ZELIENOPLE - Two unsinkable stars will shine brightly in Zelienople when the curtain opens in the grand old Strand Theater and the indomitable Debbie Reynolds performs.

And surely it won't be raining on Main Street when the veteran of stage and film sings for the first time in person in the 95-year-old brick building made new by a $1.5 million makeover.

Chances are good that in the early 1950s someone in the new 289 cushioned seats sat in the Strand and saw a young actress make her dancing debut on film with legendary dancers Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor in a musical called "Singin' in the Rain."

Or perhaps later in that decade, a teenager watched a country bumpkin named Tammy Tyree charm the socks off a Southern gentleman in a movie called "Tammy and the Bachelor."

And who then hadn't listened to Reynolds sing the movie's theme on the radio sometime during the five weeks "Tammy" topped Billboard's charts in the summer of 1957? The record went gold and was the best selling single by a female vocalist that year, Billboard reports.

And while Molly Brown was played by Kathy Bates in 1997's box-office king "Titanic," it was Reynolds' portrayal of the feisty heroine in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" in 1964 that earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress in a leading role.

"Singin' in the Rain" was the most popular of her 50 films, Reynolds said, "But, Molly Brown was the best part because it was a greater role for a woman," Reynolds said last week in a phone interview from her home in Beverly Hills.

Molly grew from a naive teen to a woman of strength and conviction, like Reynolds said she has in the six decades since two talent scouts, both judges in the 1948 "Miss Burbank (Calif.)" beauty pageant, saw the Texas-born Mary Frances Reynolds.

Reynolds won the contest and the Warner Bros. talent scout got to offer the fresh-faced and funny petite 16-year-old a screen test.

According to her Web site biography, Warner Bros.

president Jack Warner signed Reynolds to a $65 a week contract, changed her first named to Debbie and wanted to change her last name to Morgan.

Reynolds refused.

At Warner Bros., she had several small parts, then signed a seven-year contract with MGM studios starting at $700 a week. The studio sent the untrained Reynolds on the road to perform in variety shows presented between features in movie theaters like the Strand.

"They threw me in front of a live audience and you swim or you drown. That's the way we used to learn," Reynolds said. "So, for me, this (appearances in Zelienople) is like coming home, being back on stage."

Which, Reynolds added, she's never left in more than 50 years.

She'll do what she calls a variety show - singing, comedy, dancing and present film clips - during her four performances this weekend at the Strand.

Her act includes impressions of Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

In that spoof, Gabor tells today's "celebutant" Paris Hilton, whom Reynolds claims is Gabor's real life grand niece, how to slap a cop and stay out of jail, a reference to Gabor's legal woes years ago.

Reynolds also will perform songs from theater and movies such as "You Made Me Love You."

And naturally the show includes film clips from "Singin' in the Rain," which, at that time was a formidable challenge for a 17-year-old cast to dance with two leading dance stars, Kelly and O'Connor.

"I had never danced. I had a tremendous amount of work to do," she said.

For four months prior to filming, Reynolds learned from five professional dancers, among them Kelly's assistant choreographer Carol Haney and Broadway star Gwen Verdon.
And then she went to work with Pittsburgh native Kelly, who publicly admitted that he wasn't nice to Reynolds during the filming.

"He came in every day to look at my work and he never liked it any day," Reynolds said. "He was a tough taskmaster."

She worked hard to please Kelly, who at that time along with Fred Astaire, topped Hollywood's A-list of dancers.
"Either you failed or you became a really good dancer," she said. "I did become a really good dancer."

Who, at age 77, said she is very grateful to have performed with the biggest stars of Hollywood's Golden Age and to have weathered the challenges of celebrity and day-to-day life.

"I was blessed to be in it and to really know them and count them as my friends and visit and laugh and sing," Reynolds said.

She sang songs to actor Jimmy Stewart and danced and skated with Fred Astaire.

"Frank Sinatra called me 'Sweetie' and said it with a big slobbering 'S,'" Reynolds said. "And he liked me and always included me in his inner circle."

Fame also magnified personal heartache. In 1955, she married singing star Eddie Fisher and they became parents to two children, Carrie, born in 1956, and Todd, born in 1958.

In 1959, Fisher divorced Reynolds to marry the widowed Elizabeth Taylor. World-wide headlines hammered the heartache deeper.

Reynolds' marriages to millionaire businessman Harry Karl and to real estate developer Richard Hamlett also ended in divorce and financial woes.

"That is the way life is," Reynolds said. "Life becomes hard and life becomes challenging and then you get through it. You have faith, never give up and continue through any adversity."

And she enjoys the good that does come.

Daughter Carrie Fisher, perhaps best known as Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, is also a best-selling novelist and playwright, and has weathered personal trials that include bipolar disorder.

"I was very proud and it's very important for her to have her own identity and not be Debbie Reynolds' daughter," said Reynolds, who has been called Princess Leia's mother.

Reynolds said it's the audience that tells a performer what do to, especially in the intimate surroundings at the Strand. They'll talk. She'll talk.

"It's like you're in your own living room," Reynolds.
And perhaps the late Gene Kelly might stop by.

"Maybe his ghost will come to check out my dancing," Reynolds said. "If the lights blink, I'll know he didn't like it and I'll redo the step."

Patti Conley can be reached online at pconley@times
online.com.