Debbie Reynolds
Actress
Debbie has done it all. She patterned her early style after the late Betty Hutton, song and dance/actress from the late 40s, early 50s. Got a seven year movie contract and married singer Eddie Fischer in 1955 and the media tagged them as Americas Darlings. Her movie and night club career spanned more than fifty years.
In 1986 she appeared at Famous-Barr's West County Department Store in St. Louis to do a style show for her latest line of clothing. A special stage had been constructed where they expected a crowd of 400. More than 1700 people managed to squeeze in for a glimpse of Debbie Reynolds.
I was very early and grabbed a front row seat near the podium. I felt that surely at one point I would be able to have her sign the Tablecloth.
After the style show had ended, Debbie took questions from the audience. I called out "Would you sign my Tablecloth?" She walked to where I was seated and took the cloth to center stage. "My, what a dirty Tablecloth," she said. She was looking at age marks from having laid in a drawer for more than forty years. She held it tightly as she signed a very beautiful signature in front of the large audience. I didn't carry a camera with me that day and it would be another five years before would meet with her again to take that picture during the Working Woman's Show at the Convention Center, downtown St. Louis. She looked stunning in her dark blue dress.
I reminded her about the dirty Tablecloth comment that day and how I went home and gave the cloth a good washing in the the bathtub. In doing that, I had forgotten there was still one signature that had not been embroidered. Maestro Leopold Stokowski had signed a large signature in pencil and had never been embroidered. I washed his name out completely. "Aww, that's too bad" she said just as she was now being introduced to go on stage.