Debbie Reynolds on the throne from Prince Valiant

   When I interviewed Debbie Reynolds at her Los Angeles canyon home last year, just before she left for a concert tour of England, she was upbeat and optimistic that she had finally found a home for the treasure trove of film memorabilia she had been collecting for almost 50 years.

    It would go on permanent display, she said, in a purpose-built new museum at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, near Dolly Parton’s Dollywood theme park. 

  But since then the developer of the property went bankrupt and all other efforts to find a home for the 5,000 vintage costumes, props, letters and even cars from Hollywood’s Golden Age have failed and now the 79-year-old actress has decided to sell everything in a series of auction sales. 

     “I’m very sad the collection isn’t in a museum,” she told me, “but I’ve spent literally millions of dollars just on protecting it and taking care of it and now I’m sick and tired of it and feel I must call it a day.”

   The star of such classic films as Singing In The Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Reynolds acquired many of the costumes, props and sets when she bought the MGM collection in 1970, but she continued to add to it, telling me only last year: “I’ve just bought Audrey Hepburn’s dress from the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady.”