The Fabrication of Fabian

February 6 is the birthday of singer and actor Fabian Forte (b.1943), known to audiences of his own day merely as Fabian.

Fabian lives at the center of a Venn Diagram including two sets of male pop singers of the late ’50s and early ’60s: Mononymic phenoms (like Elvis and Dion) and Italian Guys from Philly (like Bobby Rydell and Frankie Avalon). What set him apart from all of them was that he was not actually a singer.

The career of Fabian really was one of the more egregious swindles perpetrated on the public, exceeding in a very real way the more widely acknowledged controversies of The Monkees or Milli Vanilli, for just two examples. After all, The Monkees really were entertainers and even musicians, and Milli Vanilli really were aspiring singers and dancers (they just didn’t sing on their records). Fabian was just minding his business one day when his neighbor Bob Marcucci, who handled Frankie Avalon, decided he could make a pop star out of him. This was during the Elvis void, when the king had been drafted into the army and was serving at a base over in Germany. Fabian was only 14, but very good looking in an Elvisian kind of way, and that was all Marcucci needed, he felt, to put him over. So he was given singing lessons, groomed with a pompadour, and given some flashy threads to wear. A campaign was implemented full of slogans like “Fabian is Coming” and “Who is Fabian?” Some recordings were made (with Fabian’s voice electronically enhanced in some instances) and Dick Clark (who’d been impressed by the screaming girls at a live event) booked Fabian on American Bandstand and his prime time variety show.Ed Sullivan, Kraft Music Hall, and a slew of other appearances followed. Voila! Pop star!

Still, the public ain’t that dumb. Fabian’s actual top ten hits, all released in 1959, were few in number. There was his first hit, which became his signature number, “Turn Me Loose”, pronounced “Turn Muh Loose”, which went to #9. His biggest record “Tiger” went to #3. His third and final top ten was the hilariously craven “Hound Dog Man” (1959), notable for its brazen aping of Elvis’s first hit “Hound Dog”, and the fact that it was also the title song of a movie Fabian starred in.

Unexpectedly, it was as an actor that Fabian made the bigger mark; he ceased cutting new records in the early ’60s. Among the heartthrobs of his generation, Fabian was second only to Elvis as a film star throughout the ’60s, and his screen career lasted about a decade longer than Presley’s. After Hound Dog Man, he was in High Time (1960) with Bing Crosby and Tuesday Weld, North to Alaska (1960) with John Wayne, Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1961) with rival pop star Tommy Sands, Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) and Dear Brigitte (1965) with Jimmy Stewart, the all-star The Longest Day (1962), Five Weeks in a Balloon(1962), and Agatha Christie’s10 Little Indians (1965). He also made waves in a controversially violent episode of the tv show Bus Stop (1961) directed by Robert Altman, and also appeared on The Dick Powell Show,The Virginian, Wagon Train, Daniel Boone, et al.

Then there was phase of youth and exploitation pictures, mostly for AIP. These included Ride the Wild Surf (1964), Fireball 500 (1966), Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966), Thunder Alley (1967), Maryjane (1968), and The Wild Racers (1968). His last two for AIP were The Devil’s 8 (1969), a rip-off of The Dirty Dozen, and A Bullet for Pretty Boy (1970), in which he played Pretty Boy Floyd.

At this stage he began billing himself by his full name Fabian Forte in a gambit to be taken more seriously. 1973, the year he turned 30, was a pretty good year: he appeared in an episode of Love American Style, co-starred with Karen Black in the film Little Laura and Big John, and was also in the movie Soul Hustler. At the same time, he returned to singing, with a lounge act in Las Vegas. His decision to pose nude in Playgirl magazine the following year proved a stumbling block to his acting career, although he did manage to keep the career going into the 1980s, appearing in made-for-tv movies, low-budget theatrical films, and guest shots on TV series. His 1977 appearance on Laverne and Shirley was my first introduction to him! Naturally, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat were in the mix. After a certain point, he was almost always playing himself in his TV guest appearances. The last of these was a 1998 episode of Murphy Brown.

In 1980, Peter Gallagher played a fictionalized version of Fabian in the film The Idolmaker. Since 1981, Fabian has primarily worked the nostalgia circuit as a singer, touring with other pop stars of his generation.

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.