing we would have to leave for Vegas on Thursday. Billie flew in from New York around the same time. I was frantic. None of us knew what we would be doing. I worked out a new rundown for the show. Carrie planned to sing “I’ll Never Say No to You” from The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Billie said she would like to sing a duet with Carrie—the number I did with Eddie Fisher in Bundle of Joy. Then Billie would do a contemporary song on her own. Now we only needed to find a time when we were all in the same place, to rehearse. Packing, singing, flying, every one going every which way. We finally made it to Vegas.

  That weekend the South Point Casino was also hosting a rodeo in their equestrian center. I arrived in the huge hotel lobby at the same time as every cowboy within a five-hundred-mile radius of South Nevada. There I was, little Debbie in the middle of mobs of people in cowboy hats and spurs, carrying lassos and sporting number tags on their chests, amid huge posters everywhere of me in a beaded Bob Mackie gown.

  We started the sound check on Friday afternoon at 3:30. Backstage was chaos. A friend of Carrie’s was filming a documentary about our family. Carrie and Billie had their pet bulldogs with them. We worked hard on our cues, staging, and the lighting to prepare for opening night.

  At 7:30 the showroom was full. I took the stage hoping for the best, dressed in my gold bugle-beaded evening gown. I sang and talked for thirty minutes, then played clips from some of my movies, ending with a number from Molly Brown—Carrie’s cue to enter from stage right singing.

  “I’ll never say no to you,

  Whatever you say or do.

  I’ll smile if you say, ‘Be glad.’

  I’ll cry ’cause I’m bipolar.

  Today is tomorrow

  If you do lots of blow.

  I’ll stay or I’ll go,

  But I’ll never say no.”

  “Ladies and gentleman, my daughter, Carrie Fisher,” I told the audience, but they were already applauding. They didn’t need the introduction.

  Carrie went on to tell everyone how happy she was to be onstage with her mother again. How I’d forced her to be in my act when she was only fourteen. Then she talked about the movie I made with her “a
lleged father,” Eddie Fisher.

  “They made Bundle of Joy while she was pregnant with me. She did all those dance numbers—which accounts for my mental deformities.”

  “You had such a wild young life, dear,” I said. “Was it because of the blow?”

  “No, it was the acid.”

  (Did I tell you that my daughter only feels normal when she’s on acid?)

  As Carrie continued talking, Billie appeared at stage left singing a jazz riff of “Lullaby in Blue” from Bundle of Joy. She walked upstage to stand next to her mother and me. Then Carrie sang with her.

  “How I love my pretty baby.

  Sweet and precious little baby.

  How I love my pretty baby

  Honest to goodness I do.”

  After that, Billie sang a beautiful version of Etta James’s classic “At Last”—my granddaughter’s solo singing debut. Then Todd entered from stage left, singing “Oh my Ma-ma, to me she was so wonderful”—a slightly altered version of his father’s big hit record “Oh! My Papa.”

  We all bantered back and forth, then ran some old home movies I had taken with the 16mm Bell & Howell camera given to me when I was a guest on This Is Your Life in 1961. Then we sang two rousing verses of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and I closed the show with my hit song “Tammy.”

  The audience was wildly enthusiastic throughout. It was wonderful to have my family with me as I bade a modest farewell to my Vegas days. Now I’ll have more time to spend with them—if they’re ever in town!

  It feels like I’m coming full circle with my children and grandchild. Todd is settled with his new wife, the beautiful actress Catherine Hickland, and busy doing sound-engineering work. Carrie is acting and writing. I believe her best work is still ahead of her. I still kid myself that someday she may be a singer. Billie is grown up and likes to wear my old clothes—they’re “vintage” now, and I never throw anything away. She just shortens the skirts. So now she has closets full of fabulous Bob Mackie gowns and classic designer outfits. It’s a thrill for me to see her in them. I pray I’ll be here to see her fly. I’ll always look after her, even if it’s in a heavenly way.