THE OTHER ( FAMOUS) FAMILY
After Marie Mcdonald’s death, her children found refuge with none other than Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds and Princess Leia-in-waiting, Carrie Fisher
The day that Marie Mcdonald died—oct. 21, 1965— was also the 9th birthday of a girl in Beverly Hills named Carrie Fisher. Believe it or not, these events were connected.
“There was yellow police tape all over my house when out of nowhere Debbie Reynolds pulled up driving this green Rolls-royce,” says Mcdonald’s youngest daughter, Tina Diamond. “And Debbie said to me, ‘Call me Mom,’ and whizzed me off to Carrie’s birthday party. It was so bizarre.”
Mcdonald’s ex-husband Harry Karl had married Reynolds in 1960. Diamond was then raised for the next decade in Reynolds’ house. Reynolds’s son, Todd Fisher, remembers, “My mother thought it was non-negotiable that Tina come live with us. That was her natural empathy. But it was a complex, intense situation. There was nothing normal about Tina, but there was nothing normal about Carrie or me either. And Tina came into a very well-established household, and there was a disruption in the Force, if you know what I mean.”
The two girls shared a bedroom, and Diamond has wild memories of those times, including one in which comedian George Carlin played spin the bottle with the two teenagers in a closet under the stairs. “He was like an old pervert,” Diamond alleges. “He’d probably be arrested today for the things he did with us.”
According to Todd Fisher, all three of Mcdonald’s children were financially supported by Reynolds until she passed away last December, one day after Carrie’s death. Diamond, who now lives in Palm Springs, California, was shattered by the news. “It was a nightmare, and it still is,” she says of losing them both. “None of it seems real.”