A star eclipsed by his personal life

Before Fabian, Bobby Rydell, and Frankie Avalon - and American Bandstand - turned this city into the teen-idol capital of the world, another bushy-haired, baby-faced singer from Philadelphia made 1950s teenyboppers swoon: Eddie Fisher.

Fisher, 82, who died in Berkeley, Calif., on Wednesday of complications from surgery after breaking a hip this month, was a South Philly grocer's son whose voice carried him to a stardom that his tumultuous personal life would eclipse.

More than his musical triumphs, Fisher these days is better known for his string of movie-star marriages - to Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and Connie Stevens - and for being the father of the actress and writer Carrie Fisher.

But in the pre-rock early 1950s, Fisher was a constant hitmaker.

Fisher, known as "Sonny" to his family, began his musical career as a child, singing on WFIL-AM and skipping school to practice his music. He attended Simon Gratz and South Philadelphia High Schools, but did not graduate. After comedian Eddie Cantor discovered him at the Grossinger's resort in the Catskills and legendary Philadelphia record executive Manie Sacks took him to RCA Victor, Fisher racked up a string of successes.

A crooner with a sweet, soaring tenor, he scored 17 Top 10 hits between 1950 and 1956, including "Tell Me Why," "Any Time," and "Oh! My Pa-Pa."

By the time he was 24, RCA had sold more than seven million Fisher records and Fisher had become an international star.

"He was a real ballad singer, in the same genre as Vic Damone and Tony Bennett," recalled Ed Hurst, who along with his partner, Joe Grady, hosted the top-rated The 950 Club on WPEN-AM from 1949 to 1956. Fisher was a frequent guest.

"Occasionally, the critics would say he would sing off-key," said Hurst, 84, who still hosts the twice-weekly Steel Pier Radio Show on WIBG-AM (1020) in Atlantic City, but there was no denying Fisher's enormous popularity. He had two network TV shows of his own: Coke Time With Eddie Fisher, on NBC from 1953 to 1957, and The Eddie Fisher Show, also on NBC, from 1957 to 1959.

"He had just as much fame as Fabian, Bobby Rydell, all those guys, but he came before them. He had a pretty voice, and he made some nice records," Hurst said Friday. "The teenagers, the bobby-soxers loved him. He was their cup of tea. Everybody wanted to mother him. He always had that boyish grin, and the hair. He was cute."

Cute enough to win the hearts - for a time, anyway - of glamorous women. Fisher was wed five times.

"He married all those lovely ladies," Hurst said. "Liz Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens. I thought it was pretty good for a South Philly boy."

Fisher married his first wife, Reynolds, in 1955, and they had two children, one of them Carrie. But he fell in love with Taylor, the wife of his friend Mike Todd, the movie producer, after Todd died in a 1958 plane crash. The following year, he divorced Reynolds and married Taylor, who would dump him five years later in favor of Richard Burton.

After that, he married Stevens, with whom he had two daughters. Fisher later married beauty queen Terry Richard, followed by businesswoman Betty Lin.

Fame came "extraordinarily fast" to Fisher, recalled Peggy King, a singer who was Reynolds' best friend when both were MGM contract singers in the early 1950s. "Pretty Perky Peggy King" sang on George Gobel's show, which was filmed across the hall from Fisher's show.

"I don't think that Eddie ever accepted what happened to him," said King, who moved to Philadelphia in 1962 after stepping aside from show business to raise a family. "He wanted to be in the business, but didn't want it to take up too much of his time."

Fisher was complicated. He was "easy to get along with," she said Friday, but "I was wildly annoyed with his behavior toward Debbie."

"I believe Eddie wanted to be loved, which explains the [five] wives," said King. "I got lucky" in her own marriage.

Fisher did little to make anyone love him with his two memoirs, Eddie: My Life, My Loves (1983) and Been There, Done That (1999). He proved to be a memoirist with no gallantry who blamed his problems on others.

"By the time I was thirty-three years old, I'd been married to America's sweetheart and America's femme fatale and both marriages had ended in scandal," he wrote in Been There. " . . . I was addicted to methamphetamines and I couldn't sleep at night without a huge dose of Librium. And from all this I had learned one very important lesson: There were no rules for me. I could get away with anything so long as that sound came out of my throat."

What came out of that throat was no real help to him when he tried to turn himself into a movie star.

His musical talent did not translate well to the screen. He appeared with his wife du jour in two films and they overshadowed him both times - Reynolds in Bundle of Joy (1956) and Taylor in Butterfield 8 (1960).

For all his history of domestic discord, others remembered him fondly.

Atlantic City radio host and writer Seymore "Pinky" Kravitz, 83, recalled Fisher, who appeared at the Steel Pier and in local nightspots, as "very friendly, with a smile on his face that people loved. It didn't change over the years, although he became bigger. . . . He was a very likable person. He never had a sneer."

To Paula Kartman, 80, Fisher was a teenage pal back in South Philly when she was Paula Fromowitz. "He was great," she recalled. "He had a beautiful smile."

Kartman met Fisher through his sister, Janet.

She, Janet, Eddie, and Joey Forman, the late South Philly comedian, spent a lot of time together. Later, Kartman would have a few dates with Fisher. "He was a skinny kid, a good-looking kid," she recalled, but there was nothing romantic, just friends going out.

Fisher already had a singing career under way. He sang on the radio and, Kartman remembered, at an assembly at Thomas Junior High School.

"He was just a nice Jewish boy with a great voice," she said.