NEED TO KNOW
Todd Fisher celebrated his mother, Debbie Reynolds, ahead of what would have been her 94th birthday with a live podcast episode
Todd recalled working with his mom at a young age, sharing his memories of how she helped make it possible
Reynolds died at 84 in Dec. 2016, the day after daughter Carrie Fisher’s death
Todd Fisher has fond memories of helping with his mother’s productions.
During a live episode of the Behind the Stage Doors with Todd Fisher and Catherine Hickland podcast released on March 28, the business executive paid tribute to Debbie Reynolds ahead of what would have been her birthday on April 1 as he recalled how he started working on his mom’s productions.
“So I had stopped doing her show. I was probably 14ish and I had stopped being in the show and I started doing sound. Gary Wood, who was the entertainment director at the Desert End… He was something else. He worked for Walter Kaine, who was the big guy under Howard Hughes, but he was the one that used to take me up and let me run the board, but he’d be sitting there when I did it,” Fisher explained.
“And then at a certain point, my mother said, ‘I want him to run the sound rather than the curtain puller.’ I was 14 years old. And that’s how he said, ‘Hey, let him do it,’ But the union stepped in and said, ‘No, he has to be union. He can’t be union till he’s 18,’ ” Fisher recalled.
While for many parents, it would end there, Reynolds didn’t see it as a roadblock. In fact, she called the head of the union with a personal plea.
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“That’s why mother called John Flity, head of the New York Local One Union, IATSI, Local One in New York, and said, ‘I want my son to do my sound in Las Vegas. They’re saying he can’t do it unless he’s a member,’ ” Reynolds’ son continued.
“I was the youngest, and I am to this day the youngest member… Well, I don’t know what’s happened in the last 30 years, but back then, it was unheard of that a 14-year-old would become a member of the high hats union,” he said.
Fisher added, “Then, I started getting to do her sound. So that was a fun thing, and then they couldn’t tell me not to touch anything anymore.”
Fisher worked closely with his mother throughout her life and has managed her estate since her death in 2016, which came just a day after sister Carrie Fisher‘s death.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source nz.news.yahoo.com ’
