Among the different dynasties that roam the corridors of Hollywood, the Carradines have just made headlines for another family tragedy. This Tuesday, the family of Robert Carradine announced that the star ofLizzie McGuire and Revenge of the Nerds has committed suicide at the age of 71 after two decades of battling bipolar disorder.
As reported by The Guardian at the time, his divorce fromEdith Mani, with whom he had three children, was quite harsh as she accused him of trying to "kill them both in a car accident in Colorado in 2015." Following this claim, Robert admitted that he was in a "psychotic state at that time."
The problems of this saga began with the patriarch, John Carradine, star of some of the most iconic titles of the golden age of cinema such as Stagecoach (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and The Ten Commandments (1956).
In his lifetime, he was at the center of several scandals due to his first two divorces, with whom he had five children , Bruce (adopted), David, Christopher, Keith, and Robert.
The big star had bitter custody battles, avoided paying alimony, and due to certain mental health issues, had to place the children in reformatories, foster homes, boarding schools, or centers for abused children under court supervision.
Several decades later, Keith (76), who has appeared in Deadly Embrace (1988) and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), as well as being the father of actress Martha Plimpton (55), revealed in an interview that being in some of those places "was like being in jail. There were bars on the windows, and we could only see our parents through glass doors. It was very sad. We would stand on either side of the glass door crying."
Likewise, John had quite a few debts with Uncle Sam -as the U.S. Treasury is popularly known-, so he had to accept a myriad of low-quality productions to sustain his lifestyle.
After fourteen years of marriage, John's third wife, Doris Grimshaw, died in 1971 in an apartment fire caused by a cigarette. Despite their separation, this tragedy caused the actor to fall into depression. He eventually found happiness after marrying in 1975 Emily Cisneros, who became a widow in 1988.
The misfortunes of the Carradines remained in their blood. The most famous case was that of David Carradine, who rose to fame as the grasshopper in the series Kung Fu (1972-1975). The actor was in Bangkok (Thailand) in June 2009 filming a movie when he was found dead in the closet of his hotel room tied with a rope around his neck, wrist, and genitals.
Initially, suicide was mentioned, but his loved ones and colleagues were convinced that this hypothesis was not true. After hiring the services of forensic pathologist Michael Baden, he stated that "the cause of death was asphyxiation, an inability to breathe, but why that happened is still what we are working on," he told Reuters.
Finally, after a thorough investigation, it was determined that he lost his life accidentally due to autoerotic asphyxiation, a dangerous sexual fantasy that led to his death. He was 72 years old.