Few vocalists in the history of popular music have achieved the level of respect, adulation, and critical acclaim Karen Carpenter has.
Though she passed away at age 32 in 1983, her presence remains indelible. The hits she recorded with her brother Richard are evergreen staples of adult contemporary radio, their albums continue to sell, and their top hits have garnered hundreds of millions of plays across streaming platforms.
Yet comparatively little is known about the inner life of the woman behind the mic. She is immortalized as the voice of the Carpenters’ catalogue, yet the truth of who Carpenter was as a woman and artist — as well as why she suffered from anorexia nervosa, the disease which would claim her life — remains largely gauzy and shadowed, like a photograph out of focus.
No one has worked harder to remedy that than Randy Schmidt. His extensively researched 2010 biography of Carpenter, Little Girl Blue, is an illuminating look at a beloved artist who, though adored by the public, was largely relegated to the status of mouthpiece for her brother’s talent. It lifts the veil, revealing the harsh, often devastating truths that cut the life of an icon tragically short.
Schmidt has furthered his effort with Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection, a gripping new documentary. With audio footage, new revelations, and extensive interviews with noteworthy artists and celebrities — many of whom knew Carpenter personally, including Carol Burnett and Olivia Newton-John — it shines the spotlight on the extraordinary woman whose velvety voice and mysterious demise continue to touch and fascinate fans around the world.
Schmidt took time to talk with me about the genesis of the documentary, why Carpenter remains iconic to scores of LGBTQ listeners and much more.
Many documentaries about Karen and Richard are available, including the infamous TV film The Karen Carpenter Story, which Richard disapproved of after the fact. Of course, there’s also your biography of Karen, which is so well-written and puts her center stage. What drove you to make this film?
Randy Schmidt: I received a call from a guy in Dallas who is the head of a production company called AMS Pictures, and he was a Carpenters fan as well.
He is of the generation that felt like they were supposed to listen to other things or like other types of music. [When he discovered that I happened to live down the road from him] he brought me in and said, “I read your book several years ago not realizing you were local to Dallas” and that he’d love to see if there’s a way that we could maybe work together to tell Karen’s story in a way that hasn’t been done before. That set this all in motion. He said he’d give me a crew and editors and six months — several years later we finished the project! [Laughs.]
What revelations about Karen do you hope that people will come away with that were previously unavailable or obscured? It’s hard to imagine anything coming as a surprise to you after your extensively researched biography.
RS: I think unearthing a lot of Karen’s audio interviews was something really significant that informed this project. I had researched and collected her interviews for nearly 25 years at the time I wrote Little Girl Blue, but in doing this, I reached back out to some people I had spoken to before [and we were able to find so much more]. In several cases, I came away with hours of interviews that hadn’t been widely distributed, and they afford an illuminating look into Karen’s persona and her voice.
One other thing — the way trailers for such films work is that you can’t include music — here, that means Karen’s singing voice — but you are able to include her speaking voice.
I thought of how poignant that is because this is a woman — especially now — who is known to the public by her singing voice. And the point of the film is that her voice not be lost, that it be respected, that it be allowed to help tell her story — the story as it was, which she often wasn’t afforded in her lifetime.
And, of course, you were able to include many other important voices to help tell that story.
RS: Absolutely. It was important to bring in new voices that hadn’t weighed in before, at least in other projects that I had done, or maybe haven’t been heard from enough. [Carpenters touring drummer] Cubby O’Brien, for example, was somebody that I felt like I was chasing constantly, trying to get him for the book. And then, because he was just touring so much at the time, I couldn’t ever track him down.
I just him saw play with Bernadette Peters this summer.
RS: Yeah, he’s still out there wowing audiences, and being able to get him involved this time was really good, because he gives us such great perspective into the band’s life on the road and who Karen was in private, away from the lights and cameras.
And what a beautiful thing to have included Suzanne Somers and Olivia Newton-John, two true friends to Karen and fellow LGBTQ icons. How fortunate you got them on the record. Who knew we wouldn’t have them much longer?
RS: Olivia Newton-John…it was such an honor to speak with her again. Both of them were just fantastic interviews.
