In the 50’s, there was Elvis. In the 60’s came the Beatles. Somewhere in between came the teen idols — Bobby Rydell, Paul Anna, Frankie Avalon among them. Some were talented. Some mostly looked good. Fabian Forte, who performed just using his first name, probably fit the latter category.
Fabian was recruited by a talent manager when he was only 14. One of the stories told about his early experience suggests he was going to need some help. “‘The first voice teacher I took the boy to worked with him a month and threw up his hands in disgust,’ recalled Bob Marcucci, the man who was to make a fortune as mentor-manager of Fabian and Frankie Avalon.” (Ande Beck, New York Times, Oct. 2, 1977).
Fabian would later make the following admission. “Questioned in ’60s Congressional hearings about payola in broadcasting, Fabian explained at the time that his records were substantially doctored, electronically, in order to improve his voice.” (Liz Nichols, Edmonton Journal, Nov. 5, 1998)
Nonetheless, by the time he was 18, he had produced ten Top-10 songs. “Hold That Tiger” won a gold record and the album “The Fabulous Fabian” produced more than a million dollars in sales. Then he up and quit. He would later explain “I had no major desire to get into the music industry. I was never really infatuated with it: too many people telling me what to do, what to wear, how to comb my hair.” (Liz Nichols, Edmonton Journal, Nov. 5, 1998)
He then embarked on an acting career. “His first film, 1959’s Hound Dog Man, found him playing opposite Dodie Stevens, a 13-year-old who briefly found fame with a song called Pink Shoelaces. Later, he would turn up in a series of beach party films with fellow singers-turned-actors Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, finally breaking character in 1963 in a TV series episode in which he played a vicious killer.” (Lynn Van Matre, Chicago Tribune Aug. 13, 1983)
He would later play Pretty Boy Floyd in a movie called “Bullet for Pretty Boy.”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram reviewer John Dycus offered this summation (July 16, 1970): “Floyd is portrayed by Fabian Forte, a teen singing idol in the relatively tame rock and roll era, who’s not so unbearable as unfeasible.”
Whatever Happened to Fabian? In her 1983 Chicago Tribune story, Van Matre, summed it up like this: “Fabian Forte, better known simply as Fabian (‘Fabe’ to his friends), has, among other things and in no particular order, been written off as just another no talent pretty boy; grown up; ‘come close to going off the deep end’; studied film at UCLA; been written off as an adult entertainer; married; had two children; divorced; made 30 films; gone the rock revival route; married again; put together his own show; sold real estate; posed for a Cosmo seminude centrefold; grown up some more; and been written off once more.”
Here are some of the details.
“Today, the superstardom, the hysterics of massed admirers are gone, and so, it might appear, is the modesty, since Fabe is about to be seen buck naked as the centerfold in a saucy publication specializing in male nudes. However, appearances are to a degree deceiving. Fabe still has enough of his reserve to be wondering whether or not he did the right thing when he shed his dignity for the camera.” (Bryan-College Station Eagle, Dec. 2, 1973)
The next year, he told Dan Lewis of Pop Scene Service (May 11, 1974) he was quitting his acting career and going back to singing. “I did nine pictures. But I was frustrated my acting career was going nowhere.” He would go on to appear in some 30 films.
UPI had this dispatch on March 8, 1976: “Fabian, the slick-haired rock singer of the early 1960s, was fined $200 and placed on three year’s probation last week, in connection with charges he beat his wife and mother-in-law. The 32-year-old singer, whose full name is Fabian Forte, was arrested Oct. 6 at the Toluca lake home of his estranged wife, Katie. She accused him of beating her and roughing up her mother, Moreau Reagan, 69.” Sounds like he got off pretty easy. Katie, with whom he had two children, was his first of three wives. Married in 1966, they divorced in 1979.
Fabian also tried his hand at race car driving, with apparently mixed results. According to the AP (Sept. 15, 1978) “Singer Fabian Forte suffered head injuries at a stock car race track while practicing for a New York charity auto race. Forte, 35, was not seriously hurt and said in an interview that he suffered cuts on the temple and left elbow that were stitched by doctors. The former teen idol said he was rounding a curve at the Willow Springs Raceway on the Mojave Desert at Rosamond Wednesday when his Toyota hatchback slipped three times and flipped end over end twice.”
That accident would eventually lead to a couple lawsuits. The Daily Breeze, Torrance, Calif., (April 1, 1982) had that story. “Forte, whose hits included ‘Hound Dog Man,’ is seeking at least $750,000 in damages from Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., based in Torrance, and race car driver Bill Simpson.
