Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher at Home: 15 Vintage Photos of the ’50s Sweethearts
Tour the dwellings of the Golden Age legends throughout their marriage and the early years of raising their children, Todd and Carrie Fisher
During Hollywood’s Golden Age, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher were among the darlings of the entertainment industry. In the early ’50s, Reynolds became a household name with a leading role in one of her career’s most popular films, Singin’ in the Rain, while Fisher was an in-demand recording artist and the star of the musical variety television series Coke Time with Eddie Fisher.
When the two performers became romantically linked, they were dubbed “America’s Sweethearts” by press. They even went on to become costars in the 1956 film Bundle of Joy. Both were bright Hollywood fixtures at the time, but Reynolds dreamed about quitting it all and staying at home. “I thought eventually I’d leave the business and concentrate on being a wife and mother,” she wrote in her 1988 memoir, Debbie: My Life. “Then we would not have to worry about where we’d live, we’d live wherever Eddie was working.”
Though their careers in showbiz would outlast their marriage, the duo’s time in the spotlight would be enshrined in many a home photoshoot—some of which included their children. The couple had a son and a daughter, Todd and Carrie Fisher, the latter of whom would go on to become an icon of cinema in her own right with the Star Wars franchise. Below, we’ve rounded up some images of the couple’s lives at the homes where they spent time with family and eventually raised their own.
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images1/15Meet the parents
“Eddie took me to visit his parents in Philadelphia,” Reynolds wrote in her 2015 book, Make ‘Em Laugh: Short-Term Memories of Longtime Friends, of the story behind this 1954 photo of herself with Fisher and his mom, Kate. “One of the local papers ran a picture of us sampling his mother’s cooking.” The two actors had just recently announced their engagement. They got married the following year on September 17.
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images2/15Making a home
This 1955 snap was the newlyweds’ first published photograph taken in their Pacific Palisades, California, home. They started renting the space—which was actually a converted barn—after they tied the knot. The estate sat on six acres surrounded by farmland and was a “completely furnished honeymoon cottage way out on Sunset Boulevard, almost to the ocean,” Reynolds recalled in Debbie: My Life. She described the property as “rustic.”
Photo: Archive Photos/Stringer/Getty Images3/15Baby on board
In 1956, Reynolds and Fisher costarred in the musical Bundle of Joy, wherein the two end up caring for an abandoned baby. Coincidentally, Reynolds was pregnant with their first child, Carrie, during filming. The experience inspired her to consider becoming a stay-at-home mom one day. “I wanted a large family—four or six children,” she wrote in Debbie: My Life. “When the time came, I would give up my career and stay home to take care of my family.”
Photo: CBS via Getty Images/CBS Photo Archive/Contributor/Getty Images4/15Person to Person
Fisher and Reynolds were interviewed at their Pacific Palisades home for the CBS celebrity interview show Person to Person in 1956. They gave a tour of their new digs, which included a playhouse (a.k.a. a guesthouse), a barbecue, and a newly installed swimming pool (a feature Fisher had insisted on). “The house went in every direction,” Reynolds wrote in her 1988 memoir. “There was a 60-foot-long sunken living room, with exposed rough-hewn beams painted white. A couple of steps led down to a den, and a couple of steps more led down to a small projection area to run movies.”
CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images5/15A library for entertaining
The home was also outfitted with a full library. It was there that Reynolds and Fisher would often entertain guests, including their good friends Elizabeth Taylor and her then husband, movie producer Mike Todd. The rental was attended to by their house staff, which included a housekeeper, a chef, and Fisher’s assistant.
Photo: CBS via Getty Images/CBS Photo Archive/Contributor/Getty Images6/15“America’s Sweethearts”
When Fisher and Reynolds met in the ’50s, he was one of the biggest recording acts of the decade. He came into the spotlight as a teen idol with songs like “Thinking of You” and “Wish You Were Here.” His variety television show Coke Time with Eddie Fisher ran from 1953 to 1957 on NBC. At the time, Reynolds was under contract at MGM. “When we got married, the press called us ‘America’s Sweethearts,’” Reynolds wrote in her 2013 memoir, Unsinkable. “Eddie was my first love.”
