While Karen assumed he had his own money - he drove flash cars - it became apparent he was broke. When she told her mother, Agnes said she would do "no such thing" and ordered her to go through with the wedding because friends and family were travelling especially for it and it had already been paid for. He offered to have the operation reversed but Karen decided to call off the wedding. Tom had had a vasectomy before he had met her and had neglected to tell her, despite her wishes to have children as soon as possible. This set off alarm bells for Karen's friends and as the wedding date neared, Karen discovered some devastating news. She even regained some weight - the singer, who was 5ft4in tall, now weighed 7st 6lb.ĭespite the disastrous effect Karen's weight loss had on her periods, she had always wanted children and in 1980 she met a handsome property developer called Tom Burris. This particular occasion got her mother's attention and she nursed Karen. In 1975, Karen was admitted to hospital, physically and emotionally exhausted from two years on the road and years of extreme dieting. They thought psychiatrists were for crazy people. Sherwin Bash also confronted Karen's parents about her weight but they again took the stance that it was private family business. One friend read an article in a copy of Reader's Digest and passed it on to Karen's mother but as far as she could tell, Agnes never showed it to Karen. They thought it could be cured by eating. People were not aware of how to deal with it. Karen was always a strong character when it came to getting others to face up to their problems (not least when her brother Richard suffered a Quaaludes addiction) but she refused to admit that her weight loss was anything more than stress-related.Īt restaurants, Karen pushed her food around her plate or urged her friends at the table to try her meal, stealthily getting rid of her food whilst giving the impression she was enjoying her meal so much she wanted others to try it too.Īnorexia was a new disease and certainly not one with the high profile it has today. But unfortunately she didn't stop there.įriends were at a loss as to what to do. She lost 20lbs and "looked fabulous", said a sister of an old boyfriend. She fired her trainer and took her own extreme measures. She had put on weight and didn't look good in her stage outfit so she hired a personal trainer who put her on a carbohydrate-based diet. She had been a chubby teenager and in 1973, she saw a photo of herself that prompted her to take action. In Little Girl Blue, Karen's disorder is described as having started out innocently enough, when she wanted to lose a few pounds after leaving high school. At Karen's worst, her family insisted she had no emotional problems and that her 'overdieting' was something they could sort out by themselves. Schmidt spoke to hundreds of friends and colleagues when writing Little Girl Blue and the picture that emerges of the Carpenter family is one of a controlling matriarch concerned with outward appearances.Īgnes is portrayed as stressed and uptight and was known among Karen and Richard's musical acquaintances as the dragon lady. Karen was adored by millions, her circle of friends loved her dearly but it was her mother's love she never received. Now a new book by Randy Schmidt reveals the emotional problems at the core of Karen's eating disorder, her relationship with her mother and Agnes's inability to show the love and affection that Karen so desperately craved. Anything that reflected badly on the family was excised. Karen's mother Agnes and brother Richard insisted on scenes being rewritten as they were being filmed. In the 1989 CBS film The Karen Carpenter Story, screenwriter Barry Morrow was blocked at every turn from telling the true story of Karen's desperate desire for her mother's affection. Today, an estimated 200,000 people suffer from eating disorders in Ireland.įor years, biographers and filmmakers tried to tell the Karen Carpenter story but were thwarted by a family who were both grieving the loss of their daughter and very controlling about how they were viewed. In those days, eating disorders like anorexia were little-heard of and even less understood. Together, they sold 100 million records and had 17 hits before Karen's shocking death from anorexia at the age of 32 in 1982. Karen Carpenter was the instantly recognisable smooth voice of the wholesome 1970s brother-sister band, The Carpenters.
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