Jessica Savitch
Jessica Beth Savitch (
February 1,
1947-
October 23,
1983) was an
American television news reporter.
Savitch was born in
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; near
Philadelphia, the eldest daughter of
Jewish American parents, David Savitch and Florence Goldberger. When her father died in 1959 from
kidney disease, her mother moved Jessica and her two sisters to
Margate, New Jersey, outside of
Atlantic City. As a teenager, Jessica's career in broadcasting began with voice-overs at an Atlantic City radio station. She eventually scored her own program called
Teen Corner where she played music and discussed current events.
Jessica Savitch majored in communications at
Ithaca College. Her local broadcasting work led her into modeling jobs and television commercials. After college, she was employed in a clerical position at
CBS in New York, which led to her eventual hiring at
KHOU-TV in
Houston, Texas.
In 1972, she was spotted by a TV news talent scout who recommended her to
KYW-TV in Philadelphia, which was looking for a fresh young face to compete with a rival station's news team. She took the job for a small amount of money, but soon signed a lucrative contract, allowing her to move into a
Washington Square luxury apartment and meet powerful contacts.
Jessica got her first national exposure during KYW's nationally televised debate between
Gerald Ford and
Jimmy Carter (1976). Within a year of that debate, she was covering the
U.S. Senate at
NBC.
Critics and old-school newsmen felt that she lacked the experience for national network news;
David Brinkley is said to have called her "the dumbest woman I have ever met". But audiences loved her, and she soon became one of the most popular NBC anchors.
As her career skyrocketed however, her unstable personal life became increasingly messy.
Throughout the 1970's, Jessica continued an on-again, off-again relationship with
Ron Kershaw, whom she met in Houston while he was a reporter for rival station
KTRK. The couple became engaged at one point but called off the wedding because they felt that her marriage to a rival news reporter might hurt Jessica's career. The tension grew in their relationship to the point that Ron would reportedly give Jessica beatings that even NBC's make-up artists couldn't conceal and Jessica became pregnant and underwent an abortion. After finally breaking up with Kershaw, Jessica was married twice.
Jessica married her first husband, millionaire
Mel Korn on January 6, 1980. Korn was the CEO of a Philadelphia ad agency and more than twenty years her senior. Their marriage began to unravel soon after their wedding. Mel Korn began to have serious financial troubles with his company and Jessica who suffered a miscarriage early on in the marriage began to focus most of her time and energy on her career. The couple rarely saw each other and separated in November 1980.
By the time Jessica & Mel separated, she had already begun having an affair with her gynecologist, Donald Payne. Payne was a closet homosexual who had recently gone through a bitter divorce of his own. Donald Payne became Jessica's second husband when she married him on March 21, 1981, just three weeks after her divorce from Mel Korn was finalized. During their brief troubled marriage, Jessica suffered another miscarriage and Payne suffered from depression and was diagnosed with liver disease. Payne committed suicide on August 1, 1981 by hanging himself in the basement of their townhouse.
Rumors and allegations of screaming rants,
cocaine binges, and
promiscuity were spread about her bizarre behavior on and off the set. By 1983
Connie Chung had replaced her on the Saturday edition of
NBC Nightly News, and
Frontline had nearly eliminated her on-screen appearances.
The most bizarre incident in her career was a one-minute prime-time news update on the night of
October 3,
1983. Savitch's delivery of the news report was slurred and incoherent. Savitch told her bosses that her teleprompter had gone out, but her agent claimed that she was on medication for a head injury. NBC execs immediately impounded the videotape of the incident to prevent it from being circulated. Nevertheless, some individuals outside the network have seen copies of the tape.
[Magazine article "Not Necessarily the News", Entertainment Weekly, March 1996, mentions a producer of the movie "Up Close and Personal" showing the tape to the writer of the article.]On Sunday, October 23,
1983, Savitch had a date with
Martin Fischbein, Vice President of the
New York Post. They drove from her apartment in New York City to spend the day in the scenic village of
New Hope, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, famous for
Bucks County Playhouse, antique shops, and restaurants. After eating dinner at Odette's Restaurant, they began to drive home, with Fischbein behind the wheel and Jessica in the back seat with her dog, Chewy. Either ignoring or not seeing the "No Vehicles" signs in the pouring rain, Fischbein drove out of the wrong exit from the restaurant and up the towpath of the old
Delaware Division Canal on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. He veered too far to the left and the car went over the edge into the shallow water of the canal. The station wagon fell about 15 feet and landed upside-down, sinking into deep mud which sealed the doors shut, trapping the occupants inside as the water poured in. The wreck was discovered by a local resident at about 11:30 that night. Rescuers found Fischbein's body still strapped behind the wheel, and Jessica's and Chewy's in the rear. The bodies were taken to Doylestown Hospital for autopsies. The Bucks County coroner later ruled that both had died from asphyxiation (by drowning). He noted that Fischbein was apparently knocked unconscious in the wreck but Jessica was not and had struggled to escape.
After hearing about her death, Kershaw went to the accident site and saw Chewy's body. He took Chewy's body and buried him. Later, Kershaw had a relationship with
Giselle Fernandez and they were engaged to be married. Before it could happen, Kershaw died of
liver cancer and
pancreatic cancer.
Her story was told by author
Alanna Nash in a
1988 book titled
Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch. The book was the basis for the 1996
motion picture Up Close & Personal starring
Michelle Pfeiffer. Another well-known book about Savitch is
Almost Golden: Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News by
Gwenda Blair. That work served as the basis for the made-for-TV movie
Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story, starring
Sela Ward. Ms. Savitch wrote her autobiography "
Anchorwoman" in 1982.
*
*
Find a Grave entry *
Findadeath.com entry*
Roadode.com: the 10/3/1983 news update (requires Flash)*
Footage on Youtube of Jessica Savitch's infamous slurred broadcast
