Before her success with Fame, Cara portrayed the title character Sparkle Williams in the original 1976 musical drama film Sparkle.
Early life
Irene Cara Escalera was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, the youngest of five children.[8][12] Her father, Gaspar Cara,[14] a steel factory worker and retired saxophonist, was Puerto Rican, and her mother, Louise Escalera, a movie theater usher, was Cuban.[8][12] Cara had two sisters and two brothers.[12] She began to play the piano by ear, studied music, acting, and dance,[citation needed] and began taking dance lessons when she was five.[8] Her performing career started with her singing and dancing professionally on Spanish-language television. She made early TV appearances on The Original Amateur Hour (singing in Spanish)[15] and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show.[14] In 1971, she was a regular on PBS's educational program The Electric Company as a member of the Short Circus, the show's band, appearing as a member during the show’s first season.[8] As a child, Cara recorded a Spanish-language record for the Latin market and an English-language Christmas album. She also appeared in a major concert tribute to Duke Ellington, which featured Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr., and Roberta Flack.[16] Cara attended the Professional Children's School in Manhattan.[12] In 1985, Cara told Cosmopolitan "I don't mean to sound immodest, but I'd never had any doubt that I'd be successful, nor any fear of success; I was raised as a little goddess who was told she would be a star."[17]
Career
[Gail] Boggs describes Cara as a "perfectionist" who works on a song until absolutely satisfied with it.[2]
The 1980 hit film Fame, directed by Alan Parker, catapulted Cara to stardom. She originally was cast as a dancer, but when producers David Da Silva and Alan Marshall and screenwriter Christopher Gore heard her voice, they re-wrote the role of Coco Hernandez for her to play. In this part, she sang both the title song "Fame" and the single "Out Here on My Own", which were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.[12] These songs helped make the film's soundtrack a chart-topping, multi-platinum album, and it was the first time that two songs from the same film and sung by the same artist were nominated in the same category. Cara had the opportunity to be one of the few singers to perform more than one song at the Oscar ceremony; "Fame," written by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, won the award for best original song that year, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.[20] Cara earned Grammy Award nominations in 1980 for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical. Billboard named her Top New Single Artist, and Cashbox magazine awarded her both Most Promising Female Vocalist and Top Female Vocalist. Asked by Fame TV series producers to reprise her role as Coco Hernandez, she declined, wanting to focus her attention on her recording career; Erica Gimpel assumed the role.[21]
Cara in 1983
In 1980, she briefly played the role of Dorothy in The Wiz on tour, in a role that Stephanie Mills had portrayed in the original Broadway production. Coincidentally, Cara and Mills had shared the stage together as children in the original 1968 Broadway musical Maggie Flynn, starring Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy, in which both young girls played American Civil War orphans.[22]
Cara was set to star in the sitcom Irene in 1981. The cast had veteran performers Kaye Ballard and Teddy Wilson as well as newcomers Julia Duffy and Keenen Ivory Wayans. However, the pilot was not picked up by the network for the fall season.[23] In 1983, Cara appeared as herself in the film D.C. Cab. One of the characters, Tyrone, played by Charlie Barnett, is an obsessed Cara fan who decorated his Checker Cab as a shrine to her.[22] "The Dream (Hold On to Your Dream)", her contribution to the film's soundtrack, played over the closing credits of the film,[24] and was a minor hit, peaking at No. 37 on the BillboardHot 100 in February 1984.[25][26]
In 1983, Cara reached the peak of her music career with the title song for the movie Flashdance: "Flashdance... What a Feeling",[28] which she co-wrote with Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey. Cara wrote the lyrics to the song with Keith Forsey while riding in a car in New York heading to the studio to record it; Moroder composed the music. Cara admitted later that she was initially reluctant to work with Giorgio Moroder because she had no wish to invite comparisons with Donna Summer, another artist who worked with Moroder.[29] The song became a hit in several countries, attracting several awards for Cara. She shared the 1983 Academy Award for Best Original Song with Moroder and Forsey,[30] becoming the first black woman to win an Oscar in a non-acting category and the youngest to receive an Oscar for songwriting.[31] She won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance,[32] 1984 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and American Music Awards for Best R&B Female Artist and Best Pop Single of the Year.[citation needed]
In 1993, a California jury awarded her $1.5 million from a 1985 lawsuit she filed against record executive Al Coury and Network Records, accusing them of withholding royalties from the Flashdance soundtrack and her first two solo records. Cara stated that, as a result, she was labeled as being difficult to work with and that the music industry "virtually blacklisted" her.[12]
In 2004, Cara received two honors with an induction into the Ciboney Cafe's Hall of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement Award presented at the sixth annual Prestige Awards. In 2005, Cara won the third round of the NBC television series Hit Me, Baby, One More Time, performing "Flashdance... What a Feeling" and covered Anastacia's song "I'm Outta Love" with her all-female band Hot Caramel. At the 2006 AFL Grand Final in Melbourne, Cara performed a rendition of "Flashdance" as an opener to the pre-match entertainment.[37]
In 2005, Cara contributed a dance single, titled "Forever My Love", to the compilation album titled Gay Happening Vol. 12.[38]
Cara was in Hot Caramel, a band which she formed in 1999.[39] Their album, called Irene Cara Presents Hot Caramel, was released in 2011. Cara appeared in season 2 of CMT's reality show Gone Country.[40][41]
Personal life and death
Cara married once and had no children. Cara married stuntman and film director Conrad Palmisano in Los Angeles on April 13, 1986.[42] They divorced in 1991.[14] At the time of her death, Cara was a resident of Florida, living in Largo and maintaining a secondary address in New Port Richey, where her company, Caramel Productions, was located.[43] She died from arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease at her home on November 25, 2022, at 63 years of age.[12][44]
^Cara's year of birth is disputed. The majority of sources claim 1959,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] one claims 1962,[9] and Cara herself implied she was born in 1961 by claiming she turned 59 years old via a 2020 tweet,[10] despite stating she was 24 in a 1983 interview with Dick Clark on American Bandstand (which would indicate a birth year of 1959).[1] As of May 22, 2021[update], a year after her tweet, her Twitter profile says that she was born a year later in 1962.[11] Her mother told The New York Times in 1970 that a young Ms. Cara was 11 years old (which would also indicate a birth year of 1959).[12]
^Baugh, Scott L. (2012). "Irene Cara 1959-". Latino American Cinema: An Encyclopedia of Movies, Stars, Concepts, and Trends. Abc-Clio. ISBN9780313380365. Retrieved March 6, 2020.
^Rothenberg, Fred (January 7, 1982). "'Fame' Series Pilot 'Sparkling'". The Sumter Daily Item. Archived from the original on October 15, 2021. Retrieved December 4, 2023.
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