In my previous post I mentioned that I had found out which actress played Becky in the 1960 production of Tom Sawyer at The Muny in St. Louis, and that she'd had her own nationally syndicated TV show when she was 12 called "Susan's Show".
I actually do recall having watched it. There were a bunch of over-sized animal puppets, a talking table and a flying chair that Susan rode around on... ...Seems like she was way too young to be taking those types of drugs :-)
But I rarely got to watch that show because my sister Kathy absolutely could not stand Susan... She also couldn't stand the girl in the National Velvet TV series, Patty Duke, Annette Funicello and any other young/pretty/talented teenager on television. For some reason it really pissed her off to see everyone fawning over them...
Sidebar: I watched the Mickey Mouse Club religiously when I was 3 or 4 and for the life of me I could not understand all the fuss over Annette - she was (IMO) incredibly homely. (Different strokes, I guess...) I though Cheryl was pretty, but Darlene really took my breath away - shame that she ended up in prison for multiple felonies. But I digress... Back to the topic:
My sister was way smarter than the rest of us (IQ estimated in the 180 range) but she had an incredible capacity for unhappiness. That's not to say she was unhappy all the time, but it didn't take much for her to get there :-) Back when we lived in Lakeshire she nagged my parents into looking at luxury cars and $50K homes (about $1M adjusted for inflation). She was smarter than everyone and was an amazing singer. But it was never enough - she wanted to be richer, prettier and more popular too. I never could figure out exactly what she was so desperately trying to find - neither could any of her psychiatrists - she treated them as playthings for her personal amusement. The irony was that she was so brilliant, witty and outrageous that people were drawn to her like moths to a flame (they frequently ended up getting burned...)
When I was younger she devoted herself to tormenting me but by the late 1960s (after our parents' divorce and the German boarding schools) we became drinking buddies, fellow adventurers and partners in crime... My job was to look out for her and pick up the pieces when she fell, and in exchange I got to go along for the ride... She never worried about consequences - it was like being on an 'extreme' roller-coaster - alternating between euphoria and sheer terror. And I loved every minute of it...
It's been almost 20 years since she left the party. I never saw it coming - she didn't give me a clue - she knew I could talk her out of it. (I was the only person she ever listened to.) So she left it to me to tell the story...
There will be a lot more about her in future blog posts - the really interesting stuff doesn't start until around 1968... And (of course) some of it will never be told - despite the statute of limitations having expired :-)
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2 comments:
Wow, Pete. So sad, though. I'm glad you are going to tell her stories (most of them).
It's nice to read about Karina's more vibrant younger days; she seemed so haunted and fragile by the time I knew her...
By the way...it's really not fair to allude to acts to which a statute of limitations apply if your not going to elaborate. :-)
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