Talk:Karyn Kupcinet

College education

The article says she attended "Pine Manor College at Wellesley for a semester." There is no Pine Manor College at Wellesley. There is Pine Manor College and there is Wellesley College, and both are completely separate and located in different towns. Does anyone know for sure which one she attended? Did she transfer from one to the other? Beginning (talk) 22:08, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. At one point (according to the source used), Pine Manor College was in Wellesley, Massachusetts. I corrected it. Pinkadelica (talk) 23:58, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

New edit

I added dotted lines (they turn out as solid lines) to separate my explanations for each change from the changed part. This new version of lead paragraph summarizes the three theories about her death that our sources have cited the most frequently. It emphasizes that Penn Jones, Jr. was the only person who originated the JFK theory about Karyn Kupcinet.

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Karyn "Cookie" Kupcinet (March 6, 1941 – November 28, 1963) was an American actress who was found dead at her West Hollywood, California home, in the days following the JFK assassination. One of the first JFK conspiracy theorists, Penn Jones, Jr., theorized that her death was connected to the assassination. Crime writer James Ellroy suggested her death, officially ruled a homicide, could have resulted from an accidental fall. Her father, who was a syndicated newspaper columnist, said both men were wrong and that Karyn was murdered by someone acting alone who was never caught. In fact, no one was ever arrested in connection with her death.

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Adding the word "then" to the following paragraph because Irv Kupcinet was then a sportswriter for that defunct newspaper, later became show business columnist for Sun-Times.

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Early life

Kupcinet was born Roberta Lynn Kupcinet in Chicago, Illinois to Irv Kupcinet, then a sportswriter for the Chicago Daily Times, and his wife, Esther "Essee" Solomon Kupcinet. She acquired the nickname "Cookie" during her childhood. She made her acting debut at age 13 in the Chicago production of Anniversary Waltz and went on to attend Pine Manor College for a semester, eventually studying at the Actor's Studio in New York.

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Added words "and was syndicated" to this paragraph so that the word "originated" makes more sense.

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Career

Kupcinet was encouraged into acting by her mother, and was given access to producers through the reputation of her father and his Kup's Column that originated from the Chicago Sun-Times and was syndicated. In 1961, Jerry Lewis offered Kupcinet a role in the film The Ladies Man, where she appeared in a bit part as one of dozens of young ladies in a Hollywood boardinghouse. In 1962, she appeared in the role of Annie Sullivan in a Laguna Beach summer theater production of The Miracle Worker. She appeared in guest roles on television including The Donna Reed Show, G.E. True, and Going My Way (TV series). In addition to guest spots, Kupcinet had a regular role in the prime time series Mrs. G. Goes to College (retitled The Gertrude Berg Show during its short run).

Karyn's last TV role was in Perry Mason, but she was in an outtake of Jerry Lewis' most famous film, The Nutty Professor. By the time it came for her to actually do the movie she had passed away.

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Added "[in the words of James Ellroy]" to the following paragraph because those are his words in Glamour Jungle. Marcia Goddard didn't use those words as far as we know. Ellroy said what he said after revewing transcript of sheriff's interview with her.

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Death

On the last day of her life, Kupcinet had dinner with future Lost In Space cast member Mark Goddard and his wife, Marcia Rogers Goddard, at their house on Coldwater Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills (near Mulholland Drive). She was due there at 6:30 pm, but arrived an hour late by taxicab. The couple said Kupcinet only toyed with her food during the meal. Marcia Goddard told two officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department that during dinner with Kupcinet [in the words of James Ellroy] "... her lips seemed numb. Her voice was funny. She moved her head at odd angles." The Goddards noticed that her pupils were constricted. Mark Goddard told authorities that he confronted Kupcinet about her altered state during the meal, and she began to cry, putting her arm around him. At one point during the meal, Kupcinet told her friends an unsubstantiated story about a baby that had been abandoned on her doorstep earlier that day. At 8:30 pm, a taxicab arrived to take her home, and she promised to telephone the Goddards soon.

