Get out your hankies, Carrie and Debbie are together again, along with Heat Miser, aka George S. Irving, their "Irene" co-star who died the same week they did. "Tsumommy", as Carrie calls the wonderful eccentric lady she calls mom, someone my mom had introduced me to at under 10 years of age. Every year was either Molly Brown or Sister Anne or both. "Oh just do what mom says. It makes life easier", Debbie says, and if my mom said this, I'd do it just out of respect, more for the memory of those Sunday evenings of long ago. Or perhaps the memory of seeing Debbie on stage from the third row of the orchestra at the Pantages in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", balling my eyes out within her vision during "I Ain't Down Yet". Add in seeing Carrie in "Wishful Drinking" at Studio 54, and I think I know these people, whom I really don't.
It is with great love that Carrie shows off everything personal in her life, and it is much about Carrie as it is Debbie. There's also Todd Fisher and his beautiful wife Catherine Hickland, a soap opera star I've known in screen since I was 20 on "Capitol", following her to both "Loving" and "One Life to Live" where she played wonderful vixens. Carrie, immortalized as both a pez dispenser and a blow up doll, has been a champion of saying, "Hey, I'm messed up and I know it, and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'll deal with it, and the world just needs to get over it." It is obvious that they love their fans, but the longing to be themselves in quiet dignity as just mom and daughter is there, even if they are immortalized on screen as Meryl and Shirley in "Postcards from the Edge".
Christmas 2016 was a downer with their sudden deaths, and in watching this, I have hope for their souls. Drugs schmugs, I say to the detractors who dismiss Carrie for her addiction. She's funny, honest, real, easy going, complicated. Imagine if this was the Judy/Liza or Lorna syndrome, Janet Leigh or Jamie Lee Curtis, but with Carrie, it's just honesty from start to finish. Debbie is so vibrant on stage, so when they deal with her aging, it is heartbreaking, and these last few weeks were like losing my own mom, not something I've gone through yet, but a reminder of what you must do to prepare for that time. I cherish those moments I shared with my mom watching "Molly Brown" and "The Singing Nun", her memory of going to see "Molly" with her mother in law (my beloved late grandmother) at Radio City Music Hall and my seeing live with her sly wink towards me after seeing me weep, and later seeing the film on the big screen at the Egyptian. It must be said that for younger fans, if Debbie Reynolds is known as Princess Leia's mother, that makes her a queen.
It is with great love that Carrie shows off everything personal in her life, and it is much about Carrie as it is Debbie. There's also Todd Fisher and his beautiful wife Catherine Hickland, a soap opera star I've known in screen since I was 20 on "Capitol", following her to both "Loving" and "One Life to Live" where she played wonderful vixens. Carrie, immortalized as both a pez dispenser and a blow up doll, has been a champion of saying, "Hey, I'm messed up and I know it, and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'll deal with it, and the world just needs to get over it." It is obvious that they love their fans, but the longing to be themselves in quiet dignity as just mom and daughter is there, even if they are immortalized on screen as Meryl and Shirley in "Postcards from the Edge".
Christmas 2016 was a downer with their sudden deaths, and in watching this, I have hope for their souls. Drugs schmugs, I say to the detractors who dismiss Carrie for her addiction. She's funny, honest, real, easy going, complicated. Imagine if this was the Judy/Liza or Lorna syndrome, Janet Leigh or Jamie Lee Curtis, but with Carrie, it's just honesty from start to finish. Debbie is so vibrant on stage, so when they deal with her aging, it is heartbreaking, and these last few weeks were like losing my own mom, not something I've gone through yet, but a reminder of what you must do to prepare for that time. I cherish those moments I shared with my mom watching "Molly Brown" and "The Singing Nun", her memory of going to see "Molly" with her mother in law (my beloved late grandmother) at Radio City Music Hall and my seeing live with her sly wink towards me after seeing me weep, and later seeing the film on the big screen at the Egyptian. It must be said that for younger fans, if Debbie Reynolds is known as Princess Leia's mother, that makes her a queen.