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KARGER Fred

 
Frederick Maxwell Karger.

Date of birth : February 13, 1916, New York.

Date of death : August 5, 1979, Santa Monica, California.

 

Portrait :

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Practise: musical director at the Columbia, composer and singing teacher.

 

Story

His father Maxwell Karger had been one of the founders of the Metro (which later would become the MGM).

 
Divorced with his wife, he lived with his daughter Terry, at his mother's Anna, with his sister Mary, recently divorced. 

In 1948 Marilyn followed his diction and singing courses; she crazily fell in love with him. Although their love affair had been brief, she always claimed that he had been her first love.

There are 2 versions of their first meeting together :
- he took Marilyn back home and introduced her to his mother as "a little girl alone and penniless".
- after a dinner invitation at his mother's home, he took Marilyn back not to the Studio Club where she lived at that time, but in a cheap housing she had borrowed to a friend in order to convince him about her poverty, arousing his sympathy and encouraging him to invite her at his home.

All the biographies are categorical : she was much in love with him; she confided to Natasha Lytess he was the man of her life and the one she wanted to marry.

He learned her how to improve her voice but also how to dress up. He introduced her to the manners, classical music, literature and took her out in town.

 
In 1948, before the shooting of "Ladies of the Chorus", he took an appointment to an orthodontist, Dr Walter taylor, who corrected a light blemish (her anterior teeth slightly advanced), bleached her teeth and made her wear braces for the night.

 

Christmas 1948 : she offered him a 500$ watch, for which she took a 2 years credit.

 

Marilyn would have probably wanted to marry him, but, despite the fact that his mother and sister were very tied to Marilyn, he refused this possibility. He also thought that the young starlet, aged 21, wouldn't be a good mother for his daughter Terry.

November 1, 1952 : he married Jane Wyman : 

They would divorce on December 7, 1954, then, they would remarry on March 11, 1961, before divorcing again on March 9, 1965.

He married Elizabeth Derrick on August 8, 1969 in Los Angeles; they lived together until his death in 1979.

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