WESTWOOD--If you are a person “of a certain age” you will remember “America’s Sweethearts” of the 1950s:  the rambunctious, terminally adorable Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, the handsome young man with the big voice who made elderly Jewish ladies swoon.  He was the guy that every high school girl wanted to marry; she was the girl that every high school girl wanted to be.

Now their daughter, who just turned 50, is telling their story, and her own, on the stage of the Geffen Theater in Westwood.  It is all very familiar, very dysfunctional, and very very funny.  It also goes a long way toward explaining why Carrie Fisher became an alcoholic, a junkie, and a bipolar personality.

She looks very like her mother and captures Debbie’s voice and mannerisms to a T.  She also has a powerful Mermanesque voice of her own, which she demonstrates in her opening number “Happy Days Are Here Again.”  As a counterpoint to all the “happy days” are a series of newspaper headlines reflecting her various addictions, insanities, and hospital confinements over the years.  These are flashed on a screen set in a black background filled with myriad pinpoint lights, giving the effect of a large observatory sky.

In her catalogue of her life’s woes she features the gay Republican drug abuser who died in her bed while she was in it.  “He died in his sleep,” she said.  “Well, actually,” she amended, “he died in MY sleep…”  Gay, she goes on, is “something of a theme” with her, as she notes that her only child, daughter Billie, was fathered by a gay friend.

In a hilarious convoluted digression about the various marriages and relationships of her parents, she notes that her daughter Billie had been dating a young man who was the grandson of one of her father’s wives former husbands—or something like that.  Billie had been anxious to determine if she and this boy were related, and so Carrie dragged out a huge corkboard with photos of all the principals—complete with arrows linking all the flotsam and jetsam.  (“Blue-blooded white trash,” she calls them).  This included, of course, the infamous Mike Todd-Elizabeth Taylor-Eddie Fisher triangle in which, as Carrie put it, Eddie, who had been Mike Todd’s best friend (and best man at his wedding) rushed to Elizabeth’s side when Mike was killed in a plane crash and began “comforting her with his penis.”

She brought this mind-boggling history up to date with the photo of Eddie’s current Asian lady friend.  “Eddie dates all of Chinatown,” she said, “but then, he’s had so many face lifts that he looks Chinese himself.”

She notes that Debbie now lives right across the street from her and keeps in constant touch, beginning each phone call with, “Hello, dear.  This is your mother, Debbie…”

Of her only marriage, to Paul Simon, she speaks almost sweetly.  They were together for six years, then married for two, after which they divorced.  But a year later they began dating again.  They are featured, she notes, in a song that Simon wrote about “One and a Half Jews”—she being the half through her father’s side.

George Lucas, on the other hand, “ruined my life,” she says with a grin as she doffs a hideous Princess Leia wig.  She notes that this famous role in the “Star Wars” series resulted in her acquiring a “small merry band of stalkers” and a series of silly collectibles like a “Princess Leia pez-container”.  Lucas owns her likeness, she notes, “so every time I look in the mirror I have to send him a couple of bucks…”

Her Princess Leia persona also turned up in a textbook as an illustration for a description of bipolar disorder.  Which led her to speculate on the possibility of inaugurating a “Bipolar Pride Day” parade.  “There would be a Manic Marching Band,” she says, “and the depressives could just stay in their beds and we’d roll them down the street.”

But as funny and revealing as her monologues are, they leave you with the feeling that you have just scratched the surface of her complicated life.  She herself acknowledges this as she ends one of her scenes with “You cannot imagine what I’m leaving out!!!”  She remains upbeat through all the trauma, however, having apparently adopted her mother’s cheerful advice: “Cry all you want; you’ll pee less!”

Fisher’s riffs are accompanied by Gerald Sternbach at the piano; the production, which she wrote and performs alone, is directed by Joshua Ravetch.  Wishful Drinking will continue at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Avenue, in Westwood through December 23rd.