TMS Muse of the Week: Karen Umphrey

(via pinterest.com)

Once upon a time, there was a very pretty, blonde teenage girl named Karen Umphrey who grew up in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s. With this tale, things get a little hazy with specifics. Such as how a seemingly ordinary girl from an average family, that includes a minister for a father, ended up modeling once she was 12 years old. Although it isn’t surprising Karen got a modeling deal she soon, since she’s very photogenic. Her first cover photo was at 14 years old, for the March 1973 issue of Teen Magazine and she covered the April and June issues of the short lived Star Magazine [not to be confused with the modern tabloid] that same year. The reason we vaguely know of Karen is because of Star. This zine was mostly renowned in California and featured LA based teen models who not only posed for the cameras all glammed up, but also gave their advice on make-up, hair and dating, as well as shared their favorite interests and pop culture. But how can a publication that lasted only five months still be in cultural osmosis five decades later?

The expression “It was a different time,” is eye-roll inducing these days, but for the backstory on Karen and her friends, it kind of fits. The thing with the ‘Star girls,’ as they were called at the time, is that since they grew up very close to Hollywood near all the hot spots in town, specifically the Sunset Strip. In the early 1970s, there was a club in the middle of the Strip called The English Disco, owned and managed by eccentric hanger-on Rodney Bingenheimer; who most SoCal locals might recognize from his old block on KROQ FM. This club was not only very active and popular, but also didn’t have an age limit, so LA teenagers would be all over the nightclub. But this technically wasn’t a club for just teens. A lot of grown-up locals, celebrities, socialites, groupies and other famous faces would hang at Rodney’s place as much as The Whisky a Go-Go, The Rainbow, The Troubadour, Ciro’s and so on. Star girls like Karen, Shray Mecham, Sabel Starr, Lori Mattix, and Hollywood kids including Lance Loud, Melanie Griffith and Mackenzie Phillips would be clubbing alongside music acts like Slade, the New York Dolls, Led Zeppelin, the Who, David Bowie, Elton John, and even women including Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger and Pamela des Barres.

(via famousfix.com)

I look at this whole set-up now and think, this…is really weird? Not only that these adult celebs were willingly socializing with minors, but that the young girls were casually profiled with rockstars in the music mags like Creem, Circus, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone, etc. And they were especially publicized in Star. There was a whole section of each issue that featured paparazzi photos of the girls at clubs and concerts with the stars, as well as articles with direct quotes on their experiences. What makes Karen interesting and stand out from her friends is how, as far as we know, she was one of the few who wasn’t involved with any of the popular musicians frequenting the Strip in the early-to-mid-1970s. Maybe she wasn’t interested in older guys or maybe she was already intuitive enough at such a young age to realize how inappropriate these flings were. We just know that, besides her friendships with other groupies and conversing in the same locales as them, she was basically a groupie ‘in name only.’ Despite this, Karen and Shray were the most photographed models in Star, probably because they were so naturally pretty.

What Karen’s been up to as an adult is a bigger blur. According to old friends who have shared online, she left the US for Australia when she was 20 years old and has been there ever since. Supposedly she settled down and started a family with up to five children between her and her husband. As for her tiny legacy as a Hollywood starlet, Karen used to actually have a fansite with all her old photoshoots, candid pics and articles, until she asked the fan to shut down the website. So it’s probably safe to say she’s completely moved on from her racy past. Some people like to keep the memories alive. Others are more for living in the moment. Karen is an example of someone feeling the need to turn the page.