TEEN IDOLS

CLOSER CAUGHT UP WITH YESTERDAY’S MOST POPULAR HEARTTHROBS FOR AN UPDATE ON THEIR LIVES TODAY

Closer catches up with your favorite teen idols, from Frankie Avalon and Fabian Forte to Shaun Cassidy and Rick Springfield.

Frankie Avalon

He shot to stardom with his

No. 1 hit “Venus” before he was

20, but learned to change with the times. Frankie’s film roles include the “Beach Party” movies of the 1960s with Annette Funicello and 1978’s Grease, which introduced him to a new generation. In the 1980s, Frankie started selling Frankie Avalon’s Health Makeover System on HSN. This father of eight even wrote a cookbook in 2015! As Frankie, 80, tells Closer: “I had enough talent to keep going forward!”

Leif Garrett

Leif’s early stardom in the late 1970s set him on a troubled path that included brushes with the law and a car accident that left his best friend paralyzed. In 2019, the never-wed star took stock and released his memoir, Idol Truth. “I never felt that I earned” the adulation and stardom, Leif, 58, admitted. Today, after some hard work, the “I Was Made for Dancin’ ” singer is healthy and happy.

Bobby Sherman

After soaring to stardom

with hits like 1969’s “Little Woman,” Bobby,

now 77, retired from music in the 1970s only to return to performing in 1998 with fellow former

idols Davy Jones and Peter Noone. He stepped away again in 2001 and focused his attention on

serving the public in a different way: as an EMT and more recently as a technical Reserve Police Officer in the

Los Angeles Police

Department.

Fabian Forte

Though he went through some tough times — two divorces, a race-car accident — Fabian, 77, has been happily married since 1998 and still performs regularly.

In May, this animal activist re-recorded his 1959 hit “Tiger,” donating a portion of the profits to Big Cat Reserves and Education Centers in response to Netflix’s documentary Tiger King. “It was only the cruelty to the tigers that could have ever motivated me to rerecord it,” he explains.

Dion DiMucci

“Dion is the only artist from the 1950s who has remained creative and relevant,” music critic Dave Marsh has said. Dion, 81, whose early hits included 1961’s “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer,” recorded a series of religious albums in the 1980s before returning to rock and blues. In 2006, he was nominated for a Grammy. In June, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame released his latest album, Blues With Friends, featuring Paul Simon and Jeff Beck. A stage musical based on his life, The Wanderer, is set to bow in April 2021. “It has action, romance, betrayal, a lot of laughs,” Dion says. “It’s a story about transformation.”

Bobby Rydell

In 2016, the “Wild One” and “Volare” singer released a memoir, Teen Idol on the Rocks: A Tale of Second Chances, about the toll early fame took on him. Still, he continued to sing, even after double transplant surgery to replace his liver and a kidney in 2012. Bobby, 78, who grew up in Philadelphia with Frankie Avalon and Fabian Forte, still performs with them, as well. “I said to Frankie one time, ‘How long is this going to last?’ ” Bobby told Closer in 2016. “We’re still doing it!”

Rick Springfield

Rick, 71, who got his start as a teen in the pop rock group Zoot in the late 1960s, has never stopped working. “You need to stay in the game so when the opportunities come around, you are ready,” he tells Closer. Which is why, after playing Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital in the early ’80s and hitting No. 1 on the charts with “Jessie’s Girl,” the Grammy-winner went on to appear in shows like Californication, American Horror Story and, this season, on Fox’s new reality show I Can See Your Voice.

Shaun Cassidy

The former Hardy Boys star and singer of 1977’s hit “Da Doo Ron Ron” succeeded just as well behind the camera as in front of it. After performing on Broadway and London’s West End in the 1980s and ’90s, Shaun, 62, a father of eight (and half brother of the late David Cassidy), became a writer-producer for TV with such hit shows as American Gothic, Emerald City and currently, New Amsterdam. In February, he performed with his band in Las Vegas.