When she died in December at the age of 84, Debbie Reynolds was remembered as one of the last great stars of Hollywood's studio era, when singing-and-dancing talents were plucked out of obscurity as teenagers, signed under contract to the studio, and turned into stars by a mighty studio machine. But Reynolds, in fact, joined the system at the very end and was one of the last stars created by MGM before the once-mighty studio declined in the 1950s. With Reynolds gone, the number of stars who knew MGM at its mightiest grows ever-smaller. Over the next five weeks, we'll be sharing interviews with those stars who remember MGM at its best-and how it fell from grace.
The way Debbie Reynolds remembered it, she walked into MGM the day Clark Gable left. "Everything about the studio was enormous," she said in a 2015 interview. "You walked through the gates of iron, and it was palatial looking. The first day, I was introduced to Clark Gable. He said, 'Hello, kid. Welcome to MGM. I'm just leaving.' "
Gable, one of MGM's biggest stars, didn't leave the studio until 1954; Reynolds's MGM debut, Three Little Words, opened in 1950. Like many of the best Hollywood stories, there's no way this one can be entirely true. But the spirit is accurate: 18-year-old Debbie Reynolds arrived at the beginning of MGM's end.
MGM had been losing money since 1946, as TV gained in popularity. In 1948 the studio's parent company, Loews Inc., hired Dore Schary as head of production, working alongside studio patriarch Louis B. Mayer. While Mayer was ostensibly in charge, Schary had orders to cut expenses, including contracts that kept stars, like Gable, exclusive to the studio.
Still, Mayer was the kingmaker, and was the one to personally announce to his bright-eyed contract player Reynolds what her next project would be. "You are going to do a new picture called Singin' in the Rain," Mayer told Reynolds, in 1951. "I said, 'Yes, sir!'" Reynolds recalled.