Karen Black

For the lead singer of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, see Kembra Pfahler.

Karen Black
in Ace Up My Sleeve (1976)
Born	Karen Blanche Ziegler (1939-07-01)July 1, 1939 Park Ridge, Illinois, U.S.
Died	August 8, 2013(2013-08-08) (aged 74) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Actress, screenwriter, singer, composer
Years active	1959–2013
Spouse(s)	Charles Black (?; divorced) Robert Burton (1973–1974; divorced) L. M. Kit Carson (1975–1983; divorced) Stephen Eckelberry (1987–2013; her death)
Children	Hunter Carson (b. 1975) Diane Koehnemann Bay Celine Eckelberry (b. 1987)
Relatives	Gail Brown (sister)

Karen Blanche Black (née Ziegler; July 1, 1939 – August 8, 2013) was an American actress, screenwriter, singer and songwriter. She is known for her appearances in such films as Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Great Gatsby and Airport 1975 (both 1974), The Day of the Locust and Nashville (both 1975), Alfred Hitchcock's final film Family Plot (1976), and Capricorn One (1978). Over the course of her career, she won two Golden Globe Awards (out of three nominations), and an Academy Award nomination in 1971 for Best Supporting Actress.

Early life

Black was born as Karen Blanche Ziegler in Park Ridge, Illinois, in suburban Chicago, the daughter of Elsie Mary (née Reif), a writer of several prize-winning children's novels, and Norman Arthur Ziegler. Her paternal grandfather was Arthur Charles Ziegler, a classical musician and first violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her sister is the actress Gail Brown. Black was of German, Bohemian (Czech) and Norwegian descent. She was a 1957 graduate of Maine Township High School East.

Career

Black made her acting debut in a small role in The Prime Time, a B-film released in 1960. However, it would be six years before her next screen appearance, in Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now (1966). Beginning in 1967, she appeared in guest roles in several television series, including The F.B.I., Run for Your Life, The Second Hundred Years, The Big Valley, The Iron Horse, Judd for the Defense and Mannix. One of her early roles was in Season 1, episode 10 (Log 132-The Producer) of the NBC series, Adam-12 as Susan Decker. In 1984-1985, she was cast as Sheila Sheinfeld in three episodes of another NBC series, E/R.

Her feature film career expanded in 1969, playing the role of an acid-tripping prostitute opposite Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the iconic counterculture movie Easy Rider. In 1970, Black appeared as Rayette, the waitress girlfriend of Jack Nicholson, in the film Five Easy Pieces, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Black played an unfaithful wife, Myrtle Wilson, in the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. In the same year she starred as Nancy Pryor, the stewardess who is forced to fly the plane, in the disaster film Airport 1975 (1974). In 1975, she played multiple roles in the televised anthology film Trilogy of Terror. The segments, all written by suspense writer Richard Matheson, were named after the women involved in the plot — a plain college professor who seduces a student ("Julie"), a pair of sisters who squabble over their father's inheritance ("Millicent and Therese"), and the lonely recipient of a cursed Zuni fetish that comes to life and pursues her relentlessly ("Amelia").

Black received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance as an aspiring Hollywood actress in the 1930s in John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust (1975). She starred as a country singer in Robert Altman's Nashville (also 1975) and as a kidnapper in what turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976). She also co-starred with Bette Davis in Burnt Offerings (also 1976). She then played a dual role in a 1977 thriller, The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver.

Other notable films from the 1970s include Born to Win (1971) with George Segal and Robert DeNiro, Portnoy's Complaint (1972) directed by Ernest Lehman, Cisco Pike (1972) with Kris Kristofferson and Gene Hackman, The Pyx (1973) with Christopher Plummer, The Outfit (1973) with Robert Duvall, Rhinoceros (1974) with Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel, and Capricorn One (1978) with Elliott Gould.

In 1982, Black gave a critically acclaimed performance in Robert Altman's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, where she starred alongside Cher and Sandy Dennis.

Her later career tailed off into numerous horror roles, but Black did gain and maintain a cult following, as alluded to by Family Guy television anchor Tom Tucker in his remark "Karen Black: what an obscure reference." in the episode Death Is a Bitch (season 2, episode 6).

