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Now that Larry King's wife, Shawn, has checked into rehab, friends are hoping she'll start eating again.

"She looked like a walking skeleton at the ‘Indiana Jones' screening at Paramount," said one observer. "She's emaciated."

Crueler sources likened her to a "lollipop" with a "stick body."

Last week, Shawn Southwick-King sought medical assistance for an addiction to painkillers. King's spokesman denied reports she suffers from depression or anxiety. But a confidante told us: "She's really unhappy. Larry is very controlling. He barks at her in public. She always keeps a smile plastered on her face — but she is really unhappy."

The couple became tabloid fodder in February 2007 after a very public screaming fight at Nate'n Al's in Beverly Hills, during which Shawn ran out and down the street, with King yelling as he ran after her.

King's spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, told us: "He only has good feelings about her. He's deeply concerned about her well-being. He has enormous affection for her. He denies berating her.

"She is not anorexic. Nor has she been diagnosed as depressed. She has taken medications because of her migraine headaches that she's had since she was a young girl. She developed a dependency on painkillers as a result of being prescribed medication for the migraines."

The 5-foot-10 beauty's career as a singer and TV host was curtailed after the birth of the couple's boys, Chase and Cannon. In addition, being married to a man of King's reknown can be a full-time job.

The CNN talk host, who is 74, has been married seven times to six women. On the couple's 10th anniversary last September, Southwick-King, 48, boasted that she "is the only [wife] to have lasted into the two digits."