Elder gays, do you miss Jessica Savitch?

She could have been so successful if she hadn't been involved with drugs.

Jessica Savitch reports on the Death of Princess Grace From Car Accident - 1 Yr Before Savitch Would Suffer Same Fate

Damn, no buccal fat at all. She was on her way to a faces of meth

[quote]1 Yr Before Savitch Would Suffer Same Fate

They weren't quite the same.

Every damn day, OP! Thanks for tearing open that wound. I'm crying as I type!! WHY WON'T THEY BRING BACK THE NBC NEWS MINUTE?

I was a little boy visiting Venice with my Spanish Mama when Grace died. Mama cried. Jessica who?

Back then I used to be nervous driving on a stretch of road that went over a slough, afraid that if the car went off the road I'd die like Jessica Savitch.

DIE LIKE JESSICA SAVAGE, BITCH.

"Dying like Jessica Savitch" sounds like a particularly DL-inspired fear.

Compared to the screech-owl scold Martha Raddatz, Jessica was a sweet angel.

Well, except for being accidentally killed in a storm by her bad-driver boyfriend head of the Post, both upside down in a canal, sober and drowned like rats, with her pooch thrown in so Frauen in 2023 would have something to grieve in retrospect.

I don't miss her, but I remember being shocked by her death, though I was just a kid.

I LOVED Jessica Savitch. Poor addicted thing that she was.

Wasn't there some famous moment where she was drunk on the news and got fired?

"Con-stit-utional right, to own a haandgun."

After Jessica Savitch died women like Tritia Toyota were pressed into service to fill the void she left

Connie Chung Wears SAME Outfit On Two Different Networks (CBS & NBC) In The Same Year - 1983

Those newsbriefs were a big fuckin' deal back in the day. Jessica apparently had an enormous Q rating. She was considered credible by the viewing public, if not everyone at NBC News.

She was something, but she was no Norma Quarles

rare interview of Jessica Savitch talking sexism in the news industry

Was she a dyke?

[quote] Was she a dyke?

Depends who you talk to

Her gay husband hung himself with her dog’s leash.

Her story would make a compelling streaming series.

She’s quite attractive in the video posted by R18.

Her bios claim that she was bisexual, but do they name any female amours?

[Quote]Savitch's friend, WNBC anchor Sue Simmons, said in a 2013 retrospective article marking the 30th anniversary of Savitch's death, "When the books and the movie came out [after her death], they made her out to be this troubled character. Nobody ever talked about her big heart, her loyalty, her sense of humor, and her fabulousness as a person.

WHET Sue Simmons?

I really want to know what the fuck Sue Simmons is doing.

Jessica at approximately her peak hotness.

Once, “I was stuck in a pagoda with Tricia Toyota.”

You're welcome.

Not a day goes by where I think of her.

Jessica not so happy

I miss Carole Simpson and her distinctive articulation.

R21. I think he was Ethel Kennedy's OB/GYN, possibly for Rory's birth.

She was only 36 when she died.

Bob Kur was cute in his youth.

Her voice and eyes seemed to reach through the screen like a laser.

At the end of her life, she'd often do mid-afternoon updates on NBC. I remember once watching her doing one of these and thinking she really is going to go places. About two or three weeks later, I watched her again and this time she was obviously blitzed. A few days later, she was dead.

I think Jessica died sober.

[quote] I think Jessica died sober.

Tox Screen showed no drugs & very little alcohol in her system

Jessica was a wild ride OP. You never knew what you were gonna get in her 9 pm news updates. Would she report the news, or would she BE the news?

R35 She was on the way down when she was doing those daytime updates. She had been demoted and at age 36, was aging out of the sexist news industry that kept male dinosaurs forever. The "places" she went to were behind her.

Every Boomer named their daughter Jessica after her.

She never did anything for me, why would I miss her?

One of her last appearances. With a prediction of future global warming and 'catastrophic climate change'!

Savitch's personal life was marked by struggles with drug addiction, depression, and anxiety. She was open about her bisexuality and had relationships with both men and women. In 1983, at the age of 36, she died in a car accident along with her partner, Martin Fischbein, who was also a journalist.

Savitch's death was indeed tragic and shocked many people who had admired her as a journalist. Despite her personal struggles, she was widely respected for her work and considered a trailblazer for women in the news industry.

She passes across my mind a lot. I think it’s her awful death.

Whose pussies did she lick? Inquiring minds want to know.

In Linda Elerbee’s first memoir, which I read many years ago and is truly excellent, she focused one chapter on Savitch but didn’t name her. From what I remember, discussed her drug use and terrific tantrums and sleeping around. Pretty sure was also first time I read that Savitch was having an affair with another noted female newscaster that went very badly. Got the impression it was Diane Sawyer.

I remember an SNL Weekend Update from that time. I think it was Chevy Chase who solemnly announced that she died on whiter date and then added: “The date of her death. The death of her date.”

I must have been 10 years old but I laughed my ass off even though I had no idea who she was. And, obvs, remembered that line to this day.

Why would Rondstadt focus a chapter of her memoir on an unnamed journalist? It makes no sense.

R48 did you miss the part where it was Linda Ellerbee?

She was on an upswing between the fateful Update and the accident. She looked better than she had in a while (see R42). She was dating an upstanding dude who didn't approve of drugs. Her agent (the same as Tom Brokaw's), secured her a one-year renewal with NBC even after the historic Update disaster.

If she had cleaned herself up, she might have gone on to CNN or anchoring for big bucks in a top local market like Connie Chung at KNXT or Robin Young on Ch. 7 in Boston. (Right before she died, Savitch had mentioned how lucrative and desirable local news jobs had become.)