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Changed "at Kupcinet's apartment" to "the apartment" to avoid overload of her name. Added "bottles containing." Ellroy said the bottles contained pills. If you just say "prescriptions" people think she just had pieces of paper. Added sheriffs' determination that she told the "abandoned baby story" to a third person (Prine) and it was false. Ellroy found sheriffs' documentation that police never removed an abandoned baby.

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The Goddards went to Kupcinet's apartment on November 30, after she failed to telephone the couple as promised. Mark Goddard stated that he had a "funny feeling" that something was wrong. Upon arriving at the apartment, the couple found her nude body lying on the couch. Mark Goddard initially assumed that she had died from a drug overdose.

Upon searching Kupcinet's apartment, Los Angeles County sheriffs found prescriptions for and bottles containing Desoxyn, Miltown, Amvicel and other medications. They also found a note written by Kupcinet that reflected in some detail her emotions regarding issues in her life (i.e., parents, self-image, problems with boyfriend) and people she admired. When they questioned Prine, they learned that Kupcinet had told him the same story about an abandoned baby that she had told the Goddards, and they determined the story was false. (She had asserted that police had removed the baby from her doorstep.)

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Penn Jones, Jr. is most accurately described as a "conspiracy theorist." Warren Commission report doesn't include any reference to the Associated Press story of the Oxnard woman. The article needs that otherwise people won't find out that the Oxnard woman remains a mystery.

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Theories

Alleged connection to JFK

Kupcinet's death was first mentioned in connection with the assassination of JFK in 1967 by conspiracy theorist Penn Jones, Jr. in the self-published book Forgive My Grief II. Jones claimed that an AP wire service story about an unidentified woman who placed a phone call on November 22, 1963 from Oxnard, California, approximately 50 miles north of Los Angeles, was Kupcinet. The woman, who dialed her local operator approximately 20 minutes before the shooting in Dallas, stated that he was going to be shot. Jones alleged that the caller was Kupcinet attempting to warn someone of the impending assassination. Jones claimed that Kupcinet was told of the assassination by her father (who was allegedly told by Jack Ruby, whom he met in Chicago in the 1940s). Jones speculated that her death was a result of a mob hit to silence her and to send a message to Irv Kupcinet to remain silent about his knowledge. Jones was based in Midlothian, Texas and did not visit California to investigate the matter. The Oxnard woman was never identified nor was the Associated Press story about her investigated by the Warren Commission.

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Previous versions of article gave impression that Glamour Jungle is a book. It's a chapter in Ellroy's book Crime Wave. Book was published in 1999 but GQ magazine published Kupcinet's chapter (titled Glamour Jungle) in December 1998.

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Accidental death

Crime writer James Ellroy visited the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in the 1990s to research Kupcinet's death. He theorized in a chapter of Crime Wave (book) titled Glamour Jungle (originally published in the December 1998 issue of GQ) that she could have sustained a fatal injury while taking a shower, dancing in the nude or otherwise moving her body awkwardly under the influence of a stimulant. According to Ellroy, a book was found among Kupcinet's possessions lying on a table opened to pages on which the author recommended naked dancing. Ellroy has theorized that the actress followed the advice in the book, started dancing, fell and clipped her hyoid bone on a chair.

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Added that Ellroy acknowledged her death could have been murder. In Glamour Jungle he said accidental fall was just a possibility.

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Kupcinet's family have disputed Ellroy's theory about an accidental fall and maintain that she was murdered. Ellroy did acknowledge that sheriffs occasionally brought Andrew Prine and other male friends of Kupcinet's to their station to question them thoughout the 1960s.

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Here are online archives for Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune -- verifiable sources to support additions to this paragraph.

Los Angeles Times archive

Chicago Tribune archive

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Media attention

Newspaper coverage of the case lasted less than a week. The Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner published the sheriffs' revelation that Kupcinet had created and sent bizarre anonymous notes to Prine and herself, then both papers dropped the story. The sheriffs' occasional questioning of Prine and other persons of interest for more than five years went unreported. According to the online archive for the Chicago Tribune, which considered anything about the Kupcinet family to be a local story, it, too, stopped covering her death after its December 5, 1963 news story about fingerprints on the notes matching the prints on file from her shoplifting arrest. After that edition, the Tribune only reported her parents' dedications of memorials to her.

