What do you do when you star in one of the greatest films of all time at the age of 19? If you’re Debbie Reynolds, following her lead role opposite Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in the classic “Singin’ in the Rain,” you soar and fall and soar again, making the best of bad situations, never quitting, and always stopping the show.
In 1948, Mary Frances Reynolds was one of many girls around the country who got a studio contract by winning a beauty pageant, but this 16-year-old Miss Burbank left her peers in the dust. The studio system may have been slowly dying in the 1950s and 60s, but Reynolds left an indelible mark, from her work at MGM — if you know only “Singin’” and her Oscar-nominated turn in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” give “Two Weeks with Love” or “I Love Melvin” a look next time they pop up on TCM — to her early championing of film preservation.