An Evening with Debbie Reynolds was under the musical direction of Joey Singer, with special guest Tom Mullica. A legendary star of film, stage, and television, Reynolds presented a Las Vegas style performance.

Mullica (www.tommullica.com) opened the show with his "Red Skelton: a Performance Tribute." The show was part of the 2007 Gala Reception and Performance: Continuing Red's Dream - Building a Home for Freddie and Friends.

Prior to the evening performance, a "Parade of 1,000 Clowns" made its way through downtown Vincennes. The parade was part of the Red Skelton Festival Weekend. Following the parade there was a Main Street Festival with art, music, food, and tours.

Proceeds helped fund the Red Skelton Museum and Exhibit Gallery which will house and preserve the extensive Skelton collection that has been donated to VU by Mrs. Lothian Skelton. The proceeds from the inaugural Skelton Gala contributed toward the facility's groundbreaking held in October 2006.

DEBBIE REYNOLDS www.debbiereynolds.com

At the peak of her career, Debbie Reynolds was known as America's sweetheart, the very model of the girl next door. Best remembered for her work in Hollywood musicals, she appeared in the genre's defining moment, "Singin' in the Rain," as well as many other notable successes.

The star of more than 30 motion pictures, two Broadway shows, two television series, as well as dozens of television appearances here and abroad, Debbie most recently played the recurring role of Grace's ditzy mother Bobbi Adler on the NBC sitcom "Will & Grace" from 1999 to its 2006 finale. This year Debbie celebrates her 59th year in show business.

Born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas, she moved with her parents and brother to Burbank, California, at age eight. Her early comedic talents first came to light when she auditioned for dramatic roles in school plays and found everyone laughing at her readings. Failing at that, she had to contend herself with doing "everything from the wind machine to the thunder and lightning offstage," but she never made it to an onstage appearance.

At age 16, Mary Frances won a local beauty contest on the strength of a lip-synching rendition of Betty Hutton singing "I'm a Square Peg in a Social Circle." By chance, two of the judges that night were talent scouts from Warner Brothers and MGM. On the flip of a coin, the Warner Brothers scout got first dibs at a screen test for Mary Frances. The test led to a contract and her name was changed to Debbie.

Debbie made her screen debut in "The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady"; however, her first big break came in an MGM musical, "Three Little Words," starring Fred Astaire and Red Skeleton. A subsequent performance in the musical "Two Weeks With Love" convinced the legendary L.B. Mayer to choose her for the leading female role in what became one of the greatest screen musicals of all time, "Singin' in the Rain."

Over a ten-year period, Debbie made more than 25 additional films, including "How the West was Won," "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" (for which she was nominated for an Oscar), "Susan Slept Here," "The Tender Trap," "Tammy and the Bachelor" (which garnered her a hit single when "Tammy," the movie's wistful love song, spent five weeks at number one on the Billboard Chart), "The Pleasure of His Company," "Mary, Mary," "Divorce American Style," and "Goodbye Charlie."

In the mid-1960s Debbie put together her first nightclub act which debuted at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. In the years since, she has been a headliner on the casino circuit from Reno and Tahoe and Las Vegas to Atlantic City to the famed London Palladium, as well as in concert in every major American city.

In 1973, she took a break from her nightclub appearances to star in the Broadway revival of "Irene," breaking all previous box office records for a Broadway musical. After an enormously successful national tour of the show, Debbie returned to the musical stage with another hit revival, Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun." In 1983, she returned to Broadway to star in the hit musical, "Woman of the Year," followed in 1989 with a national tour of the "Unsinkable Molly Brown."

Debbie's off-screen, off-stage life has been as active and versatile. She is the mother of two, actress/writer Carrie Fisher and son Todd Fisher. Debbie has been a life-long supporter and fund raiser for the Girl Scouts, and founder-president of the Thalians, a charitable organization which has raised millions for emotionally disturbed children and AIDS patients at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

In the late 1970s, anticipating her eventual retirement from performing, Debbie established The Debbie Reynolds Professional Rehearsal Studios in North Hollywood, which has since become one of the entertainment industry's leading rehearsal as well as professional training studios.

In 1987, Debbie published her widely read memoir, "Debbie, My Life" (co-written with David Patrick Columbia).

Debbie revived her film career once more in the mid-1990s, earning a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in Albert Brooks' "Mother" (1996), and making subsequent appearances in "In and Out" (1997) and "Zack and Reba" (1998). In 2000, she voiced the character of Lulu Pickles in the animated children's film "Rugrats in Paris: The Movie," and in 2001 she starred with Shirley MacLaine, Joan Collins, and Elizabeth Taylor in the made-for-TV movie "These Old Broads." She continues to make live stage appearances in Las Vegas and across the United States, and from 1999 to its 2006 finale, she played the recurring role of Grace's ditzy mother Bobbi Adler on the NBC sitcom "Will & Grace."

Another of the many pursuits which keep Debbie busy is her Hollywood Motion Picture Collection which received a gift of 20,000 square feet of space in the "Hollywood and Highland" economic development area near Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The space will be used to display part of Debbie's extensive collection of classic movie costumes.