Debbie Reynolds was underrated in Hollywood and here's why

Unfortunately Debbie was born in the wrong generation and as one of last stars signed to MGM, she was a little guppy in an ocean of stars. She was overshadowed by her ingenue contemporaries like Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Powell, Marilyn Monroe, and Audrey Hepburn. Elizabeth Taylor occupied the best dramatic roles during the 1950s at MGM, Marilyn Monroe who was at Fox I believe dominated the romantic comedy and fun musicals of the 1950s as did Jane Powell for MGM. Audrey Hepburn was a triple threat like Debbie except Audrey Hepburn had the sophisticated European yet still ingenue thing going for her and her Academy Award for her debut performance in Roman Holiday gave her a certain power at Paramount that I think Debbie didn't have at MGM. Her role in Singin in the Rain should have garnered her at least an Oscar nomination because she did an exceptional job but she didn't even get that. She wouldn't gain any Oscar nod until The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964. Again it sucked to be nominated that year, primarily because there were a *beep* of other big budget Hollywood musicals and she became overshadowed by Julie Andrews(in her motion picture debut I believe?)who hit it out of the park with the musical Mary Poppins and won the Oscar. If Debbie had been Oscar nominated for Singin in the Rain, I think her value at MGM would have magnified but instead she got relegated to MGM B-musical territory for a while(and honestly MGM b-musicals = A movies given their big budget and quality) so she wasn't bad off. I do believe now that she's died, there might be a resurgence of her past work and people that are going to start reviewing her movies again and realizing that she was just as talented and amazing as all these other women. Sadly she isn't around to witness the appreciation that will start to happen(however judging by how reflective she seemed and her determination to collect Hollywood memorabilia from the past, she probably had the apprehension that she would become better appreciated posthumously) After all she was frequently saying that she wished to be "stuffed like Trigger and placed in a Hollywood museum" upon death.

Anyway this is just my opinion of course and others can also help me in analyzing Reynolds film star status. I wasn't around in the 1950s and don't have research done on how people rated her during that era. There's a strong possibility she could have been one of the most popular actresses and the idea of her being underrated came decades later, or perhaps there were critics during that era that also shared my same sentiments.

I will say though that as a person who studied film history at my university, she wasn't mentioned once except when discussing the famed MGM musical Singin in the Rain.

"Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo."-MaryPickford