So that way they look like a matched set.
All right, so let’s recap: Eddie and Debbie have me and my brother, Todd. I grow up, sort of, and I marry Paul Simon. Now Paul is a short, Jewish singer. Eddie Fisher is a short, Jewish singer. Short. Jewish. Singer.
Any questions?
My mother makes a blueprint, and I follow it to the letter. So Paul and I have a passionate relationship with a lot of words, big words, clever words, uh-oh, the words get mean so we get divorced. But don’t worry, I’m not alone for long ’cause now I meet Bryan Lourd. Bryan is a talent agent, so fewer words, great sex. We celebrate and we have a child together. Billie Lourd.
Elizabeth and Mike Todd have Liza Todd.
Liza’s a wonderful sculptress, and she meets and marries her art professor. Professor Hap Tivey. Hap is short for Happy—so he’s not Jewish. Anyway, they have Quinn and Rhys. So, Rhys Tivey and Billie Lourd—are they related? (You can peek back at the chart if you haven’t already.)
I told them: “You’re related by scandal.”
I just hope the two of them get married so this will all be worthwhile.
And that is Hollywood inbreeding!
Hollywood inbreeding is sort of like royal inbreeding. And after all, celebrity is sort of like American royalty. So my brother and I are like those sad, sad cases like King Charles the Second of Spain. The last of the Habsburgs.
Charles was so horribly inbred that his aunt was also his grandmother. And his tongue was so large that he couldn’t chew or be understood, and he drooled. Another little challenge was that his organs were dying inside his body (the one on the outside didn’t work that well either because he died childless). But because his organs were dying, he actually smelled. So the people around him would put this perfume on him when he met prospective wives. (And by the way, we sell that perfume out in the lobby at my show.) Another issue for Charles was that he had these little seizures all the time and he would fall over, so the perfume people put weights in his shoes. Anyway, it worked because Charlie actually managed to marry twice, (probably someone with nursing ambi tions), which just goes to show that there’s a lid for every pot. Sometimes there are as many as nine lids for the same pot. Also when I was a teenager I could buy pot in lids. But I don’t think you can anymore, can you?
Oh, and Charles’s death caused the War of the Spanish Succession, which I know a lot of you have been discussing at length recently.
So my brother and I grew up smelling and drooling and having seizures, and we did all this in our house, which I called “the Embassy” because it looked less like a house than a place you would get your passport stamped.
Where would you put the Christmas wreath on something like that?
It was a modern house and it had things that most normal houses don’t have. We had eight little pink refrigerators (you know, in case Snow White and the seven dwarfs came over) and we had a lanai and utility closets. Oh, and we had three pools, you know, in case two broke.
There was also my mother’s closet—which I always thought of as The Church of Latter Day Debbie. There was a certain hush, a certain smell of Abolene cream and White Shoulders perfume. It was very quiet; it was very dark; it was subject to its own laws like the phone booth where Clark Kent was transformed into Super man. My mother’s closet was the magical place that she entered as my mom and emerged as Debbie Reynolds.
Her closet was huge, like an enormous room, with an entrance and an exit, lined on each side by clothes of every sort—gowns, slacks, blouses, shoes and hat boxes, all manner of attire imaginable—and even the unimaginable. I remember she had these long pale gowns made out of beads. One in particular was a blue gown shimmer ing with blue beads. It even had blue fur on the sleeves and on the hem; she could float through a room in a movie star gown. Then, there was a long, shimmery, white chest of drawers where she kept all of her underwear and bras, and slips and stockings all neatly folded up and smelling of sachet. She had this weird, giant underwear that went over her belly button—big underpants and huge bras. I remember thinking, wow, some day when I’m grown up, maybe I’ll get my own enormously big breasts. I used to watch while my mom lifted up her huge fun bags so she could wash underneath them. I eventually did get those big breasts, and now I’m sorry.
