Old Palisades Real Estate: Down on the Farm with Newlyweds Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

By MICHAEL OLDHAM | Special to the Palisadian-Post

The passing last December of both “girl-next-door” iconic film star Debbie Reynolds and her daughter of Star Wars fame, actress Carrie Fisher, was painful for Hollywood.

The mother and daughter died only one day apart from each other. Their deaths also hit some with long memories in Pacific Palisades.

Reynolds, co-star of the 1955 film “The Tender Trap,” and her onetime husband Eddie Fisher, Carrie’s father, are remembered as former Palisadians. Eddie passed away in 2010. They are survived by their son, Todd.

Fisher, AKA “The Coca-Cola kid” from his TV hosting duties of the 1950s musical variety show called “Coke Time with Eddie Fisher,” was a pop record hitmaker and singing sensation of the same era. Among Fisher’s many songs were “Thinking of You” of 1950 and “Any Time,” a 1951 hit.

It was while serving a stint in the Korean War during the 1950s that Philadelphia-born Fisher was smitten by Reynolds.

“I fell in love with her while I was in Korea … One night I was sitting in a tent,” Fisher explained in his autobiography, “Been There Done That.”

“It was pouring outside, and we were watching Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds dancing through a storm in ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ … Watching that movie, I think it was impossible not to fall for her. I told myself that as soon as I got back to the States, I was going to date her.”

Reynolds on the other hand, in her memoir, “Unsinkable,” recalled meeting Fisher while she was a young “contract player at MGM.”

The actress described him as “a handsome man who was the biggest recording star of the 1950s … Eddie was my first love.”

By the time of their celebrated, made-for-Hollywood marriage on Sept. 26, 1955 in New York, both Reynolds and Fisher were on the top of their game in the acting and singing careers.

And the five-foot, two-inch Reynolds had a perfect all-American look for the socially conservative 1950s. Her light-brown, curly hair that many times was sporting a ponytail of sorts and her cute and perky photographed facial expressions all doomed her to take on a familiar Hollywood role.

Texas-born Reynolds recalled that when she married Fisher, “The press called us ‘America’s Sweethearts.’”

Generations before Jolie-Pitt or similar mergings, it would be difficult to exaggerate the public’s fascination with this newly-minted celebrity coupling.

Soon after Fisher and Reynolds’s honeymoon in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where the lovebirds enjoyed their stay at the Greenbrier Country Club, they were making plans to move into the Palisades.

In late 1955, they rented a house in the then-quiet village overlooking Temescal Canyon. The property was the onetime home of director Jack Conway and his wife, Virginia Bushman, a silent film bit actress who was the daughter of silent film star Francis X Bushman.

Reynolds described the place in her memoir. “It was called All Hallows Farm,” she wrote. “It was a farm out in Pacific Palisades.”

When they moved into All Hallows Farm, it consisted of six-acres, down from the 125 acres the farm originally consisted of while Conway and Bushman lived there beginning in the late 1930s. Bushman had moved off the farm sometime after the passing of Conway in 1952.

And with their one-year rental agreement, the Palisades laid claim to being the first home of Fisher and Reynolds as a married duo.

Upon seeing the farm, Reynolds took an immediate liking to it. This was the case, the actress told Screenland plus TV-Land magazine during a 1956 interview.

In the interview, Reynolds spoke of the property. “It wasn’t a pretentious house, but it was large enough for our needs.” She further explained, “It’s all in natural growth, so we don’t have to worry about that upkeep.”

The actress told the magazine’s interviewer, Bob Thomas, that to get to the house, “You turn off Sunset Boulevard and go through some stone gates.” The address was listed as 15600 Sunset when Conway and Bushman were living there.

Besides the Early American style main house, which was designed by architect Allen George Siple, the grounds included a barn and a guesthouse.

For Fisher, the couple’s Palisades house was a big move up from his humble childhood home.

“I grew up in a house where nine people had to use the same bathwater and the toilet could be flushed only once,” Fisher once stated.

By the close of 1956, Reynolds and Fisher would be living in Beverly Hills with their newborn, Carrie.

And by the early 1960s, Palisades High School would be built on Reynolds and Fisher’s newlywed acres.

One longtime Palisadian remembers driving past the area prior to PaliHi being built.

Sheila Bjornlie told the Palisadian-Post, “We have been living in the Palisades since 1957. I was aware of All Hallows Farm, but it was quite secluded there, where Pali [High] is now … instead of a high school campus, all was secluded by vegetation.”

And before PaliHi was built, Reynolds and Fisher would be divorced. Their marriage broke apart by way of the now-legendary Hollywood romance scandal involving Fisher and actress Elizabeth Taylor.