That canal always had such a small amount of water in it.

“This is PRIME TIME TELEVISION, folks”!

Savitch bump

Jessica Savage?

[quote]She was open about her bisexuality

No, she wasn't. Anyone open about such things would have been fired immediately and never hired for TV again.

If she had lived, we'd all be bitching about how it's long past the time for MSNBC to cancel the senile old crone's show.

It wasn't like she was my favorite nightly news reporter, but I was aware of her. I did see her infamous melt down as she was doing the NBC News Digest and since this was before the internet, it was all over the 10:00 news and Entertainment Tonight the next day. Of course, the network said that she was on pain medication. It was soon after that when she was killed in a car accident. It was tragic, nonetheless. All of the sordid details of her life in were written in magazine articles and books. LIFETIME network made a film about her.

R35 - I recall her updates were in the evening. Not mid-morning. The one where she had the meltdown was definitely in the evening.

[quote]do you miss Jessica Savitch?

Not for one single second.

Jessica Savitch was one of the most talented reporters ever. She also had a lot of pain and struggle throughout her life. Despite that, she had a good heart, which is hard to encounter in New York. At a time when gay men were oppressed beyond belief, they identified with her struggles, and she theirs.

I remember the night she drove into the ditch outside that piano bar/restaurant in New Hope. What was it called? No longer there, and I think the building was finally bulldozed.

Good times!

Jessica Sandwich? Only around lunchtime.

Anyone remember this '90s Lifetime movie about her starring Sela Ward, who was nominated for an Emmy.

R61, the restaurant was Chez Odette.

Indeed, the original building was torn down, but in its place is this a rather large building called River House at Odette's, a luxury hotel/spa/nightclub and convention/meeting facilities. I believe this establishment opened in 2020 or 2021.

More tragically, the same organization that built this building also bought the property on which sat The Raven Bar/Restaurant/Pool/Motel, the last gay bar in New Hope. They tore the entire complex down merely to use as an overflow parking facility for Odette's. They promised something better would eventually be built there, but we're still waiting.

Jessica was horrible reporter. She was a good news reader. But she was hopeless in trenches unless it was some sort of light piece.

She was headed for an OD if she didn’t get her addiction and mental health straightened out. No one wanted to work with her anymore.

The book Golden Girl by Alanna Nash details a lot of Jessica’s problems. At first, her sisters denounced the book, but Lori Savitch came around and admitted they’d all been in denial about Jessica’s condition. Lori also hints at the reason why Jessica had personality disorders, but never comes out definitively about it.

A few things have come to light since its publication: Jessica’s co-anchor in Philadelphia, Mort Crim, says they had an affair. Ugh, Jessica, NO. Also, it’s been hinted more than once Andrea Mitchell was the one Jessica threw out in the middle of the night.

Jessica was a contemporary of Andrea Mitchell? That means if she had lived, Jessica would be a doddering old fool trying desperately not to fall asleep while on air and unable to remember what she said 30 seconds ago, just like Andrea today.

I feel sorry for the dog...

Hadn't thought about her in years, but when I listened to Tonya Moseley's tongue bath interview with the execrable Connie Chung, I thought of Savitch. The interview made it sound like there hadn't been anyone on an anchor track before Chung or Baba Wawa. But there was Savitch who was much more than a news reader or a Today Girl. Before her were serious tv journalists like Nancy Dickerson and Pauline Frederick, as well as more local/niche figures like Dorothy Fuldheim. Dickerson and Frederick even had anchor duties, although it was always on the weekend or brief casts in daytime. I was annoyed that not only Savitch but these other women recived no mention.

Hated it, R63. Mainly because they didn’t show, didn’t even hint about her lesbian affairs.

More people should throw out Andrea Mitchell.

I'm sure Savitch was a nightmare, but Chung was an idiot and Walters was a lightweight.

Apparently, there were a lot of drugs going around newsrooms in that era, esp. cocaine. It wasn't just Jessica Savitch who was partaking of it.

Is she the one who blew her brains out on tv?

Linda Ellerbee is the one I mess

R74. What you do behind closed doors is your business. I use to mess on Charles Kuralt.

[quote]Walters was a lightweight.

GOD will get you for that comment!

R73 -

No, that was Christine Chubbuck

BTW, the film UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL with Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford was originally going to be a bio pic about Jessica Savitch. From WIKI:

In the spring of 1988, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion began writing the script for a film entitled Golden Girl, based on Alanna Nash's biography of the late NBC News anchor and reporter Jessica Savitch and financed by The Walt Disney Company. When the film was finally released in 1996, eight years later, it was known as Up Close & Personal and none of the more controversial details of Savitch's life remained, including her alleged drug abuse problems that may have caused her to deliver an incoherent live news update on national television in early October 1983. Other details omitted from the film included the suicide of Savitch's second husband a few months after their wedding, and her alleged bisexuality, suicide attempts and physical abuse by her longtime partner Ron Kershaw, a well-known news director who was the original model for the character of Warren Justice. Savitch's death at age 36 in an automobile accident (unrelated to drugs or alcohol) was also left out of the screenplay.

According to Dunne, who chronicled his experiences dealing with studio executives in his book Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, the majority of these changes were made in order to appeal to a broader mainstream market. Producer Scott Rudin was reported to have said, when asked by a weary Dunne what the film was supposed to be, "it's about two movie stars."

Timing really was Jessica's downfall. If she'd been on the scene 10 years earlier, she'd be Barbara Walters. Ten years later, Katie Couric.

R78 Agreed. She was a lot of style and little substance. Ahead of her time. They were pushing Connie Chung in to replace Jessica. Connie had a good reputation and was reportedly easy to work with.