Let’s discuss Jessica Savitch

“ Her biographers say she had no talent except reading off a teleprompter.”

Which biographers? Show us what they said.

You may find this thread of interest.

Her job was reading off a teleprompter. So, it was a good talent to have.

I couldn’t even do THAT!

You know how she was.

Jessica was greatly admired in the Philly region. She had a huge fan base; I was among them. Her voice and diction was so distinctive. She had amazing charisma, as well.

Jessica went to Ithaca College during the time Rod Serling was on the faculty.

I went on a tangent after the Sela Ward movie and read everything about her. Her life was a terrible thing. Especially the end.

Loved Jessica Savitch.

The very best in the business. She was flawless, until she wasn't. But damn she was great.

Golden Girl is a great biography of Jessica.

I loved her news briefs every night at 8:30 on NBC.

When news was news.

A fucking intellectual compared with Connie Chung.

My father had a crush on her.

Didn't she overcome a speech impediment?

She was great, but she was no Sue Simmons.

The woman who wrote Almost Golden said that she wasn’t respected by her co-workers as she wasn’t a real journalist; she merely read off the autocue. Bryan Gumble said she was a drug addled mess.

Her meltdown is on YouTube.

So did she eat box or not? They say she was and she always pinged to me but she was married. I know that doesn’t mean much but still.

As screwed up as her personal life was, Jessica Savitch was a dedicated professional when it came to being an anchorwoman.

Beautiful and talented. Her Mid-Atlantic accent and diction were perfect.

r18 She was a straight-leaning bisexual. Horrid taste in men for the most part, one giant boyfriend of hers used her as a punching bag.

She was one of nature's inexplicable phenomena - the human equivalent of the aurora borealis. Stunning. Substantive. Mysterious.

People use this as proof that she was a bitch, but she just wants people to [italic]do their jobs![/italic]

“Doug, you’re going to have to get in here earlier than this.”

Before she went to the network, she was an anchor at then NBC affiliate KYW here in Philly with Mort Crimm, local broadcast jounalistic icon.

Mr. Crimm never had a harsh word for her, much less being a drunken, drug addicted dyke.

[quote]misunderstood working girl trying to make it in a man’s world

Jessica Lange should have played her in a movie. Michelle Pfeiffer did a thinly disguised version of her in Up Close and Personal.

Had she lived, she likely would have found a different niche like ET and would have been hugely successful. I've always felt her delivery was so much more believable than Linda Ellerbee whom I found insufferable and smug. It's not a surprise she hated Savitch.

[quote]Linda Ellerbee whom I found insufferable and smug

Shut your mouth! Linda Ellerbee was an absolute queen!

I didn’t think she drowned, but was crushed when the car flipped over. It fell twelve feet into sludge and they died almost instantly.

She was a mess, but she was very loyal to her small group of makeup and hair crew and assistants.

The news producer who supposedly beat her early in her career, in Houston, died a few years later of liver cancer. I hope he suffered, honestly.

She needed bigger biceps.

She’s my hero

[quote] The woman who wrote Almost Golden said that she wasn’t respected by her co-workers as she wasn’t a real journalist; she merely read off the autocue.

That is the single most important qualification for her job. Dan Rather had experience as a reporter, but I would have preferred Savitch’s smooth reading from autocue to Rather’s sometimes halting delivery and unauthorized interjections.

I think her great love was Ed Bradley.

No, all three drowned. The car was barely moving when it tipped into the canal.

[quote]Shut your mouth! Linda Ellerbee was an absolute queen!

Her daughter would beg to differ.

Were they drunk or high in the car?

Guess who has the news report

Mid Atlantic?! Not this again ….

I still can't believe she was only 36 when she died.

The woman lived a thousand lives in those 3 1/2 decades and it showed on her face.

Jeez, her life was a total car-crash!

Hot mess.

Then a cold, very wet one.

I also watched her on KYW every night. She was mesmerizing.

She was in the news business when the men in the business openly resented women. It was horrible for women in those days, the men treated them like shit. That had a lot to do with her problems.

R37. This is from the last weeks of her life. She does not look prematurely aged at all.

R42 One of her rare sober appearances.

She definitely came across as a woman at least a decade older than she was.

Interesting that one of the headlines was about climate change becoming a potential threat in the 1990s. And here we are.

Climate change was a topic of discussion in the 70s.

Still my favorite Jessica Savitch TV moment:

"I'm Jessica Savage in New York. More news later on this NBC station, and on NBC News Overnight."

R43. She looks like a woman in her mid-30s. It's common that people from the past are perceived to be older than their ages based on the old-fashioned nature of hair style, clothes, and personal presentation. Physically she looked her age. I never made any claim about her sobriety.

Linda Ellerbee was supposed to stage an intervention for Jessica at her office at NBC News on a Monday morning. Jessica died that weekend.

R47 I didn't say you did.

And I still contend that she looked and appeared much older than her years. Other women her age in the 1980s had her same hairstyle and clothing and didn't come across like she did.

