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Bethesda Terrace as storm clouds pass. 5:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
June 17, 2009. Another one of those great overcast late Spring days in New York. The Sun came out but not for long. It had rained late late the night before; there were still puddles on the Promenade by the river.
Last night I went over to the Café Carlyle with Rick Unterberg to see Debbie Reynolds who opened there last week and is playing through the 27th.
NYSD readers may know that a little more than twenty years ago I collaborated and ghost-wrote Debbie’s autobiography (“Debbie: My Life; William Morrow publishers).
The experience had many aspects to it. It was the first major professional job I had as a writer and I earned a decent fee for the assignment. It was also learn as you go. Writing a book, being hired to write a book for someone is a challenge. It doesn’t mean, for example, they are your kind of person, or even someone you would like under any other kind of circumstances. I had no sense of Debbie Reynolds by that time except for her enormous fame because of her career and her marriages.
I basically knew Debbie Reynolds as a kid from the big screen in the Park Theatre in Westfield, Massachusetts. I remember seeing her in “Three Little Words” with Fred Astaire and Red Skelton when I couldn’t have been more than eight years old. My memory can still conjure up the images in the scene and the screen itself. For it was magic all around. She sang a song (“I Wanna Be Loved By You ... boo-boop-a-doop”), lip-synching actually, a 1920s novelty singer named Helen Kane.
I can still see her in my mind’s eye (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) with Carlton Carpenter singing “Abba Dabba Honeymoon” in “Two Weeks With Love” (starring Jane Powell). “Abba Dabba Honeymoon” became a million record seller, and the 19-year-old Debbie used her recording royalties to build a swimming pool in the backyard of her parents’ little house on Evergreen Avenue in Burbank. Movie fans (like me) all knew about Debbie and her backyard swimming pool and the record royalties. Because she was the authentic girl next door who was a Star.
It wasn’t until years later that I learned that Ray Reynolds, Debbie’s father, was never crazy about the pool in the backyard, and when Debbie married Eddie Fisher and moved out, he filled in the pool.
Debbie adored her father. She was a good daughter to her mother but she adored her father. He never saw a movie she was in until “Unsinkable Molly Brown” which was in the 1960s (she signed her first contract in 1948). Ray never saw her and when asked why, he answered “I see her in the kitchen all the time.”
What Ray Reynolds meant, I now realize, is that his daughter Mary Frances (renamed Debbie by the bosses at Warner Brothers where she first signed into the movie business) was always this bundle of energy who was always entertaining her pop morning noon and night.
When I was working on her book, I interviewed a ninety year old man named Solly Biano who had been a talent scout for Warner Brothers and had “discovered” Debbie. In those days, these guys spent their days look for talent for the studios. They hit every public event looking for kids with looks and talent, in no particular order. Among Solly Biano’s discoveries was Burt Lancaster and Lana Turner. Lana he met in a lingerie shop in Hollywood where she was working. When he took her over to Warners to meet Mervyn LeRoy (father of New York’s Linda Janklow), Mr. LeRoy didn’t like her name – Judy. Looking for a new name, Solly had a daughter Yolanda whom they called Lonnie. He suggested Lonnie Turner, Judy changed it to Lana.
Solly Biano was at the Miss Burbank beauty contest that night at the Burbank High School when little Frannie Reynolds entered hoping to win the prize which was a silk scarf and blouse. She had neither up to that point. When it came to the talent part, the kid lip-synched a recording of the rambunctious Betty Hutton singing “My Rocking Horse Ran Away.”
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| Debbie and daughter, Carrie Fisher. |
Debbie, Tuesday at the Friars where she was honored. With Anita Gillette. |
Solly Biano told me forty years later that he and another guy -- a talent scout from MGM – both wanted to test the kid. So they flipped a coin. Heads Solly one and she went over to Warners where they named her Debbie.
I can’t remember how she got to Metro but it wasn’t long after. The Abba Dabba bit impressed Mr. Mayer and so when they were looking for the girl in “Singin’ In the Rain,” she came to mind. She couldn’t dance. One step. So Gene Kelly was not interested. But Mr. Mayer, he knew. The kid is gonna be in the picture. Gene Kelly still wasn’t keen. But. She learned to dance.
Last night was about fifty-six or seven years since I rode my bike down to the Park Theatre on an afterschool afternoon to see this movie, “Singin’ In the Rain.” I loved Debbie Reynolds. I was Solly Biano. And she’s the last of ‘em. The Red-Hot Mamas and little Frannie Reynolds too. |
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Before last night, I hadn’t seen her perform in about twenty years. By the time I met her in 1986, she’d been making a very good living for a very long time playing Vegas and Reno and clubs and fairs all over America. I learned very early on in our relationship that she’s a very industrious woman. She works. I mean 24/7. I had a mother like that – although she didn’t pull down the bucks the way Debbie has and probably still does. But it’s similar. It’s about the work. They consider it a necessity: that or starve.
Her work is to entertain. You are there to be entertained. And she knows this. And so kid, out she comes with a song and a lotta patter and some songs and some patter and some rat-a-tat-tat, and some impersonations and some memories, and the audience just sat there and lapped it up and loved it. I loved it. It went fast but it must have been about an hour and a half of Debbie entertaining the troops. And the troops loving it.
The place was packed. On a Tuesday night. And they had a good time. I was thinking of Solly Biano back in Burbank on that Saturday night in the high school auditorium when the kid came out and lip-synched “My Rocking Horse Got Away.” Who could resist? |
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