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Added "decades later" to the following paragraph to clarify the jump from 1960s lack of press coverage to 1990s Oliver Stone era.

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Decades later, during the production and subsequent release of Oliver Stone's film JFK, Irv Kupcinet attacked the movie and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. When the film's box office success led to a wave of media attention about the JFK conspiracy, NBC's Today Show broadcast a list of mysterious deaths, including that of Karyn Kupcinet. ...

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Changed "in her honor" to "that they dedicated to her memory in 1968." That follows up on notation in previous paragraph that Chicago Tribune reported dedications of memorials to her. I'm making a new addition here: source for 1968 dedication of playhouse.

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Legacy

Irv and Essee Kupcinet established a playhouse at Shimer College that they dedicated to her memory in 1968.

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Finally, I changed the number "1" to "26" next to Mrs. G Goes to College. Kupcinet was a series regular according to the Los Angeles Times piece dated March 29, 1962 that has been a source in this article throughout hundreds of edits. Notice earlier part of article says Times "interviewer, assigned to help the actress promote The Gertrude Berg Show, noted her talking exclusively about food and her weight." The paper interviewed her because she was a regular cast member on that series.

Reply to Pinkadelica

I have an account now: "sourcingit." You said in the "edit summary" of your edit that the majority of my edit is unsourced. Not true. Did you read any of what I added to this discussion? I made a point-by-point list of each part of my edit. The James Ellroy essay/GQ article Glamour Jungle is a source for my rearranging the "Personal life" chapter. Previous edits had the details in the wrong chronological order. They had her "talking exclusively about her weight" after she met Andrew Prine, but she did that many months before. Ellroy said she met Prine in December of 1962 when she guest-starred on his TV series The Wide Country. What's wrong with putting this chapter in chronological order? And James Ellroy is hardly the only source for the article. There are several others.

Later chapters use the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and the Chicago Tribune as sources. I added a new Chicago Tribune source to the "Legacy" chapter. A March 29, 1962 Times article that was already a source in the article gives us the year "1968" that I added to the sentence about parents' memorial to her at Shimer College.

IMDb.com and Tv.com source the change from "1" to "26" in her acting credits at the very bottom -- Mrs. G. Goes to College. She was a regular cast member who appeared on every episode. CBS put 26 episodes on the air before the network cancelled it. That's why the Los Angeles Times ran the profile of Kupcinet when she was alive -- to promote that series on which she was a regular cast member. The show got cancelled a week after the article. It was the article where she wanted to talk about food and her weight instead of her show. There's no way you can reply to these points in your edit summary, so can you reply to them here please? Thanks.Sourcingit (talk) 18:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Adding more source notes to "Personal life"

I notice nobody has reverted my edit during the last four hours (approximately). I do understand what Pinkadelica said about including enough sources. Glamour Jungle by James Ellroy is the source for the sentences I added to the end of this paragraph.

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The problems with the relationship with Prine were mainly due to his objections to making the relationship exclusive. After the actress underwent an illegal abortion in July 1963, the relationship cooled and Prine began dating other women. In turn, Kupcinet began spying on Prine and his new girlfriend. Los Angeles County sheriffs later determined that in the fall of 1963 Kupcinet had sent threatening and profane messages, consisting of words and letters she had cut out of magazines, to Prine and herself. When Prine showed the notes to her, she seemed shocked and showed him identical notes that she had received. He believed her claim that she knew nothing about them.

