Jill Jackson, sports and entertainment journalist, dies at age 97
09-09-2010 Times Picayune
Submitted by N.O.V.A.


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Jill Jackson, a pioneering New Orleans sportscaster who moved to Hollywood to do a gossip column that ran
for decades in hundreds of newspapers, including The Times-Picayune, died Wednesday at the Beverly Hills
Rehabilitation Center. She was 97.

Ms. Jackson, who at her peak was syndicated to 1,700 newspapers, never stopped working, composing her
columns on a manual Olivetti typewriter, said Loraine Despres, a cousin.

"She was very proud of this," Despres said. "I talked with her a couple of weeks ago, and she said, 'I've
never missed a deadline.'"

Ms. Jackson was a throwback to a time in Hollywood when a gossip columnist like Hedda Hopper -- a friend of
Ms. Jackson's -- was powerful enough to make or break careers. Among Ms. Jackson's friends were Edward G.
Robinson; Joan Blondell; Joan Fontaine; Michael Curtiz, the director whose pictures included "Casablanca";
and Frances Marion, who in 1931 became the first woman to win a screenwriting Oscar.

Ms. Jackson, who also wrote for Rider's Digest, which appeared weekly on New Orleans buses and streetcars,
was tame by today's standards. "She did not want to say ugly things about people in print," Despres said.
"It makes her memoir less exciting than it would have been if she had really told the dirt."

She also had bit parts in movies, including some that her friend Ross Hunter produced. Among them were
"Madame X," in which she was a police matron, and "Airport," in which, Ms. Jackson said in a 1993 interview,
she played a passenger whose face was obscured by an oxygen mask and a hefty fellow flier.

Although Ms. Jackson's years in Hollywood provided plenty of opportunities to hobnob with movie stars, she
had a notable career in New Orleans before heading west in 1960.

Born Alice (pronounced ah-LEESE) Schwartz, Ms. Jackson graduated from Sophie B. Wright High School and
Newcomb College, where she was active in the drama club. She also performed in productions at Le Petit
Théatre du Vieux Carré.

Ms. Jackson, who had written for The New Orleans Item, one of the city's two afternoon newspapers, became
friends with Peggy and Henry Dupré when both worked for WWL-AM. She fell in love with radio when Peggy Dupré
asked Ms. Jackson to be on her show, according to a 2008 interview in New Orleans Magazine.

Because Ms. Jackson had played golf and tennis, Henry Dupré asked her to cover a women's golf tournament. On
the strength of that assignment, WSMB-AM offered her a five-minute sportscast each weekday, and she took it.

It was sponsored by Jax beer, a factor that gave birth to the name she adopted and used for the rest of her
life.

Ms. Jackson, who moved to WWL-AM, was a lonely pioneer for women on the sports beat. She had to sit outside
in the rain for football games because women weren't allowed in the press box. Because Tulane University
barred women from football practice, Ms. Jackson spied on the team from a nearby oak tree.

Despite the sexism, she insisted that she loved that time in her life, Despres said, adding that Ms. Jackson
once said, "I would have paid them" to do what she did.

Ms. Jackson was eventually elected to The Associated Press' Sportscasters' Club, and she became a member of
Esquire magazine's sports poll. However, according to the New Orleans Magazine interview, her membership
card was made out to "Mr. Jill Jackson."

She got a job as host of a weekly broadcast from Brennan's Restaurant, where she interviewed celebrity
diners. In her honor, the restaurant created a salad bearing her name.

One of her more memorable celebrity interviews, Despres said, involved climbing onto the shoulders of Karl
Wallenda, a member of the legendary circus family, and talking to him as he stepped onto the tightrope.
There was no net.

They didn't go farther than a few inches because she was terrified of heights.

"Sometimes, I wish I'd had guts enough to cross that wire," Ms. Jackson wrote in her memoir. "Today, I might
be famous. On the other hand, I might be dead."

Ms. Jackson was president of the Hollywood Women's Press Club in the 1970s. The organization gave her a Life
Achievement Award in 2004.

She is survived by cousins, nieces and nephews.

No funeral is scheduled.