Carrie Fisher Was Shocked!

New York City - 1980

Aug 31, 2023

Carrie Fisher, or Princess Leia Organa to some, was on the balcony, getting hair and make-up done. I was in her beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side on the edge of New York’s Central Park. This was early 1980, and I had recently moved from London to New York.

I was with Carrie on this day to shoot her for a US magazine. I don’t recall meeting her before, but I might have done very briefly with Paul Simon at an event.

It was a freezing but very bright winter day with a vibrant blue sky. It felt warm as soon as I arrived, inside her apartment and everyone was extremely nice. Carrie was very chatty, lovely, and funny.

So, whilst she was being pampered and prepared (hair, makeup, etc.) for what I thought would be a straightforward shoot, I was in the kitchen, leaning against the worktop and chatting to a perfectly lovely old chap. The place is full of people, many of whom I'm aware of as pretty famous. Suddenly, in pops Art Garfunkel, and at one point, actor Richard Dreyfuss and a bit later, her future husband, Paul Simon, too, from apartments upstairs or downstairs or wherever they lived. All the while, I'm scanning for a photo opportunity out of the corner of my eye (as I usually do), but still nattering away to this chap, notably much older than my 21 years and probably quite a bit older than most others in the apartment. We talked about London, which he knew well, and photography, music and bands I was working with. We shared stories about the London scene and the people in it. After all, London was my real home and where I was born. Then he stopped suddenly and asked me if I'd do him a favour:

"Can you call this number for me?" he says, passing me a note with a number I recognised as a 305 Florida area code. I knew this because I was working a bit with Andy Gibb brother of Brothers Gibb (The Bee Gees), who was living in Miami.

I don't ask him what his last slave died of but take the number. "If a woman answers, ask if it's Debbie."

"Right." I don't ask why.

"Tell her Eddie wants to speak to her."

"Right then."

He handed me the phone on a long curly lead from the wall. No mobiles in those days. I hoped it was okay to use Carrie’s home phone.

I dialled the number.

The phone rings a few times, and a woman's voice answers.

"Is that Debbie?" I ask.

"Uh-huh." She confirms.

"I've got Eddie here. He wants to know if you'll speak to him."

There's silence for what feels like a minute, but in reality is probably about ten seconds. Finally, before I can say, "hello?", she responds:

"Okay."

I passed the phone to the lovely old chap and said there you go! I leave them to talk for about half an hour or so. Afterwards, when my shoot with Carrie was finished, he came over to thank me for the favour. I was now intrigued, and it was then, as I asked him who Debbie was, the penny dropped.

"Carrie's mum. My ex-wife. We haven't spoken for years."

"Oh, Debbie Reynolds. And that makes you Carrie's dad?"

"Yeah."

"Eddie... Fisher?"

"Yeah."

Well, fuck my old boots. I was worldly enough at a young age to know how huge Eddie Fisher had been as a singer. I watched many black & white movies when I was very young on rainy Sunday afternoons in London. So, he was a big name in my mind and in fact, a global superstar of his day. But it hadn't occurred to me while scanning the room of stars that the best photo opportunity would have been Carrie and her legendary dad, the old fella I had been chatting with in the kitchen. And to think, I'd helped him make contact with Debbie Reynolds, the ex-wife he left for Elizabeth Taylor, and married her 20 years earlier.

As I said, Carrie and I had finished the shoot, and Eddie told her that he had spoken to her mother on the phone. She looked shocked and said how? He told Carrie I had called her for him. She just stood there and looked into my eyes and said, “How the fuck did you make that happen” I just said, I just called her and asked her. Apparently, years later, this was all written about in someone's book of memoirs. I am not sure if it was Carrie, Debbie or Eddie. I need to look into that when I have time.

After the photo shoot and the historic phone call, I jumped in a New York Yellow Cab and headed back to the apartment. I was thinking about the shoot, who I had met there.

As I had only recently moved to New York, I still looked at it like a school kid. Everything was a photo opportunity. I looked behind me out of the back window. I picked up one of my Nikon F2As cameras and took this photo out of the rear of my taxi. I had Kodachrome film in my camera. I was singing quietly in my head (as I always seem to), a song written by the genius I had just met with Carrie. The song was Kodachrome, which is without doubt one of my favourite songs.