We screened the film last year in New Haven, the Carpenters’ hometown. It was maybe two days after Suzanne had passed, and the documentary begins with two clips right in a row — the first is Olivia, followed immediately by Suzanne. The audience — first they’re thinking, as so many of us do, how much we miss Olivia, and then when they saw Suzanne, they just gasped.
Yes, it was very special to get their insights on Karen because of their personal knowledge and loyalty to her.
Then there’s the younger generation, too — people who aspired to be like Karen. Belinda Carlisle told me that she sang “Close to You” into her hairbrush when she was a teenager — that is just about the coolest thing. It all shows that Karen’s appeal is so broad and goes through so many different styles of music. And, you know, whether it’s rock or Broadway or whatever it might be, her voice is still universally loved and emulated, you know, in all types of genres.
Is there anyone you really wished for who wasn’t available, or flat out refused to participate? I’m thinking of Karen Ichiuji, for example, Phil Ramone’s wife, who had been unwell for some time before her death.
“I really did want to get [Karen’s longtime mentor and confidante] Frenda Franklin — during the last communication that I had with her she just was not well enough and didn’t feel like she should be on camera. That’s kind of like what you were saying with Ichiuji there — she was battling cancer for the last decade or so of her life.”
RS: Gosh, I mean, of course you’d love to have the participation of all kinds of people — the Herb Alberts — but there is such a deep loyalty there to Richard and Richard’s story.
His narrative.
RS: Yes. And of course, I really did want to get [Karen’s longtime mentor and confidante] Frenda Franklin — during the last communication that I had with her she just was not well enough and didn’t feel like she should be on camera. That’s kind of like what you were saying with Ichiuji there — she was battling cancer for the last decade or so of her life. I’m just so grateful that I was able to get her reminiscences for Little Girl Blue because, really, she hadn’t told her story before and didn’t after.
But again, there’s a certain group of people that will always reach out to Richard for permission.
I also really wanted to get Bette Midler.
That would have been wonderful.
RS: Many remember that kind of silly feud she and Karen had going on back in the 70s. Then to be able to maybe show that footage of when the Carpenters presented Bette with her Grammy.
And the lovely remark she made about her regrets for making fun of Karen.
RS: Right, exactly. I think because she did really kind of soften and change her mind over the years, I would have loved to have seen what she would have flipped back and said about Karen at this point.
But I got a really nice message in response from her right-hand person who said something to the effect that she thinks that Karen is so incredibly talented and wished me the best, but that they had to decline at that time.
Though that would have been nice — to have Bette, and Herb Alpert, and others — what is important is that we have a nice mix of those who knew Karen and worked with her, as well as those were inspired by her music. So I think it affords a nice, rounded look at who she really was as a person and as an artist.
Karen was deflated to a point where she didn’t believe in herself and was made to feel that she wasn’t worthy, except in a way that maybe she could support Richard.
When it comes to Richard, though, I think specifically of his narrative about how the psychological treatment Karen received didn’t work or was somehow inept — the idea that that is the reason she’s gone and that’s all there is to it. It is simply not true. It puts me in mind of things Agnes [their mother] said later, which were both self-serving and self-soothing after the pain of profound loss — repeating these things doesn’t make them true. I am so struck by — and wonder if you are, too — that changing of the narrative. It’s just like Richard saying it was Karen’s choice to shelve her solo album when we know that wasn’t true, either. She was so negated in life — don’t these stories negate her in death, too? I think this makes your documentary all the more important.
RS: That’s an interesting observation. So many times, I’ve learned, Agnes would hush others — even Harold [Karen and Richard’s father] from talking. You know — don’t do anything to embarrass us, so to speak. And that has made it more of a challenge to get to the truth of who Karen was, and why many of even her biggest fans don’t know so much.
[The bottom line about their mother is] she inflated Richard to this point that he could do no wrong, but I feel like the opposite of that happened with Karen. She was deflated to a point where she didn’t believe in herself and was made to feel that she wasn’t worthy, except in a way that maybe she could support Richard.
Right. With that irreplaceable voice, Dionne Warwick described it as like a perfect piece of silk you’d wish to hold and cradle in your hands.