Photo: CBS via Getty Images/CBS Photo Archive/Contributor/Getty Images7/15Homemaking from scratch
Fisher and Reynolds didn’t come to their Pacific Palisades residence with much. “We owned a chess set, two lamps, and an occasional chair,” she told the film magazine Screenland in 1955. “We had to go shopping so we’d have something to move in.” Fisher let Reynolds handle most of the home arrangements. He would later task her with finding them a new residence after their one-year lease expired.
Photo: CBS via Getty Images/CBS Photo Archive/Contributor/Getty Images8/15An unpretentious pad
Reynolds liked that the Palisades house wasn’t pretentious and that it was just big enough for their needs as a newly married couple without any kids. The “English-style brick house,” as Screenland reported, was very zen and featured a calming stream that flowed through their front yard. Reynolds would host her friend, the actor Bette Davis, who sometimes brought her two children along. “Bette and I would walk outdoors with the youngsters while talking like girlfriends,” Reynolds wrote in Make ‘Em Laugh.
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images9/15The beauty of a rental
Reynolds viewed the rental as a learning experience that trained her for homeownership later down the line. “It taught me a lot of things about the house I want in the future,” she told Screenland. Towards the end of their lease, she began to dislike certain things about the Palisades home and noted to avoid those features in their next place: “This house rambles too much. It’s a long hike from the bedroom to the kitchen if you want a snack at night. Hardly worth all the trouble.”
Photo: George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images/Contributor/Getty Images10/15Home sweet home
The couple’s first child, Carrie Frances Fisher, was born on October 21, 1956. “I felt that we had attained what was needed for a happy marriage—a family,” Reynolds wrote. “Everything was going well for us…. America’s sweethearts had had a baby girl and it was news across the world.”
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images11/15An LA abode, furnished by MGM
Once the family vacated their Pacific Palisades rental, they bought their first home in Los Angeles. It was a “lovely English Tudor-style house with three bedrooms, in Beverly Hills,” Reynolds wrote in Debbie: My Life. “I loved it. Eddie and I moved in right away, furnishing it with items we borrowed from MGM.”
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images12/15A family of four
When Carrie was still a toddler, and just before their son Todd arrived, the family moved again. Their new place was a white-brick, two-story home with four bedrooms on Conway Avenue in Holmby Hills, California. “We needed a bigger house,” Reynolds wrote in Debbie: My Life. “It was a spacious house with a large family room and a big bay window that overlooked a pool and a rose garden. We bought furniture and a station wagon. We were settling, at last.”
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images13/15A love triangle
Reynolds and Fisher named their son Todd after Taylor’s husband. When Todd and Taylor wed, Fisher served as his best man; Reynolds was Taylor’s matron of honor. After Todd’s tragic death in 1958, Fisher and Reynolds stepped in to support their widowed friend. “When Mike was killed in a horrible plane crash, I took care of their children while Eddie comforted Elizabeth,” Reynolds wrote in her 2013 memoir, Unsinkable.
The situation took a turn when Fisher left Reynolds (with their two small children, no less) for Taylor and married her. Taylor later had an affair with her Cleopatra costar Richard Burton and left Fisher to be with him.
Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images14/15America’s Sweethearts split
Reynolds was photographed outside of their home moments after her attorney released a statement saying that she and Fisher had separated. They were officially divorced in 1959. According to her memoir, Fisher moved out while Reynolds remained in the family home with the kids. She also received a hefty settlement: $36,000 a year for the first two years, and $30,000 after that until she either remarried or died. Reynolds would go on to marry the businessman Harry Karl in 1960 and then the real estate magnate Richard Hamlett in 1984.
Photo: Graphic House/Archive Photos/Getty Images15/15The show goes on
Reynolds loved to collect memorabilia. In this 1959 photo, she’s seen holding her self-titled album, which was released that year. “My home is filled with mementos,” she wrote in Unsinkable. In 2017, one year after her death at the age of 84, her son, Todd, gave Good Morning America a tour of her final home in Beverly Hills (located right next to her daughter Carrie’s), which was filled with Old Hollywood treasures. She began the collection in the 1970s after MGM held an auction. The actor took a serious approach to her hobby, borrowing $180,000 from the bank to start the collection off strong. “I bought hundreds of costumes,” she wrote in Debbie: My Life. “I bought furniture and props from Academy Award–winning films. I would have bought everything they were selling if I had the money. My ultimate dream was to have a Hollywood museum.”
