BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Those who knew Carmen Electra growing up in Cincinnati figured she would be famous some day.
But infamous?
"You could tell she was going somewhere," said Sandy Drake, who knew Carmen as Tara Patrick at Princeton High School in 1988-90. Going somewhere, like touring with the artist formerly known as Prince (her first big break in 1992), posing for Playboy, or starring on Singled Out and Baywatch.
Going anywhere but to the Little Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas to marry bad boy Dennis Rodman.
"What was that all about?" asks Ms. Drake of Carthage. "I never figured her with Dennis Rodman!"
Last week, the agent for the controversial Chicago Bulls star was trying to worm his client out of the Nov. 14 nuptials. Dwight Manley told the Associated Press that Mr. Rodman, 37, who once wore a wedding dress to a book signing, was drunk and didn't know what he was doing.
"(He) was taken advantage of by Electra," and people he called "leeches," the wire service reported.
The next day, Mr. Rodman announced through Cindy Guagenti, Carmen's Los Angeles publicist: "I love Carmen and am proud to be married to her."
Ms. Guagenti, who also represents Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, told the Enquirer that the 26-year-old White Oak native was not granting any interviews.
"Given the circumstances of the last couple of days," Ms. Guagenti said, "we don't know what we're doing."
Or given the events of the last year, when Carmen Electra's image has short-circuited. She has changed from Baywatch babe to bimbo, being mentioned in Esquire's "Dubious Achievements" and on People's 10 "Worst Dressed" list.
She appeared on the People cover in an "Elvis goes to Dollywood" pink halter top, bell-bottoms and platform shoes.
"She's obviously been hanging out at Dolly Parton's trash can, and she's hit pay dirt," remarked designer Simon Doonan in the Sept. 14 issue.
Ms. Drake, who described Carmen as a fancy dresser at Princeton, said the People pictures "shocked me. They were kind of tacky." Then came the media circus about the marriage, and the late-night TV jokes about the bizarre betrothal.
"They exchanged rings - his nose ring and her navel ring," cracked Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.
David Letterman's Top 10 List of "Items in the Dennis Rodman-Carmen Electra Prenuptial Agreement" included:
- "No kicking the wedding photographer in the groin."
- "Joint bank accounts, separate mascara wands."
|
CARMEN ELECTRA
|
Born: Tara Patrick on April 20, 1972, to Patricia and Harry Patrick of White Oak. Renamed "Carmen" by the artist formerly known as Prince in 1992.
Education: Attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts fourth through ninth grades (1982-87); Forest Park High School (1987-88) and Princeton High School (1988-90), according to Princeton records.
Experience: Performed in SCPA productions of Babes in Toyland, The King & I, Cinderella and Annie; appeared in P&G TV commercials for Ivory soap and Spic and Span; danced in "It's Magic" at Kings Island in 1990.
Recordings: Released Carmen (1992) on Paisley Park Records, produced by the artist formerly known as Prince.
TV:Replaced Jenny McCarthy as MTV's Singled Out co-host (1997); starred as Lani McKensie on Baywatch (1997-98); joins cast of WB's Hyperion Bay (Jan. 11, 1999).
Movies: Saturday Night Special (1994), Good Burger (1997)
|
By the end of last week, Mr. Rodman's skeptical agent said Carmen Electra should sign a post-nuptial agreement if it were really true love.
"If it made him happy to marry Miss Piggy, I'd be happy," Mr. Manley said. "My business position is to protect Dennis and his assets, not to dictate his social life."
What Carmen craves is the attention, claimed Bill Balfour, a Kings Island stage manager when Carmen danced in It's Magic in 1990.
"She was a very sweet person, but I always thought that she could be like Madonna - someone whose career would be separate from her private life," said Mr. Balfour, manager of Paramount's Kings Island admissions, entertainment and general services.
He remembered her as beautiful, confident and modest.
"The top of her costume almost came undone during one show, and she had to hold it together at the back of her neck so it wouldn't fall down," he said.
"After the show, she said to me, 'Wouldn't that have been embarrassing in front of all those people?' "
Playboy (May 1996) noted that Carmen, at age 5, won a Cincinnati dance competition "shimmying" to Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy."
As a child, she won more than 100 trophies for tap and ballet, in addition to performing in musicals at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts.
"She worked very hard," recalled Jack Louiso, the former SCPA artistic director who cast her as Tiger Lily in Peter Pan in ninth grade, her final year at the school. "You don't get cast at SCPA if you don't have talent. She had the drive to be successful." Burned out on musicals, Carmen transferred to Forest Park High School for her sophomore year, then to Princeton for her last two years.
Tim Steele of Forest Park remembered sitting in a Princeton math class next to Carmen, listening to her talk about wanting to go to California.
"She wasn't 'Miss Popularity' in high school. She didn't have many friends. She was off doing her own (dance) thing," said Amy Horstmeier Mercurio of Price Hill.
"She's a really great dancer. We all knew she would make something of it," said Ms. Drake, one of Carmen's "handful of friends" at Princeton.
Other than the school's microfilm records, there was no trace that Tara Patrick attended Princeton. Neither her name nor photo appeared in the 1989 or '90 yearbooks.
In an Enquirer interview two years ago, Carmen said the Kings Island summer job revived her interest in show business.
"She was a very assertive person. She wanted to be somebody," recalled Diana Agopian, who knew her at Kings Island.
Later that year, she headed to Los Angeles against the wishes of her mother, Patricia, who died three months ago after a long battle with brain cancer.
At Kings Island, Carmen told Mr. Balfour she wanted to make a rap album. "She said, 'I don't have a great singing voice, but I can rap.' "
It took only one week in Los Angeles to be offered a tryout by Prince for a female band. Two months later, Prince had offered her a solo record contract and had written a song for her, "Carmen on Top." So she became Carmen Patrick and moved to Prince's Paisley Park complex in Minneapolis for 2 1/2 years. Later she added the name Electra, from the Greek goddess.
After returning to Los Angeles in 1993, she was a featured dancer in the film Saturday Night Special and won a recurring role on Baywatch Nights. Her dancing at a MTV Rock 'n' Jock basketball game landed her an audition to replace Jenny McCarthy on MTV's Singled Out in February last year. She was dating Cypress Hill rapper B Real when she became a Baywatch regular in 1997.
"She really was a good person. She deserves her fame and happiness," Ms. Drake said.
"A lot of people (Princeton classmates) were jealous of her," Ms. Drake said. "She dressed really nice and she was very pretty. Either people liked her or hated her."
The same seems true today.
Those who knew her back then haven't seen much of Carmen in years. And it could be weeks before we hear from her again.
Her publicist said Carmen could lay low until she joins the cast of WB's Hyperion Bay drama on Jan. 11 (9 p.m., Channel 64).
"When we figure out what we're doing, I'll call you," Ms. Guagenti said. "We have a couple of weeks."
