It’s Not A Dream, Debbie Reynolds
Everybody who ever knew Debbie when she was Mary Frances Reynolds has been thrown for a loop. And that includes me. (I’m her sister-in-law). When I first knew her, in school a few years ago, she was considered just about the squarest square that ever hit John Burroughs High, mainly because she didn’t date boys. In the minds of the crowd I ran around with, that simple fact added up to a parallelogram having four equal sides and four right angles.
Anybody who was anybody at J. B. High just automatically gathered of nights at Bob’s Drive-In out in the valley, where we destroyed as many hamburgers as we could hold. And where was Debbie on these moonlit nights? Off somewhere with the Girl Scouts, or at home blowing into her French horn, or practicing how to twirl a baton. Heaven knows there were enough boys in the crowd who’d have been delighted to buy her a milkshake, but Debbie just wasn’t interested.
She went out with boys, sure—to football games or school proms, something or anything to do with school activities—but parties were taboo. Don’t ask me why. I guess that Debbie was so surrounded whirlpool of activity that she didn’t find time to listen to her heart. I should include here the fact that she did date one boy quite often. He was on the football team and active in all sports and extracurricular things around school. Sort of a male Debbie Reynolds, and I guess that’s why she favored him above the others.
Debbie was a half-grade ahead of me, being three months older, and I first saw her in gym class when we were both 15. She stood out like a diamond in a trash can there, for three reasons. First, she was so darned good at sports—she could shinny up the ropes like a sailor and was so fast on the rings and bars that you couldn’t keep track of what she was actually doing. Secondly, there was that Reynolds personality, a peppiness that makes her a standout in any crowd; and thirdly, the fact that she always looked so neat. I guess you could take the world’s most beautiful female and put her in a gym suit, and you’d have a big blob of nothing, but Debbie always looked as though she’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
Bless her little pointed head, you can’t tell whether Debbie’s trouble is love or hunger. Carleton Carpenter toted her to the Press Photographers’ Ball.
Anyway, there we were, and because I was the average type of girl who went to Parties with boys, Debbie and I didn’t get any closer than greeting each other. That was before I met Bill Reynolds, Debbie’s other. He and I had mutual girl friends, and it was only natural that we’d get around to each other. When we did, I fell for the Reynolds personality and pretty soon knew that one day I’d have Debbie for a sister-in-law.
It was a week after I met Bill that I had my first and only white rage at Debbie. The “Queen of Burbank Contest” was to be held on a night when I had my second date with Bill, a coincidence which was my Waterloo. Just when I’d finished dressing and had every curl in place, William phoned me with the bad news.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t make it tonight,” old me.
“What?” I howled. “Why not?”
“It’s my kid sister,” he said. “She’s in some sort of a contest, and my parents say I have to be down there at the Burbank something-or-other to watch over her.”
Debbie turned out to be the winner, and came home with her blue ribbons and my date, much too late for me to join him even for a hamburger at Bob’s.
From then on, things really started popping for Debbie, but I was so shot through with butterflies that I don’t suppose I paid much attention. ether did Bill, for that matter, or anyone else in the gang. Debbie was still just “Bill’s kid sister,” and any of his friends who might have suggested that she accompany him to a dance had been so thoroughly rebuffed that they didn’t ask a second time. No one was aware that she was shooting up to be a star. Bill been over at Warners watching Debbie on a set, but nobody thought anything would come of it. Least of all Debbie herself, I guess. Concerning the screen test that resulted from the contest, her attitude was strictly nonchalant. “They’ll give me the test and that’ll be all there is to it. They have to do it they promised it to the winner, and they’re stuck.”
Debbie can turn on glamor, too. For a gala premiere date with Robert Wagner, she dresses to the teeth in one of her fabulous collection of gowns.
It turned out that Debbie was stuck, instead, for what she had begun as a pure lark turned out to be a mighty interesting venture. She didn’t talk much about it in those days, but we knew she was goner because she didn’t, for the first time in her life, complain about getting up early in the morning. Debbie has always remained in the hay as long as possible, and could sleep through an earthquake. These days, when she’s working, she gets up at six in the morning and leaves the house by six-twenty, thereby establishing some sort of speed record. When she isn’t working she stays in bed for hours, reading books or listening to Judy Garland recordings (she thinks Judy is the absolute end when it comes to talent), and making up in general for the sleep she lost when working.
