LOS ANGELES -- Actress Debbie Reynolds, the star of the 1952 classic movie Singin' in the Rain, died Wednesday, a day after the death of her daughter, actress-writer Carrie Fisher. Reynolds was 84.
"She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken," Reynolds' son, Todd Fisher, said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where Reynolds was taken by ambulance earlier Wednesday.
He said the stress of his sister's death Tuesday "was too much" for Reynolds. Carrie Fisher, who was 60, had been hospitalized since Friday.
"She said, 'I want to be with Carrie,'" her son said. "And then she was gone."
Reynolds enjoyed the heights of show-business success and endured the depths of personal tragedy and betrayal. She lost one husband to Elizabeth Taylor, and two other husbands plundered her for millions.
Reynolds was a superstar early in life. She spent the first eight years of her life in Depression-era poverty in El Paso, Texas, where she was born on April 1, 1932. Her father, a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was transferred to Southern California, and the family settled in Burbank, near Warner Bros. studio.
The girl flourished, excelling in sports and playing French horn and bass viola in the Burbank Youth Symphony. Friends persuaded her to enter the beauty contest for Miss Burbank, and she won over the judges by lip-syncing to a Betty Hutton record.
After two minor roles at Warner Bros. and three supporting roles at MGM, studio boss Louis Mayer cast her in Singin' in the Rain. She was 19 and had little dance experience, and she appeared with two of the screen's greatest dancers, Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly, who also co-directed.
"Gene Kelly was hard on me, but I think he had to be," Reynolds, who more than held her own in the movie, said in a 1999 interview. "I had to learn everything in three to six months."
Reynolds' role in 1964 musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown brought her only Academy Award nomination. She received a Tony nomination in 1973 when she starred on Broadway in the revival of Irene, in which her daughter also appeared.
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After her transition from starlet to star, Reynolds became immensely popular with teenage girls and even more so when in 1955 she married Eddie Fisher, the pop singer whose fans were equally devoted.
During this period, the couple made a movie together, Bundle of Joy, which seemed to mirror the 1956 birth of Carrie. Reynolds also had a No. 1 hit on the pop charts in 1957 with "Tammy," the Oscar-nominated song from her film Tammy and the Bachelor.
But the Cinderella story ended after Eddie Fisher announced he was leaving his wife and two children to marry Taylor.
Reynolds' film career, however, continued to flourish. She starred in films including The Rat Race, The Pleasure of His Company, The Second Time Around, How the West Was Won and The Singing Nun.
She also provided the voice of Charlotte the spider in the 1973 animated movie Charlotte's Web.
She also appeared regularly on television, appearing as John Goodman's mother on Roseanne and a mom on Will & Grace. Her books included the memoirs Unsinkable and Make 'Em Laugh.
Reynolds and Fisher were featured together in the HBO documentary Bright Lights, scheduled for release next year.
Reynolds eventually did team up with Taylor -- long since divorced from Fisher -- and two other veteran actresses, Joan Collins and Shirley MacLaine, for the 2001 TV movie These Old Broads. The script, co-written by Carrie Fisher, was about aging, feuding actresses who get together for a reunion show. The former romantic rivals had reconciled years before Taylor died in 2011; Reynolds recalled they had both been passengers on the Queen Elizabeth.
"I sent a note to her and she sent a note to me in passing, and then we had dinner together," she said a few months after Taylor's death. "She was married to Richard Burton by then. I had been remarried at that point. And we just said, 'Let's call it a day.' And we got smashed. And we had a great evening, and stayed friends since then."
Information for this article was contributed by Hillel Italie, Sandy Cohen, Anthony McCartney and Bob Thomas of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/29/2016