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I would be happy to add source notes for those last two sentences, attributing them to Glamour Jungle. But I'll hold off until someone chimes in here. I've made enough edits during the last 24 hours. Of course, other editors should have input. But they shouldn't change my deletion of Beverly Hillbillies. Kupcinet never appeared on that show, not even under her alleged pseudonym of Tammy Windsor. (And one website says that her surviving brother never heard of that name and that they were two different women.)Sourcingit (talk) 22:21, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Additional editors don't need to come here to tell you the exact same thing I already said. It's basic policy that you should follow at all times. You need to add sources for content add when you add it. You keep talking about removing The Beverly Hillbillies as one of Kupinet's roles. I already removed it yesterday after reverting one of your edits and you restored it here. Either you're not paying attention to the content you're adding or you're simply copying and pasting previous versions of the article back in. Either way, this is disruptive and unneeded. Your latest edit summary claims the "majority of changes have sources" which is patently false. Content such as Kupinet claiming she found a baby on her doorstep is unsourced as are the claims that Penn Jones, Jr. "did not visit California to investigate the matter. The Oxnard woman was never identified nor was the Associated Press story about her investigated by the Warren Commission." and that newspapers only covered her death for a week (which doesn't belong in the article anyway). You're also rewording sourced content against consensus. As I already told you on your talk page (whilst you were editing under an IP), this has been a controversial article that underwent a major overhaul some time ago. Everything has been sourced and the current wording was done according to consensus due to past issues with the article. Further, you have already broached the three revert rule on this article so I strongly suggest you begin discussing the changes you'd like to make on the talk page instead of attempting to force unsourced content back into the article. Pinkadelica^♣ 02:12, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I must be guilty of a lot of Wikipedia crimes. I never stole anyone's identity as you are implying. Your accusation that I misused an "IP" is unfounded. I made the first few edits without setting up an account. Then I set up the account to make more edits. Nothing underhanded. Now that I've set up the account I notice something on my page about "sockpuppetry," which isn't something I've done, either. I only have worked on this article after consulting sources. As I said earlier today, the James Ellroy source Glamour Jungle can back up the rewording of the "Personal life" section so it can follow a chronology. Now it jumps back and forth throughout 1962 and 1963. Kupcinet met Prine for the first time in December 1962. That's sourced by Ellroy. Also, the article doesn't specify that Glamour Jungle is just a chapter in Ellroy's book. The article should say it is part of Crime Wave (book). Glamour Jungle also appeared as an article in the December 1998 issue of GQ. That was the year before Crime Wave appeared in book form.

If you feel the controversial arguments people made "some time ago" are still relevant, maybe you should make those posts easier to access rather than forcing people to point and click over and over through an archive. I saw part of it and cannot possibly invest the time that is necessary to read it, which would be several hours.Sourcingit (talk) 06:29, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Way to address the actual issues of adding unsourced content to the article. If you can't be bothered to go through the archive, you can rest assured when I tell you there is a previous consensus for the current wording and the majority of the changes you're attempting violate policy (WP:BURDEN). As for your "Wikipedia crimes", I suspected that you're the latest incarnation of User:Nyannrunning/User:Dooyar yesterday when you were editing under your IP address. You can go to the sockpuppetry case page and plead your case there instead of professing your shock and innocence here. If you're innocent, awesome. If you're not, you'll be blocked. You know the drill. Pinkadelica^♣ 08:49, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I have replaced the Glamour Jungle reference to point to the actual book Crime Wave as it is now available on Google Books and content sourced from it can be easily verified. I also rearranged the personal life section so these issues about chronology and the difference between a book and an article are now dead. That means there's no reason to add any other unsourced tidbits about how long newspaper coverage lasted on Kupinet's death (gee, where I have heard that before?) or change the word "researcher" to "conspiracy theorist" (déjà vu again!). Pinkadelica^♣ 10:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

You'll notice I'm being very specific here about a proposal. Other proposals can wait until much later, or maybe never, but one is important. How about if we simply insert the word "December" here?

• • By 1962, Kupcinet was living in Hollywood, had a relationship with actor Andrew Prine, and was getting positive reviews for her acting.

That will make it even clearer that she began the relationship with Prine more than six months after she did the strange Los Angeles Times interview in which she talked exclusively about food and her weight, not the TV sitcom she was supposed to promote.