My mother’s closet wasn’t off limits, but it was very much hers and, therefore, my younger brother, Todd, and I valued it. It was prized because of how highly we prized our mother. She was often away, and when we missed her, we could go into her closet and do stuff like put our faces into a bunch of clothes and inhale the powdery, flowery scent of her. We would put on shows together in the closet, playing some kind of airplane game and restaurant game. And then there was this hat we for some reason called the “bum-bum” hat. It was this big straw hat with a brim that continued over your eyes with this green mesh you could see out of. We loved nothing more than to put on the bum-bum hat and look through the green mesh at our suddenly transformed surroundings.
My mother was magnificent when she was decked out in all her glory. When she was ablaze with all manner of jewelry and gems, shimmering diamond earrings and her neck encircled with bright stones that caught the light, a gown with matching shoes and stockings, makeup and her tall wig, carefully coiffed by her hairdresser Sidney Guileroff or “Uncle Sidney” as we were encouraged to call him. Sidney’s name could be found in the credits of some of the more classic MGM films of all time. My mother would emerge from her dressing room a vision, so glamorous and so not of this world.
When my mother was at home on weekends, we stayed with her as much as possible, which frequently meant we were very involved in watching our mother. Right next to her closet there was this huge bathroom with magenta marble and mirrors everywhere. I remember the smells of her perfume—L’air du Temps—and of creams, like Ponds or Albolene. On the bathtub, there were always two or three monogrammed facecloths laid out—with her initials—DRK. Debbie Reynolds Karl. And then there was The Shrine of the Wigs, which was at the end of one countertop, along with what seemed to me like hundreds and hundreds of lipsticks and eyebrow pencils and false eyelashes. My mother was unbelievably meticulous at all of this. She’d twirl her hair up into pincurls that she’d use to pull her face tighter, then she’d put on her makeup base with a sponge. The base went low when the dress was low cut, which it usually was. Then she applied eye makeup and false lashes, so she didn’t need mascara, but there was lots of eyeliner. Next came lipstick and rouge and powder—great puffs of glittering clouds of powder, followed by hair, which was a big deal, getting the wig on right. Then came the earrings, then she’d step into her clothes, and then came her stockings and her tiny little size five shoes. When she was completely finished, her Debbie Reynolds movie star accent got stronger, her posture got better, and she looked incredibly beautiful. When our mother dressed, the man behind the curtain became the great and powerful Oz.
Undressing was also a process my brother and I observed. First we’d watch my mother as she removed her makeup with a wash cloth, then she’d take a bubble bath. As Todd and I looked on, Debbie Reynolds would slowly return to being our mother. The coach was once more a pumpkin, the footmen went back to being mice, Pinocchio became a real girl. We loved to be with her when she resumed her role as our mother. That this amazing being who looked like she looked and had these remarkable abilities belonged to us somehow. She was so beautiful, and of course I dreamed of one day looking like her. I fantasized that perhaps if Uncle Sidney would put my mother’s tall, golden wig on my head and give me her perfectly coiffed hairstyle, then I would transform into the confident and shining beauty I would surely be. Soon I would be beautiful too. But to my horror, no such transformation occurred. It was then that I knew with the profound certainty of a ten year old that I would not be, and was in no way now, the beauty that my mother was. I was a clumsy-looking and intensely awkward, insecure girl. I decided then that I’d better develop something else—if I wasn’t going to be pretty, maybe I could be funny or smart—someone past caring. So far past caring that you couldn’t even see it with a telescope.
Sometimes my mother would take me shopping, to Saks Fifth Avenue, or a store called Pixie Town. But when I was a little girl (and even sometimes now), it was complicated to go out in public with my mother because she was very famous. She belonged to the world. She not only looked like Debbie Reynolds but to make matters worse she wore this giant big diamond ring. It was like being in a parade. In a way, my mother was an event. “Oh my god!” people would say to her. “I loved you in Molly Brown!” or “I saw you in Las Vegas!” So it was not like having private time with Mom. And I really didn’t like sharing her. It seemed almost unsanitary.
When my mother was at home, she did a lot of sleeping, because she worked so hard and had such long hours, so Todd and I wanted as much of her company as we could get. So I slept on the rug on the floor next to her bed, and my brother slept on the couch near the window. In the morning when Todd and I got up, we would creep
