If I Knew Then

By Debbie Reynolds and Bob Thomas

In If I Knew Then, which was first published in 1962, Debbie Reynolds makes her debut as an author, having already excelled in numerous other fields of expression—including appearing in motion pictures, on the stage, in vaudeville and on television, and selling more than a million copies of her record “Tammy,” from the movie Tammy and the Bachelor (1957).

“I’m Debbie Reynolds.

“Well, I’m not really Debbie; I’m Mary Frances. But if you like Debbie you can call me that. Or you can call me Sis, like my father, or Frannie, like my brother, or Mrs. Karl or—Whatever you want to call me, I’m pleased to meet you.

“Now let’s get down to cases. Like the Case of Why Debbie Reynolds Is Writing a Book. That’s one that even Perry Mason would have trouble solving.

“Me write a book?

“I can imagine the hubbub this will arouse in certain quarters

“People who know me well know I will not be swayed by flattery. I am going to write this book, anyway. First I’d better list what this book is not.

“1. It is not an autobiography of Little Me. The life and times of this belle will have to be written a few decades hence.

“2. It will not teach you how to play the piano in forty-five (45) days.

“3. It will not cure nervous tension, negative thinking or excess acidity.

“Then what is it?

“It is a book about the things I have learned, often the hard way. It was prompted by the people who have written me for advice on a variety of subjects, mainly personal. Why me, I don’t know. But they write….”—Debbie Reynolds

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Sep 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789122558

Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds was an actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, and author best known for her leading roles in Singin' in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and on TV as Bobbi Adler in Will & Grace. After more than sixty years in the entertainment industry, she was a true Hollywood icon, beloved by millions of fans of all ages around the world. Debbie Reynolds died on December 28, 2016, at the age of 84, just one day after the death of her daughter, actress and author Carrie Fisher.

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

IF I KNEW THEN

DEBBIE REYNOLDS

with BOB THOMAS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

Introduction 4

1 — If I Knew Then...What I Know Now 8

2 — The Art of Dating, or Kissing through a Screen Door Can Be a Strain 12

3 — How To Be Very, Very Popular 21

4 — Are Parents People 31

5 — Here Comes the Grooming 41

6 — Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall 54

7 — Something for the Boys 62

8 — How To Be an Extrovert—in Ten Painful Lessons 79

9 — And Now a Word for Our sponsor 92

10 — There’s No Business Like Shoe Business 101

11 — Speaking of Sex—Who Doesn’t? 114

12 — Between You and Me and the Postman 122

13 — What Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage? 130

14 — Your Changing Life 139

15 — Any More Questions? 150

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 152

Introduction

I’m Debbie Reynolds.

Well, I’m not really Debbie; I’m Mary Frances. But if you like Debbie you can call me that. Or you can call me Sis, like my father, or Frannie, like my brother, or Mrs. Karl or—Whatever you want to call me, I’m pleased to meet you.

Now let’s get down to cases. Like the Case of Why Debbie Reynolds Is Writing a Book. That’s one that even Perry Mason would have trouble solving.

Me write a book?

I can imagine the hubbub this will arouse in certain quarters. My imagination is so rampant that I am able to offer readers something entirely new in the book business:

—INSTANT REVIEWS—

Miss Reynolds’ writing is on a par with her acting.—The New Yorker

Debbie WHO?—Saturday Review of Literature

She SHOULD worry.—Alfred E. Neuman, Mad Magazine

Loved the book, hated the movie.—Playboy

Dear Debbie: I’m not worried.—Abby

You can always have your old job back.—J. C. Penney Company

People who know me well know I will not be swayed by flattery. I am going to write this book, anyway. First I’d better list what this book is not.

1. It is not an autobiography of Little Me. The life and times of this belle will have to be written a few decades hence.

2. It will not teach you how to play the piano in forty-five (45) days.

3. It will not cure nervous tension, negative thinking or excess acidity.

Then what is it?

It is a book about the things I have learned, often the hard way. It was prompted by the people who have written me for advice on a variety of subjects, mainly personal. Why me, I don’t know. But they write.

I don’t want to be a mail-dropper, but the number of letters can grow quite large, and it can be a king-sized job answering them. Not that I mind answering them, because I don’t. But I decided to be terribly efficient, which was a shock to my entire system and family, and write a book. If so many young people write me with their problems, imagine how many others have problems that remain unwritten and unsolved.

I don’t want to pose as an oracle who knows all the answers. The point is, I have done so many things wrong in my life that almost anyone could profit from my experience.

My sternest critic in this endeavor will not be the book reviewers, but Miss Smith.

She was my English teacher at Burbank High School. When she hears about Frannie Reynolds writing a book, she’ll crack up for sure.

I was Miss Smith’s failure. I don’t know why I should have been, since I got straight A’s in my other subjects. Yes, I do know why.

Miss Smith was the quiet type.

Miss Reynolds wasn’t.

Sitting in a hushed classroom and putting my thoughts on paper was not my cup of tea. I was more the vocal type.

In fact, I was the loudest rooter for the baseball team. Oh, how I could rattle the opposing pitcher! The Burbank High coach recognized my ability, and he would send a pass to excuse me from my English class so I could get out to the bleachers early.

