Debbie Bartlett stepped onto her first stage long before Hollywood knew her name. Back then she was Deborah Ann DuBusky, a West Covina girl with a crown on her head—homecoming queen of 1969—and the kind of restless talent that doesn’t sit quietly through small-town expectations. She was the third of four children, raised by Jerry and Ann DuBusky, a family that carried its lineage like a quilt stitched from Prussian, French, English, Irish, and Portuguese scraps. She grew up between Washington, D.C. roots and California sunshine, learning early that reinvention comes naturally when you’re always on the move.
By 1970, she wasn’t waiting for the world to discover her—she went to meet it head-on, joining Disney on Parade. That tour swept her to Canada, Mexico, and across the United States, a young woman in a leotard and stage makeup learning the grind of backstage hallways and cramped buses, all while falling for a fellow dancer named Bill Bartlett. A year later, she married him, trading DuBusky for Bartlett and never looking back.
The two danced their way into the Chandler Conspiracy Night Club Act, touring until 1974, partners in art as much as in marriage. In between costume changes and tight choreography, they popped up in an Orange Shasta commercial with Barry Williams—a bright, fizzy moment choreographed by Peter Gennaro before the decade’s rougher edges set in.
Her film debut came in 1978 with Shame, Shame on the Bixby Boys, where she played Suley Blue Bixby with the kind of wide-open energy that marked so many of her early performances. Stage work followed—Bells Are Ringing at The Muny in 1979, where she showed she could hold her own even when the nights ran long and the summer air was thick enough to chew.
Then came the mural.
In 1980, Debbie was cast as one of the immortal Muses in Xanadu, gliding out of a wall in the “I’m Alive” sequence like a neon dream. She was the second Muse to step from paint into flesh, but she left the production before filming wrapped and went uncredited—another dancer lost in a movie that would become its own glitter-dusted cult fever dream.
Television gave her sharper outlines. She showed up on Three’s Company in 1981 as Marlene in “Some of That Jazz,” charming and precise. Game shows followed—Dream House in 1983, and then Every Second Counts a year later, where she played cohost until the next big wave hit.
Her defining role wasn’t in a film, but aboard a cruise ship.
In the final season of The Love Boat (1985–1986), Debbie Bartlett appeared in 19 episodes as Susie, one of the Mermaids—eight dancers chosen from thousands across the country. She danced alongside a young Teri Hatcher, the two of them kicking their way through the shipboard fantasy that kept 1980s America tuning in every Saturday night. For that role, she gave up her hosting gig, traded the game-show set for sequins, rhythm, and the rolling deck of television’s most famous ocean liner.
Stage work pulled her back again in 1986–1987 with a national touring production of Singin’ in the Rain, where she danced as Mary Margaret and filled out the ensemble with the kind of technical steadiness only a lifelong performer carries in her bones.
Then the Bartlett household shifted behind the scenes.
In the 1990s, Debbie and Bill became a choreographic duo, designing movement for Los Angeles theatre, most notably two F. Scott Fitzgerald adaptations—Tender is the Night (1995) and The Last Tycoon (1998). The latter earned them the LA Weekly Award for Production Design of the Year for Choreography. Their work at The Fountain Theatre—Dottie!, Ancient History, and others—marked them as artists who understood how to turn literature into movement without losing its heartbeat.
Debbie kept performing too. In 2003, both she and Bill appeared as ghost dancers in Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, drifting across the screen like memories of their own earlier lives onstage.
Her personal life was one long duet. Debbie and Bill Bartlett—married in 1971, partners in everything from choreography to teaching, friends of choreographer Alex Romero and dance historian Mark Knowles—shared nearly fifty years of marriage. She assisted Bill in teaching at Idyllwild starting around 2007, and together they helped shape Knowles’ lecture on the history of tap, which later evolved into a published work.
Their final performance together came in 2017, at the Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Celebration of Life—two dancers in the twilight of their careers honoring two women who had shaped Hollywood in their own untamable ways.
Bill died in 2020. Debbie carried on, a dancer whose legacy is woven through stage shows, television reruns, cult musicals, and the quiet, unheralded craft of choreography—the kind you can spot if you know where to look.
Her footsteps are still out there somewhere: soft, steady, and unstoppable.
