Press: TV News’ Fallen Star

Who was Jessica Savitch? Millions of TV viewers knew her as the glamorous and authoritative NBC News anchor who was a role model for scores of aspiring women journalists. To her colleagues on the set, however, she was an anorexic, acne-scarred prima donna who would throw tantrums over the slightest inconvenience or reject a glass of water because it was too warm. And to those who claimed to know her best, she was a vivacious and vulnerable woman who became so debilitated by insecurity and drug abuse that she could barely function without a nursemaid. When Savitch’s end finally came in a freak car accident in 1983, one close friend had already finished mourning: the Jessica she had once known had died years before.

Now, nearly five years later, Savitch’s troubled life is being resurrected in two searing biographies: Almost Golden by Gwenda Blair, a veteran magazine writer, and Golden Girl by Author Alanna Nash. The books tell many of the same painful stories, but while Nash writes a cautionary tale about personal ambition gone amuck, Blair sets Savitch’s rise and fall against the larger backdrop of television-news history. Ultimately, neither writer completely succeeds in conveying what made Savitch run, perhaps because her personal demons were so well masked.

What is clear, however, is that the anchor had a remarkable gift for talking to a TV camera. Blair recounts that Savitch once told a colleague that her trick was to focus on a spot in the middle of her head and project it through her eyes to the other side of the lens. “She would send this energy force out like a laser,” he recalled. “You’d step back and say, ‘Christ! What was that!’ “

Savitch labored long and hard to master her craft and fight her way into a male-dominated profession. She was quick to realize that TV news was more about show business than journalism. As a fledgling reporter for KHOU-TV in Houston, she ended a report about an exhibit of World War II bombers by posing on a wing like a vintage pinup. Viewers loved it. She moved to Philadelphia in 1972, studied speech and became a celebrated anchor after starring in a series of personal reports about such topics as rape and childbirth.

But when at 30 she achieved her dream and joined NBC News as a Senate correspondent and weekend anchor, Savitch still lacked the ear-to-the-ground reporting skills needed to cover a demanding beat. Hired to add some allure to , the news division’s stodgy image, she was also expected to break stories on Capitol Hill and provide sparkle at numerous public appearances. She quickly foundered. “The people who brought her in here abandoned her,” said Tom Brokaw. Yet even as she was being demoted for incompetence, the network flacks and a willing press continued to tout her as TV news’ hottest new commodity.

Both authors conclude that Savitch had no one to blame for her troubles but herself. Instead of seeking help or a change of assignment, she slipped ever deeper into the embrace of drugs — mostly cocaine, but also pills — and a retinue of sycophants. Her first marriage lasted ten months; her second ended after five months, when she found her husband hanging lifeless in the basement of their Washington town house. Her self-abuse finally became evident to millions when she slurred her way through a harrowing 43-second NBC News Digest. Three weeks later, Savitch, 36, and a date, New York Post Executive Martin Fischbein, accidentally drove into a canal in New Hope, Pa., and were killed.

“She had reached the top only to be dismissed as a bimbo,” Blair writes. But with film and television rights to both biographies already snapped up, Savitch is sure to be remembered as the woman who brought the dark side of Hollywood to broadcast row.