Trivia

Karyn Kupcinet was murdered on Thanksgiving Day, 1963. The crime has never been solved.

Was found strangled in her West Hollywood apartment. Her father, Chicago columnist Irv Kupcinet, believed he knew who did it but could never prove it. Speculation had it even linked to the JFK assassination just days earlier on Friday, November 22, 1963. Mr. Kupcinet called such speculation "an atrocious outrage." He said his daughter didn't know the assassin(s). He said nobody ever told him to back off from investigating the assassination, and his daughter's killer was not part of any plans to silence a journalist.

Her last on-screen appearance was in the Perry Mason (1957) episode, The Case of the Capering Camera (1964). The episode aired on January 16, 1964, seven weeks after her still-unsolved murder.

The apartment where she died is located at 1227 1/2 North Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood, not far from where Dorothy Dandridge died a year-and-a-half later.

Attended Pine Manor College in Wellesley for a semester, then went to study acting at the Actor's Studio with Lee Strasberg in New York.

Allegedly used the name "Tammy Windsor" professionally for a short period of time, although this has been disputed. The first season of The Andy Griffith Show (1960) features a guest star named Tammy Windsor, who does not resemble Kupcinet. The first billing for "Karyn Kupcinet" was in the Jerry Lewis comedy The Ladies Man (1961). She has a bit part as one of dozens of young ladies living in a boardinghouse.

Born Roberta Kupcinet, she did not change her first name to Karyn until she was 20 years old.

Starred as teacher Annie Sullivan in a Laguna Beach summer theater production of "The Miracle Worker".

In 1971, Irv and Essee Kupcinet founded the Karyn Kupcinet International School for Science as part of the Weizmann Institute of Science in their daughter's memory.

Made her acting debut at age 13 in a Chicago production of "Anniversary Waltz.".

Visited President Harry S. Truman in the White House as a child, accompanied by her parents and brother.

During the last 24 hours of her life, Kupcinet had dinner with her actor-friend Mark Goddard and his wife. A year-and-a-half later, Goddard's career became very successful when he started playing the part of Major Don West on Lost in Space (1965).

In his article "Glamour Jungle," originally published in GQ Magazine (and later in the compilation "Crime Wave"), author James Ellroy stated that he believed Karyn Kupcinet wasn't murdered, but died in a fall while "nude dancing" under the influence of alcohol and pills, in her West Hollywood apartment.

Karyn Kupcinet was cast in the 1964 film The Brass Bottle (1964) (AFI Catalog cites "Daily Variety", Jan. 3, 1963, page 2). She does not appear onscreen. Had she appeared, "The Brass Bottle" would have been her final posthumous screen appearance.