Question of the Day - 27 September 2020

Every time we mention Debbie Reynolds or her hotel, even in passing, as we did in the QoD about the Majestic Hotel planned for the property where her hotel stood, we get a slew of questions about the singer-dancer-actress-casino owner and mother of Carrie and Todd Fisher.

To this day, nearly four years since she died of a stroke at age 84 (one day after Carrie died of various causes at age 60) and nearly 25 years after the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel closed, Debbie is still beloved by fans of her movies, notably, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, Tammy and the Bachelor, Singin' in the Rain with Gene Kelly, How the West Was Won, The Unsinkable Molly Brown (Academy Award nomination for Best Actress), and this writer's favorite, the animated Charlotte's Web (watched 100 times with his kids). She also starred in her own "The Debbie Reynolds Show" on TV, played Grace's mother Bobbi on "Will and Grace," and wrote two autobiographies, Debbie: My Life and Unsinkable: A Memoir. But it was, perhaps, her grace in the midst of the very public dissolution of her first marriage when she was 23 years old to pop idol Eddie Fisher, who left her with two small children for Elizabeth Taylor after her third husband, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash, that endeared her for life to legions upon legions of fans. 

Anyway, the museum. Yes, the Debbie Reynolds' Hollywood Motion Picture & Television Museum at her hotel-casino on Convention Center Drive here housed a fabulous collection of the most iconic costumes, props, furnishings, and memorabilia from Hollywood's Golden Age. 

The back story is that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, a.k.a. MGM, was one of the great Hollywood studios throughout the 20th century. None other than Kirk Kerkorian bought the studio in 1969, coveting its vast L.A. real estate and the cache of decades of Hollywood movie glamour, which Kerkorian wanted to bring to Las Vegas in conjunction with building the largest hotel there at the time, the MGM Grand (now Bally's). When Kerkorian started selling off the studio's assets, Debbie Reynolds attended all five days of the auctioning of the memorabilia, which launched her lifelong passion for collecting and preserving Hollywood memories. She spent decades accumulating the memorabilia; in nearly 40 years, Reynolds acquired some 5,000 vintage costumes, props, cameras, letters, cars, and other items from the golden years of the movie industry. She also attempted to open a proper museum for the collection, with three aborted attempts (two in Hollywood and one in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee). For a short time, she did display a number of the most famous costumes and props at the museum in Las Vegas. 

Some of the items on display included Audrey Hepburn’s white Ascot dress from My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews’ guitar from The Sound of Music, Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz ruby-red slippers, Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra costume, among others, Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat, Scarlett O'Hara's drapery hat, and perhaps the most iconic of them all, Marilyn Monroe’s white halter dress from The Seven Year Itch. (You know, the one that the subway grating blew up, revealing parts of Monroe that were a bit risque in 1955).  

The museum closed when the hotel-casino did, after it went bankrupt due to ... well, that's a very long story of its own. But you can read the whole sordid tale, plus all about the lives of Debbie, her three (no-good) husbands, and the lives of her children Carrie and Todd Fisher, in Todd's memoir, My Girls -- A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie. Todd is now a Las Vegas resident with his third wife Cat and we highly recommend his book, published in 2018, for its gutsy, gritty, and brutally honest treatment of the roller coaster of his own life growing up as the son and brother of two superstar celebrities.