Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds

Princess Leia & Unsinkable Tammy in Hell

Add to my list

by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince

Type: Biographies
Subject: Actress > Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds
Keywords: Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, trivia
Publishing date: 2018
Publisher: Blood Moon Productions
Collection: Blood Moon's Babylon Series
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 624 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-9360035-7-0

User Ratings

(0 vote)

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Book Presentation:
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were the greatest mother-daughter act in show business.

Born in a shanty in El Paso, Texas, Debbie, a Texas tomboy, endured a life of poverty―jackrabbit every night for dinner―until she moved to California.

Blossoming into a young beauty, she won the title of Miss Burbank, which led to a movie contract. Stardom came relatively quickly when she was cast as the minty fresh ingénue in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), hailed as the greatest Hollywood musical of all time.

Frank Sinatra stole her virginity, but she married pop singer Eddie Fisher for the “official deflowering” (her words). “Debbie and Eddie,” the darling of fan magazines, reigned as “America’s Sweethearts.”

The fairytale ended when his best friend, producer Mike Todd, died in a plane crash. Fisher rushed to the side of his widow, the violet-eyed screen vamp, Elizabeth Taylor. He descended from Maggie the Cat’s Hot Tin Roof into her boudoir. His divorce from Debbie and his subsequent marriage to her best friend provided fodder for the scandal magazines until the day Elizabeth provoked another scandal, divorcing him to marry Richard Burton.

Through storm and rain, Debbie battled on, hitting a high point when she starred as Tammy in 1957, cast as the granddaughter of a Louisiana moonshiner, spouting pithy wisdom. “I’ll be singing my hit song on stage for the rest of my years.”

Her most memorable role was in 1964, when she was cast in the rags-to riches saga of The Unsinkable Molly Brown. (She even survived the sinking of the Titanic.) The role brought her an Oscar nomination.

Each of her three marriages was a disaster, the second one to a millionaire shoe manufacturing mogul who bankrupted both of them. Impoverished after the divorce, she ended up sleeping in her car.

Debbie mingled with the élite of Hollywood in the dying days of its Golden Age. Luminaries included Clark Gable (“if I were only twenty years younger….); Judy Garland (who propositioned her); Lana Turner; Bette Davis (“she was my daughter”); Katharine Hepburn; Spencer Tracy; Lucille Ball; and Glenn Ford, who fell in love with her.

Mass murderer Charles Manson sent her love letters; Liberace wanted her to enter into a “lavender marriage” with him, and James Dean “forced himself onto me” when she was up for the role of his girlfriend in Rebel Without a Cause.

“I turned down Warren Beatty,” Debbie claimed, “and didn’t even go for the handsome Gary Cooper, although he told me women called him ‘The Montana Mule.’ Bob Hope, a compulsive womanizer, also had to look elsewhere.”

A rebellious daughter, Carrie grew up to endure a life of living hell―pill popping, drug abuse, chronic anxiety, failed love affairs, bipolar disorder, and electroshock therapy. Carrie sometimes protested: “I don’t want to be the daughter of Debbie Reynolds. I battled demons that set my brain on fire.”

International celebrity came in 1977, when she played Princess Leia in Star Wars as an elaborately coiffed intergalactic princess, spearheading “The Force,” and strong enough to oppose the villainy of Darth Vader. She became the fantasy of teenage boys and sci-fi freaks.
A love affair with the married Harrison Ford faded into a marriage to singer Paul Simon as they crossed a Bridge Over Troubled Waters. A final marriage to a Hollywood agent ended when he decided he needed not a wife, but a husband for himself.

The princess turned writer in a series of autobiographical books praised for their lacerating insights into human frailty and awash with bubble and bounce, sprinkled with bons mots, an adroit verbal acrobat with words. The New York Times defined her as “one of the rare inhabitants of La-La Land who can actually write.”

In Carrie’s writings, Debbie often didn’t come out too well, depicted as a “casually narcissistic gorgon ill-suited for the real world.” As her star dimmed, cooled, and faded, mother took to the bottle.

Until the end, Debbie was resilient, a singing, dancing, sensation of massive talent, a button-nosed, boop-boopie-doo girl for six decades. She never lost her “Debbie-ness,” strutting her stuff, emoting like a storm―everything sprinkled with the stardust of yesterday.

What was her secret of perpetual youth? Carrie knew: “She drank bat’s blood for breakfast and smeared bug brains on her skin.”

Reconciled after years of separation, Carrie and Debbie came together at the end, not able to live apart. They couldn’t even die without each other. Their fans like to think they’re doing fine today in some galaxy far, far away.

About the authors:
Hailed for their ability to skewer the inflated, long-standing myths and icons of show-biz, Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince are the world’s most prolific and visible biographers of Hollywood celebrities. Residents of New York City, and winners of book awards from many literary competitions across the U.S., they’re co-authors and co-producers of streams of written entertainment about how America interprets its celebrities.

Press Reviews:
Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds: Princess Leia & Unsinkable Tammy in Hell represents the first in-depth biography of the mother-daughter duo, and is especially recommended for prior fans of either woman, who will find this survey replete with new information, scandals, and colorful insights. Black and white vintage photos liberally pepper a series of revelations which assume the high drama and attraction of hot Hollywood gossip, but with an overlay of truth that attends to revealing not only the lives of and connections between Fisher and Reynolds, but their overall, lasting impact on Hollywood and pop culture alike. It's rare that a survey of much-publicized icons offers unique perspectives and new information, but Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds does so in a sweeping, thoroughly engrossing manner that will give their fans new insights and perspectives. While no Hollywood library should be without this authoritative coverage, it should also be mentioned that despite its volume (over six hundred pages of detail), it's quite accessible to those with relatively little prior information about the duo, who will find that the length of the volume in no way precludes its value as both a serious study and an attractive leisure read. -- Diane Donovan ― Senior Editor, California Bookwatch

See the publisher website: Blood Moon Productions

See the complete filmography of Carrie Fisher on the website: IMDB ...

> From the same authors: