When she died in December at the age of 84, Debbie Reynolds was remembered as one of the last great stars of Hollywood's studio era, when singing-and-dancing talents were plucked out of obscurity as teenagers, signed under contract to the studio, and turned into stars by a mighty studio machine. But Reynolds, in fact, joined the system at the very end and was one of the last stars created by MGM before the once-mighty studio declined in the 1950s. With Reynolds gone, the number of stars who knew MGM at its mightiest grows ever-smaller. Over the next five weeks, we'll be sharing interviews with those stars who remember MGM at its best—and how it fell from grace.

The way Debbie Reynolds remembered it, she walked into MGM the day Clark Gable left. “Everything about the studio was enormous,” she said in a 2015 interview. “You walked through the gates of iron, and it was palatial looking. The first day, I was introduced to Clark Gable. He said, ‘Hello, kid. Welcome to MGM. I’m just leaving.’ ”

Gable, one of MGM’s biggest stars, didn’t leave the studio until 1954; Reynolds’s MGM debut, Three Little Words, opened in 1950. Like many of the best Hollywood stories, there’s no way this one can be entirely true. But the spirit is accurate: 18-year-old Debbie Reynolds arrived at the beginning of MGM’s end.

MGM had been losing money since 1946, as TV gained in popularity. In 1948 the studio’s parent company, Loews Inc., hired Dore Schary as head of production, working alongside studio patriarch Louis B. Mayer. While Mayer was ostensibly in charge, Schary had orders to cut expenses, including contracts that kept stars, like Gable, exclusive to the studio.

Still, Mayer was the kingmaker, and was the one to personally announce to his bright-eyed contract player Reynolds what her next project would be. “You are going to do a new picture called Singin’ in the Rain,” Mayer told Reynolds, in 1951. “I said, ‘Yes, sir!’” Reynolds recalled.

“You’ll like it. It’s a very good part, and you’ll have to work really hard and do what you’re told,” Mayer continued.

“Yes, sir,” she nodded.

“Mr. [Gene] Kelly’s coming in to meet you and you’re going to do the picture.”

“And I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ Mr. Kelly came in and asked me if I danced. I said, ‘No, sir.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to learn, and you have to dance.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ . . . I only knew the line, ‘Yes, sir!’” Reynolds said in 2015. “When you were under contract, you did what you were told to do.”

Reynolds was raised in Southern California, and it was being named Miss Burbank in 1948 that led her to a studio contract, but when she was cast in Singin’ in the Rain, she had never even been kissed. On a studio-arranged date, actor Hugh O’Brian taught her, “so I wouldn’t be shook up about having to kiss Gene Kelly,” Reynolds explained. “How would I react to that moment? What should I do? He said Gene would do it, and I wouldn’t have to worry about it, but I better practice. So he said, ‘You get on the top stair, and I’ll stand below you, and you keep your eyes closed, and I’ll give you a kiss.”

For Mayer, this lavish, rosy world—on-screen and off—was MGM’s specialty. For Schary, it was also a liability. Though musicals continued to be made, Schary pushed for less expensive noir dramas, winning favor with audiences and Loews executives. Before Singin’ in the Rain was released in 1951, Mayer had been replaced. “They had Mr. Mayer leave in one day,” Reynolds remembered. “They were horrible to him.”