DEBBIE REYNOLDS, the vivacious actress, dancer and pop star who wowed ‘em in the musicals “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” died Wednesday, one day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, passed away. She was 84.

    “She’s with Carrie,” said Reynolds’ son, Todd Fisher. He said the stress of his sister’s death was “too much” for his mother. On Tuesday, her daughter, the “Star Wars” actress, author and screenwriter, died of complications from a heart attack.

    Mary Frances Reynolds was born April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas. At age 7, her family moved to Burbank, and at age 16, she was signed to a contract at Warner Bros.

    After appearing in bit roles in such films as “June Bride” (1948) and “The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady” (1950), Reynolds attracted the attention of MGM. The studio gave the fresh-faced teenager a small but significant part as singer Helen Kane (“I Wanna Be Loved by You”) in the Fred Astaire starrer “Three Little Words” (1950), then signed her to a seven-year contract.

    In her next film, “Two Weeks With Love” (1950), Reynolds scored a hit song with a remake of “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” a duet with Carleton Carpenter that made it to No. 3 on the Billboard pop chart.

    Reynolds became a sensation after starring with legendary hoofers Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in the immortal MGM musical “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen. With the stars portraying performers caught up in the transition from silent films to talkies, the movie was voted the No. 1 musical of all time by the American Film Institute.

    After the success of “Singin’ in the Rain,” Reynolds spent the rest of a busy decade starring as good-natured girls in musicals and light-hearted comedies.

    Reynolds received her only Oscar nomination for playing the title role in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” (1964), based on the Broadway musical and fictionalized account of the life of a woman who survived the sinking of the Titanic. But Reynolds lost out to Julie Andrews in her debut film, “Mary Poppins.”

    In between those two films, Reynolds was very much a headliner on the Hollywood gossip pages when her husband fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor following the death of Taylor’s husband, “Around the World in 80 Days” producer Michael Todd, in a March 1958 plane crash. Fisher was Todd’s best man when he married Taylor, and Reynolds had been a bridesmaid.

    In her 2008 autobiography “Wishful Drinking,” Carrie Fisher described her parents’ breakup, which started when her dad “flew to Elizabeth’s side, making his way slowly to her front.”

    “He first dried her eyes with his handkerchief, then he consoled her with flowers, and he ultimately consoled her with his penis,” Fisher wrote.

    Reynolds’ divorce became final in 1959 — Carrie was 2 at the time — and Taylor and Fisher were wed less than four hours later. Taylor would go on to divorce Fisher in 1964 after she fell for Richard Burton on the set of “Cleopatra” (1963).

    Reynolds did not talk to Taylor for seven years until she boarded the Queen Elizabeth with her second husband, shoe manufacturer Harry Karl, and discovered that Taylor also was on the ship. Reynolds sent her a note, and the two had dinner and “a lot of laughs.”

    She divorced Karl in 1973. Reynolds also was married from 1984-96 to real estate developer Richard Hamlett.

    In 2001, Reynolds and Taylor starred in TV movie “These Old Broads” written by her daughter Fisher.

    In January 2015, she was the recipient of the Life Achievement Award at the SAG Awards. On stage, Reynolds earned a Tony Award nomination for the 1973 revival of “Irene” and in the early 1980s for the musical version of “Woman of the Year.” Reynolds was given the prestigious Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2015 by the Academy for her charitiable life’s work.(SD-Agencies)