Bill and I were married a year ago, and Debbie was at the wedding, bouncing all over the place as though she were attending a football game. I think she was fascinated only because in her eyes it was another activity, and one which she figured she might tackle herself some day.
When Bill went into the army last January and left for Camp Roberts, I went to live with Debbie and her parents, whom I call Maxene and Ray, at their request. It was the first time I had had an opportunity to really know Debbie, for Bill and I had continued to go around with our own crowd. Debbie didn’t approve of said crowd, but then none of us had the talent for tooting a horn with the Burbank Youth Symphony Orchestra, or singing with the Choral Society, or marching with the Batoneers, or starting a fire with two sticks of wood—much less the executive capacity for running a half-dozen organizations around town.
As a matter of fact, I guess Debbie didn’t approve of me, but if that was the case I’m sure she’s changed her mind, for I’ve been living a year under the same roof and get along with her better than Bill does. He and Debbie have had the same relationship as most brother-and-sister acts. She’s two years younger than he, and as a result was always tagging around after him when they were kids. Bill used to wish that Debbie would get interested in dolls and keep off the sandlot when he was trying to pitch a tight game. It soon got to the point where he ceased. paying any attention to her at all, and this detached state of affairs went on for years until they grew up and each suddenly discovered that the other wasn’t half bad, as people go.
Only one subject remained a sore point with them, and that was Debbie’s disapproval of Bill’s girl friends (before I got into the act, of course).
“For the life of me,” she used to say, “I can’t see what you see in her.”
“Who’s asking you?” Bill would growl.
If Debbie had gone with any boy in particular, Bill could have come back at her with his own criticism, but the event He’d ask Maxene, “Mom, why doesn’t Franny get serious about some guy?” And Maxene would answer, “Give her time, she has a lot of it. And when she does fall in love it will be for keeps.”
Debbie and I now disagree on only one thing, and that’s potato salad. She likes it with dill pickles and I prefer sweet; and when poor Maxene is trying to concoct a dish, she has Debbie over one shoulder and me over the other, touting for our favorite pickles.
There’s one thing about living in the same house with Debbie—you always know she’s there. When she comes home she drives her car into the driveway, comes to a squealing stop, slams the door and yells at the top of her voice, “I’m ho-ome!” As if we didn’t already know.
It’s impossible for Debbie to be quiet. She even talks in her sleep, and the only time her mouth stays closed for any length of time is when she’s attending a movie. Movies charm her right out of her shoes—any kind of movies—and she sits there spellbound through the whole thing. Except that she makes up for it by munching popcorn with great gusto.
I’ve always loved clothes, but I guess I’ll never equal my sister-in-law. With her contract safely signed, she had one wall of her bedroom knocked out and lined with an immense closet. Even with the original closet still available, things spill out into the room and it never manages to look tidy. Debbie herself is no help, for when she’s going out, even if it’s only for bowling with some girl friends, she’ll put on six or seven complete outfits before feeling that she’s appropriately rigged. By the time she’s decided, there’s no time to put away the discarded clothes, and Maxene says she’s going to make a recording (long playing) that says nothing but, “Put your things away. Put your things away.”
Debbie isn’t home very much these days. When she isn’t working she’s off on some tour, and often does camp shows for the boys in service. She knocks herself out on these occasions, and her favorite is Travis Air Base near San Francisco, where they bring in the wounded evacuees from Korea. A person just can’t keep up this pace all the time, and many a night Debbie is obviously tired. We know she’s tired when she tries to sneak into bed without having dinner. Debbie has erratic eating habits, and sometimes skips whole meals because she claims she hasn’t time to eat. If it weren’t for milk, she’d starve to death. She drinks milk as soon as she’s out of bed, and all day long, finishing off with another glass before she gets back in bed.