We won the baseball league that spring, but I lost at English. The result was that I didn’t know an adverb from a proverb.

But I can talk. Anybody who knows me will readily admit that. My mother says that I started talking at nine months and haven’t stopped yet. She could be right.

So if I can’t write a book, maybe I can talk one.

Okay, Miss Smith?

I would like to add that I am not flying solo on this venture. In preparing this book, as with the answering of letters I receive, I have called on the aid of those whose opinions I respect. These include my mother, whose neighborhood is still teeming with teenagers and who keeps me informed of their latest habits; my grandmother, who harks back to frontier philosophy but is still up to date; my friends among parents and schoolteachers—and teenagers ; plus the doctors and child psychiatrists whose expert opinions I have sought. I am also grateful to my minister, Dr. Louis B. Evans, for his sound advice on the morals of modern living.

Lest I incriminate these good people, let me add that I will take responsibility for all opinions expressed in these pages. And I must say—

What’s that?

I seem to hear a cynical voice in the balcony saying, She’s a one-time loser. So how can she dish out advice when she couldn’t even make her own marriage work?

You have a point there. I certainly don’t profess to be The Great Authority on love and marriage. My past record of failure would disqualify me for that.

But just because one experiences defeat the first time, she shouldn’t give up her search for happiness, should she?

I don’t think so. If I did think so, consider all the present happiness I would have missed.

After all, experience is a good teacher.

And the title of this book is IF I KNEW THEN.

1 — If I Knew Then...What I Know Now

Nice old song.

It keeps running through my mind as I start this book. Everybody likes to ponder what might have been. Especially me.

If I hadn’t done this, then that wouldn’t have happened and something else would have—My mind churns on at a mile a minute. Of course, it never gets anywhere, because it’s only imagination.

But a girl can dream, can’t she?

Sometimes I dream about what might have happened if my father hadn’t up and left El Paso. I’d probably be a Texas school-teacher right now, or maybe the wife of a shoe clerk and mother of ten kids.

El Paso! That was some town! We lived there during the Depression, and believe me, we were depressed. Financially, that is, seldom in spirit.

Those were days when hardly anybody could find a good job. Dad managed to get work digging ditches, and Mother took in washing. Both were scarcely twenty, and they couldn’t provide luxurious lodging.

Home for us was a one-room suite over somebody’s garage. There was a small walk to the bathroom, which we shared with passing motorists at the gas station down the street.

Life wasn’t all work for the Reynoldses; we had our share of excitement, too. I’ll admit that sometimes the excitement wasn’t the right kind. Like the night Dad came home to find Mother, my brother and me nearly dead from gas fumes. There had been a small leak in the heater, and the wet clothes strung across the room had consumed all the good air.

That was when Dad decided we had to move in with Grandma.

It was quite a household. The four-room house contained Grandpa, Grandma, their four sons and daughter, Dad, Mother, Billy and me, Mary Frances. The single bathroom had almost constant occupancy, as you can imagine with that size family.

Nearly all the other people on Magnolia Street were Mexicans, except for the Indian lady on the corner. We lived in a red brick house that backed up to the Great American Desert. All you could see was miles and miles of Texas, and a lot of Texas drifted through our house with every windstorm.

We seldom asked what was for dinner, because more than likely it would be rabbit stew and beans. Dad would work in the bean fields across the border in Mexico and bring home a week’s supply. He took care of the meat course by shooting jack rabbits in the desert with his trusty shooting iron.

Nobody in our neighborhood could afford milk in those times, but we made use of nature’s supply. My mother provided milk for my brother and me until we were three or four years old.

If I knew then...what a tough life we were having, I would have had the sense to feel miserable about it.

But I didn’t. Everybody else in our part of town lived the same way, so it seemed perfectly normal to me. My brother and I had a great time, whether we were bringing home bums from the railroad tracks for Mother to feed, or playing hit-and-run with our six-foot uncles.

Home might still be El Paso for me, except that Dad decided to seek his fortune out West. It wasn’t much of a fortune, but he did manage to get a steady job with the railroad and he put up a home for us in Burbank. It cost $4,500, which he paid off twenty-two years later.

Jack rabbit stew wasn’t on the menu any more, but we weren’t living high off the hog, either. Mother often had to strain the family budget to the breaking point.

I still didn’t have the foresight to moan and groan about our plight. We had a happy family, largely due to my mother. The mother usually sets the tone for a family, and my mother’s attitude toward life was warm, optimistic and religious. Dad added the proper note of masculine authority, and he was always around when we needed him.

Where is this reminiscence getting us?

To this point: rich or poor, your family will survive all trials if there is a closeness of spirit.

Sometimes I think it is even harder to achieve that spirit in these times of plenty. Wealth provides the material needs and luxuries—and honest, I’m not knocking them. But it also cuts down the need and the opportunity to be together.

Maybe I sound like a Pollyanna, but just look around you. Which families spend more time together, seem more like members of the same team, act as if they’re all pulling in the same direction toward a common goal—rich ones or poor ones? You’ll have to agree that, more often than not, it’s the have-nots who really seem to have more when it comes to family warmth and family