Paul Stanley

Stanley Bert Eisen was raised in Upper Manhattan, New York City, 211th Street and Broadway. Both his parents were Jewish. He was the younger of two children; his sister Julia is two years older. Stanley's mother, Eva Jontof-Hutter, was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1923 and came from a family that fled Nazi Germany to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and then to New York City. His father William Eisen's parents Rebecca and Harry Eisenhandler were from Poland. Stanley was raised Jewish, although he did not consider his family very observant and did not celebrate his bar mitzvah; he continued to consider himself Jewish in adulthood. Since Stanley's right ear was misshapen from a birth defect called microtia and he was unable to hear on that side, he found it difficult to determine the direction of a sound, and was unable to understand speech in a noisy environment. Attending PS 98, he was taunted by other children for his deformed ear. Despite his hearing problem, Stanley enjoyed listening to music, and he watched American Bandstand on television. His favorite musical artists included Eddie Cochran, Dion and the Belmonts, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. Stanley learned to sing harmony with his family, and he was given a child's guitar at age seven. Stanley's family relocated to the Kew Gardens neighborhood in Queens in 1960. …

In 1982, after he turned 30 years old, Stanley had reconstructive surgery for the microtia in his right ear. The new ear was formed from cartilage from one of his ribs, with skin grafts put over it. Stanley said the surgery had given him "a new lease on life" and was so grateful to the surgeon that he gave him a Rolex watch upon his retirement. Because of this birth-defect, Stanley is an ambassador for the charitable organization AboutFace, an organization that provides support and information to people with facial differences. He has appeared at fundraising events and in videos to raise awareness. Stanley became involved with AboutFace after a representative saw his performance in the Phantom of the Opera in 1999. On July 3, 1990, Stanley was involved in a near fatal car accident on his way from New York, after a KISS show in Springfield, Massachusetts. That same year he had relocated to Los Angeles full-time and has lived there ever since. In 2001, Stanley's first wife, actress Pamela Bowen, filed for divorce after nine years of marriage. They have one son. On November 19, 2005, Stanley married long-time girlfriend Erin Sutton at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena, California. The couple had a son in September 2006, a daughter in January 2009, and a daughter in August 2011. …