Also, it accounts for the positive reviews Kupcinet got playing Annie Sullivan in a Laguna Beach theatrical production of The Miracle Worker. She did that in the summer of 1962, and it's in the "career" section of her article. It doesn't mention the positive reviews she got for it. Other sources do, but I propose we simply enlarge the "personal life" section so readers can see that the food issue began months before she met Prine, and so did her positive reviews. (Of course, newspaper critics in those days were much more likely to praise an actress' talent if she did theater as opposed to television guest gigs.)

The Glamour Jungle chapter of James Ellroy's Crime Wave (book) is the source on her meeting Andrew Prine in December 1962 when she filmed a guest-star gig on his The Wide Country western series. The exact date would seem superfluous IMHO, but "December" would help people see her two obsessions: food and this boyfriend who eventually dumped her and she proceeded to stalk him. The "pressure to stay thin intensified" many months before she even met Mr. Prine. I don't want to get into the shoplifting arrest. That, too, happened before she met him, but it happened in Pacoima, way outside the axis where aspiring actresses go (even today), and then I would be tempted to cite a source that says she had a boyfriend in Pacoima before she met Mr. Prine. But that's a source other than Ellroy, I don't have it now, and can we just add "December?" If you add it, I trust you will create another source note for Ellroy. I can't see if the source notes have page numbers for him. If they do, want me to get back to you tomorrow with the page on which he provides "December?" Ellroy's book is easy to get. It's the only book containing anything about Kupcinet that is easy to get where I live.

And someone needs to add a Wikilink to The Wide Country as it appears in the segment about her "career." Now it's just in italics. Do you want to add not only "December," but the fact that she met Andrew Prine when she guest-starred on this western series on which he was a regular cast member? In order to do that, maybe removing The Wide Country from the shows in "career" would be better. Introduce it to the reader when she meets Mr. Prine during filming. If not, then keep it in "career," give it a Wikilink and add "December" to "Personal life." That's enough for now, or maybe permanently for this article. There is a possible source on Penn Jones, Jr. never visiting California: a 1967 book titled The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report by Richard Warren Lewis and Lawrence Schiller. But I can't visit a library that has it until next week. Most non-fiction books from 1967 are hard to access. I'm pretty sure the book makes it clear that Mr. Jones (born in 1914) merely sat at his typewriter in Midlothian, Texas and created all sorts of links between hundreds of people who met Jack Ruby, the people's children and even Mary Jo Kopechne. But I'll have to check it. I'm positive about "December 1962" for introduction to Andrew Prine, however, and I can provide a page number. The Ellroy book is easy to get.Sourcingit (talk) 02:17, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I support changing "By 1962 Kupcinet was living..." to "By December 1962 ...". Show us what you find in the Lewis/Schiller book The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report about Penn Jones before you insert it in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.212.116.225 (talk) 05:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC) I think you all did a very good job here. There's still talk of her being "Tammy Windsor." Two different people. And the imdb already had her as Tammy Windsor when I went there to check. She was on methamphetamine in 1963. No doctor can prescribe it today. I have reserched this and found out that Desoxyn (100 pills missing) is the same as crystal meth. I refer you to mugshots.com. These are public records. See what methamphetamine does to people. You won't believe it. I care a lot about this subject. I have debunked terrible things said about her, like she was Bobby Baker's call girl. So if I make a change, it's because I know it.24.160.71.93 (talk) 08:17, 11 March 2014 (UTC)kc440_

Remove Seth Kantor as a source

In response to the edit that "Location" did about a half-hour ago: OK, I'm removing the paragraph about Seth Kantor, whom you say is not a reliable source. I'm submitting a new edit that is identical to my last one except I have removed the paragraph that cites Mr. Kantor and replaced it with a shorter one that cites the Warren Commission. The Commission determined that Jack Ruby was a loquacious person throughout his entire life, and he interacted with hundreds of people in Chicago and later Dallas, none of whom knew in advance that he was going to shoot Oswald. The other paragraphs in our article's "JFK section," so to speak, explain Penn Jones' nonsensical theory about Karyn better than previous edits explained it. They remain the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.183.42.58 (talk) 23:10, 1 May 2017 (UTC)