R48 Jessica was found to be sober when she died, though, right?

Yes, r50. there were no drugs or alcohol involved in her death. She and her boyfriend, who worked for the NY Post were in New Hope, PA and had dinner at a restaurant called Chez Odette's (since closed). It was pitch dark and pouring rain and he took the wrong exit out of the parking lot and was driving along a towpath next to a canal. Because of the weather and the darkness visibility was terrible. The car fell off the edge of the towpath and landed upside down in mud which sealed the doors shut. Savitch, her boyfriend and her dog all drowned. It was a horrifying death.

I read "Almost Golden" many years ago and came away with mixed feelings about Jessica Savitch.

On the one hand, she certainly endured her fair share of tragedies in her short life that no one should have to endure. On the other hand, her ambitions were greater than her talent. She was ruthless in her desire to climb the ladder quickly, and she shit on a lot of people on her way up. She had great early success, but few friends, and while she was a polished TV anchor presence, as an actual journalist, she was middling at best, having been put on suspension by NBC at least once for shoddy reporting and fact checking.

A lot of her problems were self-inflicted, and because she really didn't have a circle of close friends or family, her reckless behavior went unchecked. Her crash (no pun intended) was inevitable.

The Lifetime movie about Jessica Savitch with Sela Ward was an abomination. Ward was all wrong for the role, and the movie flubbed and downright misrepresented many aspects of Savitch's life.

The film with Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford was originally meant to be a gritty, unvarnished, not-so-disguised biography of Savitch and her relationship with her alcoholic, drug-addled, abusive boyfriend, but the movie studio ended up watering it down and it became just another sappy romantic drama.

It's too bad she never got an accurate film version of her life. She's been gone so long now, though, that I doubt most people would flock to theaters to see a movie about her.

An article from a couple of years ago.

R52: Basically she was portrayed as a less adroit counterpart to the no-talents who did advance like Walters and Chung. The networks had other, more competent women in journalism and most of them hit the glass ceiling and went into making documentaries.

Jessica Savitch was largely responsible for her perception as a cold bitch because, well, she was. And while it's true that it was incredibly difficult for women in broadcast news in the '80s, Jessica often blamed her own shortcomings on that fact, which alienated a lot of her colleagues.

I think it was in "Almost Golden" that one of her male colleagues when she was in Philly, who really liked her and knew she had great potential, sat down with her once and tried to encourage her to focus more on being a journalist and not just a talking head. She brushed him off and said she'd be on a national network in two years. Then when that dream came true, she sent him a letter that just said, "Told you. Fuck you."

Way back, I was always impressed with Jessica Savitch when I saw her on the news. Just magic. She was so commanding, yet personable. Then I saw her on the old Tomorrow show. It was the Tom Snyder interview show and she guest hosted for a week. I was absolutely aghast at how she flubbed interview after interview. She was totally flat on her feet and the talk led nowhere and was boring. Her interview with Madalyn Murray O'Hare was such a disaster that I stopped watching. You could see Savitch was angry at MMO's approach and she showed it. Her questions were shockingly insipid and could not follow up even the most basic point MMO made. Then I saw her on another talk/game show where journalists gathered together and tried to give clever answers to questions. She was always the dumbest and least funny. The spell was broken. When I learned of her troubles, I wasn't surprised.

Linda Ellerbee hated her guts. Like who would trust her in an “intervention”. I hate the whole intervention idea and process. It is a humiliation.

[quote] She was in the news business when the men in the business openly resented women. It was horrible for women in those days, the men treated them like shit. That had a lot to do with her problems.

Wrong.

It was true r59. Read any account of that era of the news business. Barbara Walters talked about it extensively.

[quote] It's too bad she never got an accurate film version of her life.

It could be made into a mini series.

[quote] Read any account of that era of the news business. Barbara Walters talked about it extensively.

Barbara Walters was a bitch who backstabbed every person she encountered. Savitch’s problems were her own.

At best, here was a glass ceiling for talent which is why Nancy Dickerson and Marlene Sanders exited it and did independent productions. Both were far more talented than Chung, Savitch, and Walters. Ellerbee went a similar route,

Marlene Sanders had great narration skills. She was the narrator for HBO's Autopsy series.

You can’t expect to make it in the business when you have no actual talent. She was a nice news reader but there are millions who can do that job. That on top of her being a druggie gets your ass kicked to the curb.

Most men didn’t have the luxury of getting by on their looks. They had to have some background in journalism. The women got a pass and still complained. Of course they weren’t going to be taken seriously.

Many of the women were also good journalists.

[quote]You can’t expect to make it in the business when you have no actual talent. She was a nice news reader but there are millions who can do that job.

This is clearly not true. Being effective on camera is relatively rare. Ninety percent of her job was reading text, and she was exceptional at it.

As for denying that she faced sexism, you have an uphill battle to substantiate that. Are you denying just how sexist the workplace was in the 70s and 80s. Or are you claiming that television news was the idyllic exception to that rule?