She came along at just the right time, as American cinema was changing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She didn't have a lacquered Hollywood look or demeanor. She seemed like a real person, and that was exactly what the young filmmakers whose careers were blossoming at the time were looking for. There was an honesty and a vulnerability about her that suited so many of the characters she played.

—Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin speaking about Karen Black in 2013

In April 2009, Black worked with director Steve Balderson for Stuck! — an homage to film noir women-in-prison dramas, which co-starred Mink Stole, Pleasant Gehman and Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go's. Black also starred in John Landis' 2010 thriller, Some Guy Who Kills People. Later that year, Black appeared on Cass McCombs' song "Dreams-Come-True-Girl" from the album Catacombs.

Personal life

In 2010

Black married four times:

• Charles Black, married in 1955 or 1960, sources vary; year of divorce unknown.
• Robert Burton, an actor (who appeared alongside Black in Trilogy of Terror), from April 18, 1973 to October 1974.
• L. M. Kit Carson, an actor/screenwriter, on July 4, 1975. They had a son, actor Hunter Carson, and subsequently divorced.
• Stephen Eckelberry, from September 27, 1987. They adopted a daughter, Celine. The couple were active Scientologists.

Death

After her final films were released in 2010, she was diagnosed with cancer and stopped making public appearances. She had a portion of her pancreas removed that year and endured two further operations. She was invited to attend the premiere of River Phoenix's last on-screen performance in the salvaged feature film Dark Blood, in which she had played a small part in the original early 1990s shoot. Black was unable to attend the event, held in the Netherlands in September 2012, due to her illness.

On August 8, 2013, Black died in Los Angeles from ampullary cancer at age 74. Actress Juliette Lewis paid tribute, saying "Karen Black was my mentor and a second mother to me. She inspired everyone she came in contact with."

Filmography

• You're a Big Boy Now (1966)
• Hard Contract (1969)
• Easy Rider (1969)
• Five Easy Pieces (1970)
• Drive, He Said (1971)
• A Gunfight (1971)
• Born to Win (1971)
• Cisco Pike (1972)
• Portnoy's Complaint (1972)
• The Pyx (1973)
• The Outfit (1973)
• Rhinoceros (1974)
• The Great Gatsby (1974)
• Law and Disorder (1974)
• Airport 1975 (1974)
• Trilogy of Terror (1975)
• The Day of the Locust (1975)
• Nashville (1975)
• Family Plot (1976)
• Burnt Offerings (1976)
• Capricorn One (1978)
• In Praise of Older Women (1978)
• The Squeeze (1978)
• Mr. Horn (1979)
• Killer Fish (1979)
• Police Story: Confessions of a Lady Cop (1980)
• Chanel Solitaire (1981)
• Killing Heat (1981)
• Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
• Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983)
• Bad Manners (aka: Growing Pains) (1984)
• The Blue Man (1985)
• Savage Dawn (1985)
• Cut and Run (1985)
• Invaders from Mars (1986)
• The Invisible Kid (1988)
• Out of the Dark (1989)
• Homer and Eddie (1989)
• Mirror, Mirror (1990)
• The Children (1990)
• Club Fed (1990)
• Zapped Again! (1990)
• The Roller Blade Seven (1991)
• Rubin and Ed (1991)
• Children of the Night (1991)
• Return of the Roller Blade Seven (1992)
• The Double 0 Kid (1992)
• Dark Blood (1993) (completed in 2012)
• Plan 10 from Outer Space (1994)
• Crimetime (1996)
• Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)
• Dogtown (1997)
• Conceiving Ada (1997)
• Fallen Arches (1998)
• Charades (1998)
• The Underground Comedy Movie (1999)
• Red Dirt (2000)
• Gypsy 83 (2001)
• Teknolust (2002)
• Buttleman (2002)
• Summer Solstice (2003)
• Curse of the Forty-Niner (2003)
• House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
• Firecracker (2005)
• My Suicidal Sweetheart (2005)
• Hollywood Dreams (2006)
• Suffering Man's Charity (2007)
• Watercolors (2008)
• A Single Woman (2009)
• Double Duty (2009)
• Irene in Time (2009)

External links

• Karen Black at IMDb
• Karen Black at the Internet Broadway Database
• "The Films of Karen Black", video compilation, 3 min.
• Karen Black at AllMovie
• Template:Worldcat id
• Stuck! movie site
• Podcast interview March 2007
• Karen Black — The Terror Trap
• Karen Black at Find-A-Grave