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Postcards from the Eddie | page 1, 2
Fisher's first experience with drugs came from one Dr. Max Jacobson. He remembers the date with exactitude: April 17, 1953. And he didn't stop for 37 years. Most of the famous people he knew -- in show biz, in music, in politics -- were doing it. Even John Fitzgerald Kennedy: "I had arrived at Max Jacobson's office for my shot and found the place in an uproar. 'Come wit me,' he ordered. 'I haf to see the President.' I knew Max had very powerful friends, but the President? ... With Max, anything was possible. Max could make night into day. Max with his filthy fingernails and his magic potions treating the President of the United States?" According to Fisher, the president took Dr. Max with him when he went to Vienna for a summit meeting with Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev. "Looking back on it, it's amazing how we all just accepted the fact that the President was taking Dr. Feelgood with him to a meeting that would affect the entire world. The fate of the free world rested on Max's injections. I can still see Max taking a little from this bottle, a little from that one, and 'pull down your pants, Mr. President.'"
Been There, Done That What sets Fisher's tale apart from the thousand- Who would ever suspect that Eddie Fisher, the man who made so many awful records -- songs he himself calls "bubble-gum" -- the man who was shooting meth and cocaine for 37 straight years, the one who bungled several marriages with several of the most gorgeous women in Hollywood -- who could ever guess that he would create an autobiography that is such a kick in the pants? This is a man who, literally, got a shirt off of JFK's back; one who loved the loveliest women of our time; one who hung out with all the stars and the mafioso kings; one who turned down part ownership in Caesar's Palace ("I wanted nothing more to do with Caesar and Cleopatra"); the man who abandoned all his children, the man whose third wife would write, "I wish you good luck, good health and wealth and happiness in your own time on your terms -- I do not wish you love as you wouldn't know what to do with it." Fisher is a man who shot up with the stars, and who ended up, in his most desperate days, travelling with "Roy Radin's Vaudeville Review," also known as "The cavalcade of has-beens," along with Tiny Tim, Georgie Jessel and Donald O'Connor, "who was whacked out of his mind most of the time." When he was on top, he says, "I walked into theatres and championship fights without a ticket. I could make a phone call and have airplanes wait for me. Now I had to learn how to lead a normal life." Fisher is now 70. Surprisingly, he survived. He makes it quite clear that even now, his main regret is that he wasn't able to hang onto his No. 1 shiksa, Elizabeth Taylor. This juvenile passion and his endless roll-call of sexual conquests are not very impressive. But we are impressed that Fisher is able, at this late date, to come up with a brand new act, one associated neither with his music nor his weenie. Here we have a faded pop star who has, out of the blue, developed a brand new trick that he doesn't even mention in his book: The ability to write winningly and well. "Been There, Done That" is self-deprecating, and droll -- and sometimes very sad. But all the while it's honest, and very, very good.
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