Jill Jackson, a reporter, pioneering female sportscaster and former WWL broadcaster whose New Orleans success led to a stint as a syndicated Hollywood columnist , died Wednesday in Beverly Hills. She was 97.
She was sidelined only recently by poor health, according to her cousin Loraine Despres, who said Ms. Jackson continued writing up until a few weeks ago. At her peak, her work for King Features Syndicate was distributed in 1,700 newspapers nationwide, including The Times-Picayune.
Ms. Jackson moved to California in 1960, after many years in local media, including stints at the Item, The Times-Picayune and Rider’s Digest, as well as announcing and hosting roles at WWL Radio and a brief stint on WWL-TV.
Her celebrity columns covered the glitz and glamour of Hollywood from an insider’s perspective, and led to her personal friendships with some of those she covered, including Joan Fontaine, Edward G. Robinson, Joan Blondell and Frances Marion, the Oscar-winning female screenwriter whom Ms. Jackson called her mentor.
A New Orleans native born Alice Schwartz, Ms. Jackson launched her broadcasting career in the 1940s, quite by accident. A talented athlete and Newcomb College graduate who played golf, tennis and several other sports, she was recruited by a Jax Beer sponsor to provide color commentary for a women’s golf tournament, alongside WWL star announcer Henry Dupre.
“I had been somewhat of a champ-about-town in golf, tennis, and ping-pong. When my back went bad and I could no longer play, Henry Dupre asked me to do the color with him on the broadcast of a women’s golf tournament,” Ms. Jackson wrote in her memoir, “Whaaaattt! And Leave Show Business!!!” published online by Tulane University’s Newcomb College for Research on Women.
She said the Jax Beer executive “heard me, liked what he heard, and put me on the air – that’s how it happened,” she wrote. The name of the sponsor – Jackson Brewing Company – also contributed her stage name, which she used for the rest of her life.
In print and on air, Ms. Jackson faced inevitable hurdles as a female in a male-dominated field.
“On my own show, I called all the shots, but when I became a member of the Sports and Special Events Staff, the boys were always assigning me to the things they didn’t want to do,” she wrote. “I was a female invading their sacred precincts. There was a preconceived notion that a woman should not broadcast news or sports. I argued that a brain has no sex, but they wouldn’t listen.”
When covering events at Tulane Stadium, Ms. Jackson said she was not even allowed in the press box, much less the locker rooms.
“I had to sit outside the press box, just below their hallowed confines, on an uncomfortable, back-less bench that was about a two-block walk to the ladies room. When it rained, there I sat, cold and wet, with papers blowing about,” she wrote.
Her cousin said that even the discrimination she encountered, Ms. Jackson never let the challenges keep her from doing what she loved.
“I asked her recently, ‘Didn’t that make you furious?’ and she said that in spite of it all, she would have paid them for the opportunity to do what she loved,” Despres said.
She shared that sentiment with local writer Carolyn Kolb for a recent New Orleans Magazine profile.
"Don't be silly. I was having a ball. I loved every minute of it," she told Kolb, refuting any claims of her being a “feminist.”
Ms. Jackson later shifted from the sports beat to what she called “more ‘ladylike’ ventures” – shows like “Jill’s Hollywood,” a daily news and interview show featuring celebrities who visited New Orleans; “Let’s Join Jill,” a nightly interview show from Brennan’s Restaurant (where the Jackson salad was named in her honor); and “The Jill Jackson Show.”
In her memoir, Ms. Jackson recounts some favorite early celebrity interviews: Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Jack Benny (whom she would accompany on art-shopping trips to the French Quarter), Liberace, Gary Cooper, Gloria Swanson, a young Elvis Presley and Harpo Marx.
Of Marx’s radio interview, she wrote, “I figured out a gimmick where I would ask Harpo a question and he could answer yes or no. One honk would be ‘yes.’ Two would be ‘no.' The broadcast went along, shall we say, honkingly.”
Ms. Jackson’s home is filled with photographs and mementoes from her long Hollywood career, said Stuart Berton, a family member who helped Ms. Jackson write her memoir.
In time, Ms. Jackson would travel to Hollywood to interview celebrities on their own turf, recording broadcasts for WWL, beginning in 1946.
During one visit to a party at friend Frances Marion’s Hollywood home, Ms. Jackson met Hedda Hopper, the legendary Hollywood gossip columnist.
“I had always admired her, and wanted someday to be a syndicated columnist. Be careful what you wish for,” wrote Ms. Jackson, who soon became close friends and later a Hollywood colleague of Hopper.
Ms. Jackson herself had bit parts in movies, among them "Madame X,” starring Lana Turner, and "Airport,” though her face was obscured by an oxygen mask and fellow flier.
“I have seen it at least five times in reruns. I have run the video, and stopped in spots where I thought I was -- AND I AM YET TO FIND MYSELF in Airport,” she joked in her memoir.
She had happier memories of a featured part in an episode of Jack Benny’s television show, playing – what else -- a reporter.
Ms. Jackson is survived by three cousins, and a niece and nephew – Michael and Matt Berenson of New Orleans.
There will be no funeral, according to Berton.
