Karyn Kupcinet in the Nutty Professor (deleted scene)

The Nutty Professor came out in 1963.  I always had a feeling that Karyn Kupcinet was in it, but may have died before he completed the film.  Anyway, Jerry looks very sweaty and to me it's like a rehearsal. She is in the crowd that comes over to the piano.  She has short, dark hair and is very small in stature.  She's the one who puts her head on her folded arms when Jerry goofs.

Karyn died mysteriously, probably murdered, on Thanksgiving 1963.  She was not found till 3 nights later.  Irv Kupcinet, newspaperman and TV host, was her father.  She came from a very wealthy and popular family.  Her father became "Mr. Chicago."  After he died, they built a bronze statue of him on a high platform by the waterway, hand out, welcoming everyone to Chicago.  The Wabash Ave Bridge was renamed (during his lifetime) the Irv Kupcinet Bridge.

Karyn was 22 when she died.  She had an IQ of 146.  Although small, she was big-boned like her father and people like that look heavier than a small/medium-boned person.  She was addicted to methamphetamine pills, trying to keep thin.  One photographer white-outed part of her shoulders and neck.  She underwent a lot of plastic surgery.  Two days before she died, she refilled a prescription of 100 Desoxyn.  The police found the empty bottle in her bathroom cabinet.  Where did they go?  Did someone steal them?  The autopsy was botched and basically no meds showed up.

Karyn Kupcinet -- a Grave Side Stroll

The video here shows the graves of Irv Kupcinet, Chicago TV host and Sun-Times columnist; Karyn Kupcinet, actress and her mother Essee.

The maker of this video pronounces "Kupcinet" very oddly. As far as I know Irv pronounced the name kup'si net. He relies on the official version, that she was strangled. But the autopsy we have is no good. The same coroner that worked on Karyn also claimed other women were strangled or something similar. A man was on trial for killing his wife. His lawyer had the wife exhumed. She died from natural causes. They exhumed another woman and found the same thing: not strangulation. Did this trickle back to Irv in Chicago? Los Angeles County couldn't exhume other of the coroner's victims due to no money. Karyn, as you've seen, was buried in Chicago. Irv tried not to talk about his daughter and believed to the end that she was murdered. In the last decade or so, people believe she may have committed suicide. Her body was too far gone to do blood tests for drugs. She was a heavy user of Desoxyn, Amvicel, etc., all amphetamines, Desoxyn being methamphetamine. Two days before her death, she had some prescriptions filled, 100 Desoxyn pills and another amphetamine. The pill bottle of 100 methamphetamines contained nothing. Another prescription had pills missing. Could she have taken 100 meth pills in 2 days? Where did they go? Her apartment looked like it had been ransacked, but the bathroom with all the pills was neat and orderly. Had the murderer been after her drugs? Expensive clothes, like her mink stole, were in view. No jewelry taken. It's a mystery. Would a woman commit suicide in the nude? She was described as being "stretched out" on her stomach. Something wrong, as Dr. Henry Lee said in the OJ Simpson case.

Anyway, this is a nice little tour of the Kupcinet tombstones.