Little Girl Blue Read Free Page A

remains vivid in the minds of the cast and crew, even today. “ Have you told her that you love her?” the therapist asks the family.
    The father starts to respond, but his nervous voice is overpowered by the mother’s. “We don’t do things that way. You show a person, you don’t tell them all the time. . . . I don’t think you understand our family.”
    This pivotal scene, Gibb feels, sheds light on the family’s level of denial and unwillingness to fully support Karen’s mission to get well. “She was making progress, and her family came to see her,” she observes. “There was no support for the work that she was doing whatsoever. The family was more old-fashioned in their beliefs that ‘normal’ families don’t need therapy, only ‘crazy’ people do.”
    â€œMrs. Carpenter, go ahead,” the therapist says, prompting Agnes to voice her love for her daughter.
    â€œFor heaven’s sake,” she exclaims. “This is ridiculous! We came three thousand miles for this nonsense?” Gibb’s head drops slowly to the side, her character seemingly ashamed, having burdened the parents with her personal problems. Missing the point, the mother retorts, “We don’t need to prove anything to Karen. She knows we love her.”
    Heartbroken and horrified by the scene’s content, the cast was forced to remain neutral, not voicing their opinions or reacting to their emotions. So many revisions had taken place prior to shooting that Richard was unaware of the reactions on the set and seemed pleased with the outcome. “The response from the family and from Richard himself was as if he were in the
Twilight Zone
,” recalls Mitchell Anderson. “When we were doing that scene we were like, ‘Oh my god, Agnes was such an asshole!’ But after we finished shooting, Richard was so proud of it because he thought the doctor looked like an asshole.”
    No matter the amount of dilution, Morrow’s screenplay spoke between the lines and was ultimately as close to the actual series of events in Karen Carpenter’s life as anyone could ask of a biopic. “ If there’s an arch-villain of the story, it’s probably Agnes Carpenter,” wrote Ron Miller in a review for the
San Jose Mercury News
. He illustrated her character as “an imposing woman who found it almost impossible to show her love to her troubled daughter, even after her illness had been diagnosed and the threat to her life was clear.”
    In the final scene of
The Karen Carpenter Story
, however, Agnes Carpenter’s character does soften. She almost repents. For a moment the viewer might forgive and forget her sins of the previous ninety minutes. Louise Fletcher’s “Agnes” gazes affectionately up the staircase at her grown-up little girl for the last time.
    â€œAnd Karen,” she says with a tender hesitation, “I love you.”
    â€œI love you, too, Mom,” Karen replies. “Goodnight.”
    Sadly, the mother’s “I love you” on the eve of her daughter’s untimely death was a fabrication—creative license justified by CBS Standards and Practices for the purpose of dramatic effect.

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CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’
    H AROLD B ERTRAM Carpenter had a rather peripatetic childhood and even more itinerant adolescence. The eldest son of missionaries George and Nellie Carpenter, he was born November 8, 1908, in Wuzhou, a city in southern China where the Gui and Xi rivers meet. Siblings Esther and Richard were born several years later. The Carpenter parents were both fine pianists and often played and sang for guests at their frequent formal dinner parties. Although he greatly enjoyed their performances, Harold was not as interested in making music. Against his will he took piano lessons for a while but loathed practicing. More an appreciator of good music than a musician himself, Harold began listening