Therapist Linda Carroll may have helped talk celebrated fugitive Katherine Ann Power through her problems before she turned herself in after 23 years on the run, but she doesn’t want to talk about her daughter. Carroll did confirm, though, that she is the mother of–get this–Courtney Love, who’s married to Nirvana chief Kurt Cobain and fronts the noisy punk band Hole. That also makes her the grandmother of year-old grunge icon Frances Bean Cobain. Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways.
Carroll’s reticence is understandable. After all, having kids in show business is no picnic. Just ask W. G. and Edmonia Sue Coleman, parents of “Different Strokes” star Gary Coleman. The actor, now 25, sued his parents in 1989, alleging that they and a business manager had misappropriated more than a cool mil of his income from the show. Last week, after years of acrimony, Coleman and his parents reached a final settlement. “Gary’s very happy with it,” says Philip Boesch, Coleman’s attorney. He wouldn’t speculate on the chances for a family rapprochement, but he’d like to see them patch things up.
The Reagans still talk to their children, so maybe there’s hope. Rather than opt merely to sue Mom and Dad’s pants off, former First Daughter Patti Davis really embarrassed her folks with “The Way I See It,” a tell-all autobiography that detailed her excruciatingly unhappy childhood. Now she’ll put her life experience to work in the seminar she’s set to host in December at The Learning Annex in New York: “Recovering from Dysfunctional Families.” According to a brochure, Davis will tell attendees “how to forgive our parents and go on with our lives,” and explain “bow the dynamic in her family became the dysfunction in our country.” She describes her dealings with Ron and Nancy as awkward but “cordial.” “There’s love there whether it’s expressed or not,” Davis says. Naturally, though, they don’t approve of her public disclosures. “They come from he ethic of ‘we don’t talk about that’.” Wait until they get a load of her next book: an erotic novel titled “Bondage.”