RS: She always describes Karen’s voice in interesting ways.
It’s such a rich, textured, endlessly evocative instrument that she had. And I think that part of what makes great art is that there’s sort of an unbeknownst quality to the artist sometimes — I don’t think she even knew what she had. But why do you think it is, in your opinion, that four decades later she remains so strongly entrenched in the culture?
RS: If there were anything common about Karen, she might have faded in the same way that other ‘70s singers have. But there’s nothing common at all about Karen’s voice. It’s so unique. I mean, you can see today these reaction videos on YouTube. You know, people’s heads turning, like, ‘What is this I’m hearing?!’ It’s unlike anything else.
I’ve played her for my students over the years as an elementary music teacher, and I remember one kid asking, ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’ and then another kid said, ‘It doesn’t matter — it’s beautiful!’ I think it’s just such a unique quality that it’s indescribable to so many people. And there is such a raw emotion that comes through in Karen’s voice.
I heard somebody the other day talk about these people that we say are old souls, and that’s kind of used to describe certain singers or actors or artists — this intuition that they have. And I’ve certainly been asked how Karen could have known the kind of heartbreak at 20 or 21 to sing “Rainy Days and Mondays” or “Superstar”? Yet [one theme that stands out] is a lot of these people who are seen as old souls have been through a lot of childhood trauma.
And I think we [LGBTQ people] get the product of that, and it’s something we cling to and connect with. But I think with Karen it’s something that runs so deep in that way that she didn’t understand it, the family didn’t understand it. It was just part of what made her who she was and how she sang.
It’s a window into her heart.
RS: Yeah. Absolutely.
Building off that — can you speak more about what you think makes Karen such an enduring LGBTQ icon?
RS: I think that part of it is that old soul quality. But I also think that we perceive something almost indefinable in Karen that we recognize.
[I specifically highlighted in this documentary] the expectations placed upon Karen to to be feminine. I don’t know what Karen’s struggles were, if anything, relating to sexuality, but I do know that she quite obviously struggled with those expectations to be feminine and to quote, unquote, you know, walk like a lady and talk like a lady.
[Karen’s friend and mentor Frenda Franklin] told me, ‘We practiced — here’s how you walk, here’s how you talk, here’s how you carry a clutch when you go to this red-carpet event…’
And so [the powers that be] felt the need to sort of sanitize her from her natural leanings when she was the tomboy — the girl who played baseball with the boys and wore jeans and sat with her legs spread and had to be told, ‘No, you need to cross your legs because this is what young ladies do.’ And I believe this played a part in her relationship with Agnes.
You know, Kristen Chenoweth talks about this in the documentary, how a woman was expected to look like this, act like this, wear the pink frilly dress. And I think Agnes had this idea that why is Karen not like all these other little girls of the 50s and 60s — they’re making their moms proud and I’m over here embarrassed because Karen wants to, you know, play drums when every other girl is playing the flute. We’re talking about a family where nothing out of the norm was allowed, and [it affected Karen’s self-perception] negatively.
Your title is so provocative and on the money — there’s the quest for elusive perfection, which was ironic in some way because, vocally, Karen was perfection. And there were clear feelings of physical inadequacy, in spite of what she had to offer, that unique gift. There is a sadness and longing that you can hear not just in her voice but see in her eyes in photos. The lack of parental validation. All this shapes a child’s worldview. It builds a faulty foundation that can scar the child for life, as we can see, and what follows is a dogged, unsettling feeling of not being enough.
Your film highlights how painful this was for Karen, and I think that speaks to why she’s an LGBTQ icon. Sadly, for many of us, that was our childhood experience, too. The pain of that can linger with us through our whole lives. It’s like having a friend who says, ‘I see you’ when we listen to her voice.
RS: Oh, man! That’s what I wanted to say right there. That was so beautifully and eloquently said. I think that’s kind of the main idea of what we’re talking about in the documentary, absolutely.
Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection is available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime Video. It is also available for streaming via Eventive.org and can be purchased directly from AMSPictures.com on DVD and Blu-Ray.