“The lawsuit stems from an accident which occurred on Sept. 13, 1978, during a practice session at Willow Springs Raceway near Rosamond in Kern County. Forte blames Simpson, his instructor, for the wreck and Simpson, who has filed suit against the singer, blames Forte.
“Forte alleges that Simpson, acting as an employee of the car company, caused his injuries by failing to take safety precautions or to tell him how fast to go around curves.
“Simpson tells another story. He said Forte caused the wreck by going between 90 and 115 mph despite repeated warnings to slow down.”
(I could find no information as to how this was resolved.)
Fabian had also filed a suit against the makers of the film “The Idolmaker,” charging defamation of character. “Fabian Forte, one of the top teen heartthrobs of the early 1960s, has filed a $64 million lawsuit contending there’s a slanderous representation of him in the film ‘The Idolmaker.’ The film, based on the experiences of Forte’s former personal manager, Bob Marcucci, is about a brash promoter who molds two young men into national stars. Forte, charging defamation of character and invasion of privacy, contends one of the two men is a representation of himself. The lawsuit names Marcucci, who served as a consultant on the film, as a defendant along with United Artists and its parent company, TransAmerica, producers Gene Kirkwood and Howard Koch Jr. and screenplay ‘author Edward DiLorenzo. (Daily Advance, Lynchburg Va., July 28, 1981). The suit was settled out of court resulting in public apologies made to Fabian. He also received Marcucci’s minority share of ownership in the film.
It appears that paying bills is not one of Fabian’s fortes. AP had this story about a lawsuit with a contractor who worked on his house (Nov. 24, 2000).
“For the second time in two months, Fabian Forte, a singing sensation in the 1950s and 1960s, has been sued by someone accusing the singer of not paying his bills. But this time, Forte and his beauty queen wife, Andrea Patrick Forte, are fighting back.
“A lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of Andrea Forte against Roy D DeWitt Jr. of Connellsville says the walls of the couple’s $355,000 home in Dunbar Township, about 35 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, are crooked and repairs will cost $50,000.
“The suit was filed the day after DeWitt sued the Fortes saying he had not been paid for finishing the home.”
Andrea is Fabian’s third wife. They married in 1998. And there seems to be some question as to whether they paid those bills.
“A Fayette County resort has dropped its lawsuit against singer Fabian Forte and his wife that claimed they failed to pay more than $4,000 owed for liquor consumed at their 1998 wedding. Forte, 57, and his wife, Andrea Patrick Forte, 39, of Dunbar, said they have been notified that Nemacolin Woodlands Resort and Spa will not pursue the lawsuit it filed against them last fall in Fayette County Common Pleas Court. Nemacolin Woodlands had charged that the Fortes owed $4,663 in unpaid bills plus interest from their wedding reception there.
“In December, Fabian Forte, who gained fame as a teen heartthrob during the 1950s and ’60s, and his wife moved to Dunbar, where Andrea Forte, a former Miss Pennsylvania and Miss West Virginia, grew up. (Cindi Lash, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, April 17, 2001)
Through the years Fabian has kept his career going by playing mostly nostalgia shows. During the 2010’s he toured with a group dubbed the Golden Boys, which also included Bobby Rydell and Frankie Avalon. He also put together a show called “The Original Stars of American Bandstand” that included The Chiffons, Bobby Vee, Brian Hyland and Chris Montez.
There is a Fabian web site. But when I clicked on the “on tour” page, it hadn’t been updated since 2008.
Looking back, Fabian had this to say about his teen idol days:
“‘They laughed at us.
“‘They wouldn’t take us seriously as artists,’ Forte told The Times in 1985, talking about music critics in the 1950’s and early ‘60s. But, he added, ‘Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all bad. For a teenage boy, you can imagine what it was like having all those girls drooling over you. That was heaven.’” (Newark Star-Ledger, June 22, 2025)
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(Newspaper and wire service stories cited above were accessed on newspapers.com.)
See also, Whatever Happened To?
off the leash 
Thanks for this well-researched post, Ken.
Well, let’s see, Fabian has a history as a coward who beat women, a deadbeat who didn’t pay his bills and a cheat who electronically doctored his music records. If he follows the pattern, next, he’ll be declaring he’s accepted the Almighty as his savior and is born-again.
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And nobody, anywhere ever plays his music.
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I don’t remember liking any of those guys except perhaps Paul Anka, who was from Canada. Maybe his origin helped him avoid some of the idiocies of others.
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I never liked any of those guys either. Too slick. But you’ve put together a treasure trove of information, and it was interesting. Of all your “where are they now” candidates, the greatest of them all was Chubby Checker – who, whatever else you say about him, sang the greatest and most influential rock and roll song of all time.
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