When she isn’t tired, we’re in for a ball, because Debbie is a clown at heart and puts on impromptu acts as long as she’s vertical. She sings a lot around the house, in a voice ranging from a crazy falsetto to a strained bass, and while she used to render “Abba-Dabba Honeymoon” at least once a day, I think she’s finally grown tired of it. The boys at the camps always request it, and despite the fact it’s the song that helped make her famous, you can like one tune just so long. The only thing that’s left for Debbie out of that one is her fondness for monkeys. At this point she is waging a campaign to bring a live one home, and Maxene is resisting with all the fortifications that a mother can put forth. When Debbie has run out of arguments, she brings up the dubious point that the animal would make a good pet for Gail, the baby born to Bill and me last September. The argument doesn’t carry much weight, for at this early age Gail wouldn’t know a monkey from her own mother. I don’t think.
The advent of Gail was a thing that Debbie looked forward to with great anticipation. Such anticipation that when I told her about it last spring,she was crushed by the information that she would have to wait until the middle of August. “Well, hurry up,” she said. “Isn’t there something you can do about it?” When August had come and gone and we discovered that we’d figured wrong and wouldn’t have the baby until mid-September, Debbie gave up the whole project in utter disbelief that she would ever be an aunt. As it happened, Gail was born on a Friday afternoon while Debbie was at the studio making Singin’ In The Rain. She didn’t know about it until she came home at eight that night, and was in a big twit because she had to leave the next morning for an air base in Omaha. When she and Gail and I finally came home where we belonged, Debbie was very polite about the fact that the baby was a girl. With all those uncles and fond memories of tetherball, etc., she had been all set for a nephew, but the disappointment didn’t last long. By this time, when Maxene is doing the dishes and I’m mixing the formula, Gail is given into the care of Debbie, who promptly snatches her up and goes into anything ranging from ballet to jitterbugging, a jouncing pastime which delights the baby.
I’m happy that my daughter and sister-in-law get along so well, particularly in view of the fact that Gail has done her darndest to draw Debbie’s dislike. For two solid months the baby was afflicted with colic, and it seemed she made a point of howling the minute Debbie got up to go to work. She quieted down as soon as Debbie left the house, then started up again in the evening when she heard her aunt’s car screech into the driveway. Debbie has forgiven her all this, but I notice a change in her attitude toward babies. She likes children and always has, figuring that six would make a likely brood. But lately, between the colic and the two-hour feeding schedule that disrupted the entire house, Debbie has given some brief thought to adopting all six when they are safely out of the infant stage.
In the meantime, all she has to worry about is this career business. She still doesn’t believe it, and dreams of going to college so that she can be qualified as a gym teacher and have something to fall: back on when “all this glamor routine blows over.” I don’t think it’s going to blow over, and all you have to do is look at Debbie to know that. Its amazing how she’s perked up since beginning her movie work. When I first knew her she wore no makeup except a little lipstick, and now, while she doesn’t go into complications about cosmetics, she looks so much prettier. She was always neat, but these days—well, it sort of stuns me when I think of it, but I do believe Debbie is getting to be glamorous. I guess the thought would stun her, too, but it’s the truth. It isn’t anything she works at—it’s just beginning to steal over her, that’s all.
I suppose the family first realized it when that strange boy began hanging around the house. Seems he’d seen her in a movie and fallen in love with her. Our phone number was still listed in the book, and after calling up all the Reynolds in Los Angeles, he struck our house, copied the address and came around the next night. Nobody was home but Ray, who invited the boy in to watch television. After that, he showed up wherever Deb happened to be, and that included crashing the studio. He was’a nice enough kid, but Debbie doesn’t have enough time to devote to her old friends, let alone new ones, and finally had to ask him to stay in his own bailiwick.
Next thing we knew she received a letter from an old friend of Bill’s, now in the army, and although he’d always known her as Franny, the kid sister, the letter was addressed most respectfully to Miss Debbie Reynolds. And not long after that another army friend of Bill’s, who years ago hadn’t even bothered to speak to Debbie, stopped by when on leave to ask her for an autographed picture.
Well, things are happening all right, and the prize square of John Burroughs High is turning into a social circle all by herself. And as glamorous females seldom choose a career of drilling schoolchildren in their exercises, I very much doubt that a gymnasium will ever see Mary Frances Reynolds again. Instead, Debbie Reynolds will be confining her appearances to the silver screens of the nation.
THE END
—BY JOYCE REYNOLDS
It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1952
