The Unsinkable Molly Brown

"Be sure the story is something you cannot resist," Richard Rodgers once advised Meredith Willson. After considering 100 projects for a successor to The Music Man, Willson found one that was irresistible. And unsinkable. Debbie Reynolds plays the title role, inviting all to Belly Up to the Bar, Boys for the whoop-and-holler film of Willson's 1960 Broadway hit. Reynolds won a 1964 Best Actress Oscar® nomination as the backwoods heroine who survives the Titanic and the snobbery of Denver society. Screen-debuting Harve Presnell reprises his stage role of Johnny, who has heartful-and-a-half of love for Molly. Johnny wasn't alone. Astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young so admired the movie they named their Gemini 3 spacecraft Molly Brown.