GOODBYE, EDDIE – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  Eddie Fisher has died.  Now, for some of our younger readers, that statement may elicit a huge question mark.  But for the rest of us, it elicits memories of a different cultural time in America.

Despite my years in the Hollywood and TV game, I never met the man.  By the time I got in, he was out.  But Eddie Fisher was one of the most important, and one of the best, of the post-World War II popular singers.  Go to YouTube and hear his rendition of "Any Time," and you'll see what I mean.   The voice was pure and musical, and the lyric was treated with respect.  Young girls of the period thought Eddie was singing directly to them.

I recall Fisher's TV program, "Coke Time."  (In those days, coke meant the soft drink.)  The program was 15 minutes in length.  In the fifties, there were a number of 15-minute network music programs.  I remember that Peggy Lee had one.  They were terrific, virtually all music, and good music.  There were actual melodies.  And you could understand the words. 

Fisher was very much the new Sinatra in that period.  The teen-aged public waited on every story about him, especially how he was "discovered" singing at Grossinger's, the Catskill resort north of New York City, by the legendary comedian, Eddie Cantor.  (False.  Tanya Grossinger, a member of the family, once told me, when I worked at the Tonight Show, that the whole thing was prearranged.)

The sad fact, though, is that two things conspired to end Eddie Fisher's reign.  The first was the coming of rock 'n' roll.  He wasn't a rocker, and never could be.  That wasn't his style.  The second factor was even more serious:  Fisher couldn't handle his personal life.  In "the wedding of the decade" he married Debbie Reynolds, who at that time had built an image of "America's sweetheart."  Young, pretty, pure, the girl next door, Debbie was everything a young man in America could want.  (False.  It was an image.  Easy she was not.  One of my friends in Hollywood was a member of her family, and Debbie used to babysit him.  He told me how she'd lock him in the closet.  Just your nice, average American girl.)

But Eddie met Elizabeth Taylor, fell in love, and divorced Debbie.  That was essentially the end of his stardom.  You did not, in those days, divorce the girl next door.  You stayed with her and had a family.  Compare please to Hollywood standards today. 

Eddie descended into drugs and, eventually, another divorce.  He tried to make a comeback, but his time had passed.  Two autobiographies he wrote offended members of his family, especially his daughter with Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in "Star Wars." 

In recent years, Fisher faded into almost complete obscurity.

But let us remember the great singer that Eddie Fisher was.  His talent cannot be denied.  It was the man who let the talent down.

September 24, 2010