NEW YORK -- The judge who last winter heard three middle-aged women testify to
be Lymon's legal widow. The opinion by Surrogate Court Judge Marie
Lambert entitles Waters to an estate that may be worth $750,000 in
accumulated royalties from Lymon's 1956 hit and its more recent
incarnations.
It also dooms, at least for now, the hopes of singer Zola Mae Taylor
of Los Angeles, the female member of the original Platters, and Emira
Eagle, a schoolteacher from Augusta, Ga., each of whom had claimed in
court that she was Lymon's widow and heir. And it stalls or kills a
federal lawsuit Eagle had brought to reclaim control of the publishing
rights to his song.
Waters, who on the witness stand acknowledged a long struggle with
drugs and prostitution during her tempestuous relationship with the
onetime star, got the news from her attorney Monday night. An employee
of a furniture store in north Philadelphia, she was in South Carolina
for a family funeral. "She was speechless, actually unable to talk,"
reported the attorney, Dwight Peterson. When she recovered, she declared
that "she knew it; she'd had faith all along," Peterson said. "She was
so taken with the idea of being once and for all declared the real Mrs.
Frankie Lymon." Waters bore Lymon's only known child, a daughter who
died shortly after birth.
William McCracken, who represents Emira Eagle, called her at the
elementary school where she teaches. "I didn't want her to hear it on
the news," he said. McCracken said his client "has a strong religious
background and beliefs, so I don't think she'll be devastated, but I
know she's disappointed to say the least.
"Knowing the facts like I know them, I feel confident there will be
an appeal," McCracken predicted. Eagle's New York counsel Ira Greenberg
agreed that his "current inclination" was to appeal.
The court found that "the decedent and Elizabeth {Waters} have
satisfied the requirements of common law marriage in the State of
Pennsylvania." Though Waters was not yet divorced from her first husband
when she and Frankie Lymon married in a civil ceremony in Alexandria in
1964, their union became valid when that divorce became final in 1965,
the judge found.
The opinion dismisses the claims of Taylor, who was unable to
produce "credible proof" of her marriage to Lymon or her divorce from
her previous husband, both of which she said occurred in Mexico.
Taylor's attorneys could not be reached for comment.
Lymon's 1967 marriage to Eagle, marked by a ceremony at the Beulah
Grove Baptist Church, was invalid, according to the opinion, because he
was still married to Waters.
Aside from Waters, the winner of this legal round is Morris Levy,
head of Roulette Records, among the defendants when Eagle brought a
federal suit in 1984. Eagle claimed that Levy had committed fraud and
copyright infringement by crediting himself as coauthor of "Why Do Fools
Fall in Love" (a not uncommon practice in the history of early rock 'n'
roll). That suit was suspended while Lambert determined which woman was
Lymon's widow.
If the judge's ruling stands, "then we go to federal court and
advise the judge that the party who commenced the action is the wrong
party," says Levy's attorney in the case, Leon Bornstein.
The record company executive has other problems: He was sentenced
last week to 10 years in prison for his conspiracy conviction arising
from an FBI investigation of racketeering in the recording industry. But
he will apparently have little trouble with Elizabeth Waters. "She never
disputed his role in the creation and authorship of this song," her
attorney says.
Others still do, however. The doo-wop classic (its earnings boosted
by Diana Ross' 1981 version and by its use in a greeting card
commercial) was recorded by Lymon's group the Teenagers. The two
surviving members of the Teenagers claim that they wrote the song with
Lymon when they were all Harlem street-corner harmonizers hoping for a
break. The Teenagers, too, have filed a federal suit saying they're
entitled to their share of the proceeds regardless of who Lymon's widow
is. That case can now proceed, their attorney says.
