ullalume
Well-Known Member
Talk was turning toward the Coleman biography on another thread, so thought I'd start a new one.
I attended a Carpenters get together back in either '94 or '95, and Ray Coleman spoke there.
He was a very gracious man, even offering me and a couple of others a lift back to the train station after it ended. I also remember someone asking him if he felt the Carpenters' creative output tailed off toward the end of their career. . .he stated in so many words "if "Now" is anything to go by, not at all."
I personally feel his biography is superbly written. He really took the choreography of the events of their lives and managed to intertwine them in a very thematically satisfying way.
It was overseen by Richard/Agnes, Randy Schmidt was free from that plus had Frenda and Itchie, but the only out and out conflict with Randy's book seems to be on perhaps the most pivotal point in Karen life. . . . the 1982 family session with Levenkron.
Writes Coleman - "Willingly, Agnes. . .put her arms around her. . . .the emotional electricity was so strong. . . both Harold and Levenkron had to turn away."
Then Levenkron states "I felt relieved. . . we got the hug for Karen."
Writes Schmidt - ""Agnes couldn't do it," says Itchie Ramone, who discussed the meeting with Karen and Levenkron after the family left."
So clearly someone's lying. . .Itchie or Levenkron, and I can't for the life of me see why her best friend would. Which means Agnes and Richard must have put pressure on the psychiatrist back in '93 to change the facts and save face for Mrs. Carpenter. But then that seems strange, since only 4 years earlier, in the TV movie, the scene with the family session, as depicted, backs up Itchie's statements. Maybe Richard and Agnes were so horrified by the truth in the biopic they tried to rewrite history 4 years later in the biography.
Either way, it does show how fame hungry Levenkron is/was. He was prepared to completely falsify information on his patient just so he could be a part of a best-selling biography. Kind of backs up what we already know about the man.
And of course, very sadly, it demonstrates that Agnes, though I have no doubt loved her daughter very much, just could not show it.
I attended a Carpenters get together back in either '94 or '95, and Ray Coleman spoke there.
He was a very gracious man, even offering me and a couple of others a lift back to the train station after it ended. I also remember someone asking him if he felt the Carpenters' creative output tailed off toward the end of their career. . .he stated in so many words "if "Now" is anything to go by, not at all."
I personally feel his biography is superbly written. He really took the choreography of the events of their lives and managed to intertwine them in a very thematically satisfying way.
It was overseen by Richard/Agnes, Randy Schmidt was free from that plus had Frenda and Itchie, but the only out and out conflict with Randy's book seems to be on perhaps the most pivotal point in Karen life. . . . the 1982 family session with Levenkron.
Writes Coleman - "Willingly, Agnes. . .put her arms around her. . . .the emotional electricity was so strong. . . both Harold and Levenkron had to turn away."
Then Levenkron states "I felt relieved. . . we got the hug for Karen."
Writes Schmidt - ""Agnes couldn't do it," says Itchie Ramone, who discussed the meeting with Karen and Levenkron after the family left."
So clearly someone's lying. . .Itchie or Levenkron, and I can't for the life of me see why her best friend would. Which means Agnes and Richard must have put pressure on the psychiatrist back in '93 to change the facts and save face for Mrs. Carpenter. But then that seems strange, since only 4 years earlier, in the TV movie, the scene with the family session, as depicted, backs up Itchie's statements. Maybe Richard and Agnes were so horrified by the truth in the biopic they tried to rewrite history 4 years later in the biography.
Either way, it does show how fame hungry Levenkron is/was. He was prepared to completely falsify information on his patient just so he could be a part of a best-selling biography. Kind of backs up what we already know about the man.
And of course, very sadly, it demonstrates that Agnes, though I have no doubt loved her daughter very much, just could not show it.