Karen Carpenter's tragic story

guardian ^ | October 23, 2010 | Randy Schmidt

[Morgana]

The Carpenters were one of the biggest-selling American musical acts of all time. Between 1970 and 1984 brother and sister Richard and Karen Carpenter had 17 top 20 hits, including "Goodbye to Love", "Yesterday Once More", "Close to You" and "Rainy Days and Mondays". They notched up 10 gold singles, nine gold albums, one multi-platinum album and three Grammy awards. Karen's velvety voice and Richard's airy melodies and meticulously crafted arrangements stood in direct contrast to the louder, wilder rock dominating the rest of the charts at the time, yet they became immensely popular, selling more than 100m records.

Richard was the musical driving force but it was Karen's effortless voice that lay behind the Carpenters' hits. Promoted from behind the drums to star vocalist, she became one of the decade's most instantly recognisable female singers.

But there was a tragic discrepancy between her public and private selves. Offstage, away from the spotlight, she felt desperately unloved by her mother, Agnes, who favoured Richard, and struggled with low self-esteem, eventually developing anorexia nervosa from which she never recovered. She died at the age of 32.

In 1996 journalist Rob Hoerburger powerfully summed up Karen Carpenter's tribulations in a New York Times Magazine feature: "If anorexia has classically been defined as a young woman's struggle for control, then Karen was a prime candidate, for the two things she valued most in the world – her voice and her mother's love – were exclusively the property of her brother Richard. At least she would control the size of her own body." And control it she did. By September 1975 her weight fell to 6st 7lb (41kg).

[Cecily]

Princess Diana had bulimia nervosa and at one point looked like a candidate for anorexia nervosa. Her sister Sarah did have anorexia, but both of them managed to recover from their eating disorders.

[wildbill]

That lady’s voice was so pure and true that her recordings are still popular with us oldsters. Such a tragic end.

[CptnObvious]

Karen was worth was about 6 Million at the time of her death. That’s about 14 Million in today’s money. The tragedy would have been not to use a psychiatrist at that time as she was an adult.

[Arm_Bears]

Watched a made-for-TV bio-drama on Karen and Richard back in the early 80’s.

If it was even remotely accurate, their mother was an absolute tree squirrel and the likely source of both their problems—Richard’s drug addiction and Karen’s self-esteem, among others.

[oblomov]

Ew... really?

[Morgana]

I don’t know that Donnie and Marie did anything at all but I remember a comedy show doing a parody of them long ago. This is when Marie was married to that other guy (Brian Blosil) and had just become pregnant. In the comedy show she and Donny were doing a duet and she was 9 months pregnant when while singing they started holding and making out with each other.

Does not matter what religion you are when you are in the public eye comedy shows are going to poke fun at you. They may be just funning Donny and Marie but sometimes I wonder as with Michael Jackson, they may be telling us the truth in a way the general public could handle it.

[corkoman]

The "magic" of their music included the fact that her voice was clear and chirpy-happy but the lyrics of those songs were dark.

"I'll say goodbye to love"... jeez Louise that's pretty sad.

[mjp]

I still think her and her brother were lovers and thats why she was so messed up

I saw a movie about the Carpenters a while back. I got an impression that she at least had a intense crush on her brother.

[Morgana]

don’t blame me....comedy shows been on to those two for years!!!

Family guy episode!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzhc550spzs

[EdnaMode]

She had a wonderful voice. What a shame she died so young.

[sargon]

What a wonderful singing voice Karen had! That's all I have to say, and all I ever will have to say. All else is speculation...

[al baby]

Nope it was Karen and Richard it was a quite rumor I worked for a place that did lots of work for entertainers back in the late 70s

[TexasGator]

She

[al baby]

Get a life

[trisham]

Agreed.

[cymbeline]

I got a sheet music book of Carpenter songs. It had the ones we’ve all heard, written by people other than Richard. It also had songs written by Richard. To me they were an awful waste of paper, but he arranged the music they did and was terrific at that.

[hanamizu]

Our use of pounds isn’t archaic. Pounds, pints, gallons, feet, inches, etc. are convenient measurements for which there is no metric equivalent

---

Our system is based on human-convenient measures. The metric system is based on nature. So water freezes at 0º C, which means a lot of negative numbers in the winter. A foot is based on an average-sized man’s foot. A meter is based on a fraction of an imagined distance from the north pole to the equator. Not quite as handy a yard, which is an average man’s stride. The only advantage that metric brings to the table is easier conversion—all by 10s. But how often do we need to know how many inches are in 2.7 miles?

[TexasGator]

“I still think her and her brother were lovers ...”

You REALLY need to ‘get a life’!

[Migraine]

But, “Goodbye to Love” is more than offset by “On Top of the World”, and “Sing, Sing a Song” and “Close to You”.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

One of the best films of the 1980s was a little independent movie called Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988)

It was a Karen Carpenter biographical movie which instead of actors, they used Barbie Dolls instead. I went to the theater to laugh at the lampooning of the Carpenters, but left the theater admiring Karen. It was actually a very touching movie, and very sympathetic toward Karen Carpenter.

Her brother didn't think so because he came out on the short end of the stick in his portrayal. The movie portrayed him as a cunning manipulative ass. He along with a team of lawyers were able to get the movie banned.

The movie hasn't been seen in years. It was ordered destroyed by the judge, but there supposedly is a grainy dupey video available of it in the dark corners of the internet. Whether or not the movie was actually destroyed or not is a good question.

After seeing that movie, every time I hear one of Karen Carpenter's songs, it takes on a melancholy aspect when I think about the sad person behind that crystal clear voice.