"I'd been working on a comeback album for the last four or five years. Pianist George Michalski, who met Fisher about 15 years ago when he was living with Pritikin, had concrete ideas for his friend. Comeback triesĪlmost every one of his pals talks about trying to help him make a comeback. He did try a comeback, and I was a participant in that effort." Fisher sang at Pritikin's huge Labor Day picnic at his Mission District mansion in 2005. "He was a very famous guy who lapsed in a kind of anonymity, and I don't think he felt comfortable in that role. "Fisher was like the Elvis Presley of the '50s," said Pritikin. The morning after one dinner shared by Fisher, Lin and Pritikin, "she took him to Betty Ford for rehab." He didn't drink much, but there were dozens of bottles of pills in his room. Drugs were every place, bottles and jars were every place. But with all the scandal and crap and bad reputation that developed, I think of him as a nice guy, on this magnificent array of drugs. "When I knew him, I don't think he had any money. He was "not the Eddie Fisher you would read about in the tabloids," said Pritikin. I think of all his multi-marriages this was his best one.
Eddie fisher movie#
Her characteristics did not relate to famous movie stars like Elizabeth Taylor. "But then he hooked up with this Chinese lady, a lovely person, but not usually his type. Recovering from that surgery, Fisher "came back to live with me," for about six months. There were good days and bad days, but he always looked good." Repeated face liftsįisher became famous for repeated face lifts, and his pal Bob Pritikin, who can't remember how they met, but thinks of him as "among my very closest friends." Pritikin, a former ad man, recalls "waltzing him into a face lift" at some point between 19. But I'll always have the same image: Perfection. The last two years were extremely tough." Alonzo saw Fisher last "two months ago. Carrie called quite often and periodically came up." He'd see his other children "two or three times annually. Was he in touch with his children? "Yeah, he kept in touch with them quite often. But Alonzo's quite definite about him being in Alameda, where Carrie Fisher wanted him to live "because her daughter was to go to college in Berkeley." It was his very last party but he was in a wheelchair, and I wasn't even sure he could make it."Īlonzo says Fisher lived in the East Bay for "about two years" (that arithmetic again), "in good spirits." News reports - and other friends - say Fisher was living in Berkeley at the end. "I had about 70 people in the restaurant at the Gramercy. I gave him his last birthday party, when he turned 81," in 2009. He was a real normal loving individual." Last birthday partyĪfter Lin's death, Alonzo and Fisher both had apartments in the Gramercy Towers on California Street, where "I used to see him every day for years and years and years, and would help him, even if he got sick. He had great humor, great style and was really accommodating to a lot of people. He never drank, he did take drugs, but he did not die broke. A lot of people will say he was an alcoholic and a drug addict and he died broke. A lot of stories about Eddie are absolutely nonsense," said Alonzo. Winkie, Lin's son.) Fisher and Lin lived in the Fontana, selling a Hollywood Hills house in 2000 for $5.35 million. She had an apartment in the Fontana, she had a printing company in San Francisco, then she had the Club DV8 and the Caribbean Zone." (Newspaper accounts ascribed ownership of those establishments to Dr. In 1993, Fisher married Lin at Alonzo's house in La Jolla, "and I stood up for him. Then from that point on, he was singing at the Fairmont, at different functions." And all three sang a song together." That was about 1987, said Alonzo, "strictly to introduce him again out of semi-retirement in the Bay Area. I hired a 36-piece orchestra with violins and everything, and two of his daughters (with Connie Stevens), Tricia and Joely, also came. "One year I gave him a big evening of entertainment at Herbst Theatre, with Jane Russell, Eartha Kitt, and an audience of 999 people. He was living in New York, and then I told him to come to visit me - I had a house in Tiburon - and I introduced him to Betty." That was about 1980, said Alonzo. "I was the reason he came to San Francisco, I introduced him to his last wife. Alonzo, who "used to do a lot of entertainment stuff" and lived in Pacific Heights and other places, was "like his agent in his later years, when he was sort of semi-retired." Good friend Reno Alonzo, who says he knew Fisher for about 30 years, recalls meeting him "at a show in Vegas in the '60s" (addition and subtraction are for nit-pickers).
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