Kennedy-Overton, Jayne Harrison 1951–

views updated

Jayne Harrison Kennedy-Overton 1951–

Actress, sports commentator

Jayne Harrison Kennedy-Overton became one of the first female network sports anchors in an era when hiring attractive women was merely a ratings ploy designed to lure male viewers. As co-host of NFL Today on CBS from 1978 to 1980, the actress and former model was the first African-American woman to anchor a network sports program.

Kennedy-Overton was born on November 27, 1951, in Washington, D.C., but her family soon moved to suburban Cleveland, Ohio, where her father worked as a machinist in a local factory. One of five children, she was a standout in her Wickliffe-area high school as a cheerleader, National Honor Society member, and three-time class president. In 1969, at a youth organization rally in Washington, D.C., she became the first black vice president of Girls State. The following year, Kennedy-Overton added another first to her resume when she became the first African American to win the crown of Miss Ohio. Most of those in her hometown of Wickliffe were thrilled, but some weren’t, and a banner erected in her honor was taken down. “We got some phone calls because, after a couple of newspaper articles, some blacks thought she was bragging,” her mother, Virginia Harrison, recalled in an interview with the Washington Post’s Jacqueline Trescott a few years later.

Kennedy-Overton went on to compete in the Miss USA beauty pageant, and was fourth runner-up. Around this time, she began dating a popular Detroit-area disc jockey named Leon Isaac Kennedy, and the two wed in a ceremony that featured Motown star Smokey Robinson as her husband’s best man. The couple moved to Los Angeles, and Kennedy-Overton began working in television advertising. She even served a stint with comedian Bob Hope on his overseas tours to entertain American troops in Southeast Asia toward the end of the Vietnam War. Kennedy-Overton became a regular on The Dean Martin Show as a dancer, which led to episodic television work in such top-rated series as Shaft, Kojak, Sanford & Son, and Starsky & Hutch.

The Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, which starred Diana Ross as the famous jazz and blues singer of the 1930s, was Kennedy-Overton’s first film role,

At a Glance…

Born on November 27, 1951, in Washington, D.C.; daughter of Herbert {a machinist) and Virginia Harrison; married Leon Isaac Kennedy (an actor and film producer), 1972 (divorced, 1982); married Bill Overton (an actor and entrepreneur), May 1985; children: (with Overton) daughters Savannah Re, Kopper, Zaire. Religion: Evangelical Christian.

Career: Actress, 1972– NFL Today, co-host, 1978-80; released exercise video, Love Your Body, c. 1982; advisory board, Ta life, Inc., New York City.

Awards: Miss USA beauty pageant, fourth runner-up, 1970; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Image Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, 1982, for Body and Soul

Addresses: Office—c/o Ta Life, Inc., 71 W, 128th St, 3rd Fl., Ste. B, New York, NY 10027-3102. Home — Maine and California.

though it was a small, uncredited part. She went on to appear in a string of B-movies over the next few years, including Group Marriage and The Muthers. Her one starring vehicle, a 1977 television movie called Cover Girls, featured her as one-half of a top-model duo who moonlight as secret agents. Its premise was nearly a copycat of Charlie’s Angels, the hit television series, and Kennedy-Overton was even considered for a role on the show when Farrah Fawcett left the show in 1977. Kennedy-Overton admitted to having a tough time as a black actress in Hollywood during this era. “I like it when someone says you are intelligent or pretty,” she said in the interview with Trescott in the Washington Post. “But universal is a quality most people in Hollywood don’t want to see in blacks. That’s an appreciation of my talent. I did an episode of ‘Police Woman’ last year and I played an inmate, wore no make-up and had my hair pulled in a pony tail. And the producer said ‘I like you because you want to work, you want to be good.’ And that’s the nicest thing anyone could say.”

Kennedy-Overton was one of the more recognized faces in her day, thanks to her advertising work for Jovan fragrances and the diet soft drink Tab. Her high visibility helped her land the NFL Today job in 1978. She became the first black woman to host a sports show on American network television, but she was not the first female to land such a part: she was the replacement for a former Miss America, Phyllis George, on a broadcasting team that included Brent Musburger, Irv Cross, and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder. Some seven million viewers tuned in to the CBS show during fall football season, during which Kennedy-Overton bantered with her co-hosts on-air, interviewed players, and displayed a command of NFL statistics and team rosters. She was replaced in 1980 when she auditioned for an NBC television series called Speak Up, America.

Kennedy-Overton joined the celebrity-exercise bandwagon and released a how-to video, Love Your Body, that was a top seller in the early 1980s. She also starred in film with her husband, who had had a minor hit in 1979 with Penitentiary, about a boxer wrongfully incarcerated. In 1981’s Body and Soul, Kennedy-Overton portrayed a television journalist who interviews a famous boxer, played by her husband, and the interview leads to romance. She won an NAACP Image Award for best actress for the part, but the couple called it quits in 1982.

Few film or television roles came Kennedy-Overton’s way in the 1980s. She did a few episodes of the Love Boat and Benson, and wed an actor she had met on the set of Cover Girls, Bill Overton, in 1985. By this time, Kennedy-Overton had been suffering from endometriosis, a painful uterine-tissue condition, for a number of years. “I was in pain all the time,” she recalled in an article in USA Today by Adele Slaughter, an interview that came about as a result of her role as a spokesperson for the National Endometriosis Foundation. “Sometimes I would be standing in the kitchen, lift the top off a pot and pains came in my stomach. They were not dull aches, they were all sharp pains. It was difficult to walk and certainly almost impossible to exercise.” After other remedies had failed, Kennedy-Overton was told that having a baby seemed to relieve symptoms for many women, and her first child, Savannah Re, was born in late 1985.

Kennedy-Overton went on to have two more daughters, Kopper and Zaire, but the condition did not abate until she underwent surgery. She spent much of the 1990s raising her children, splitting time between Los Angeles and a farm property in Maine. She also conquered a weight gain that pushed the former model and dancer past the 200-pound mark. “One of the reasons being overweight was so embarrassing for me is because I used to have my own exercise video,” she told Ebony journalist Laura B. Randolph. “So here I am, the preacher of being in shape and maintaining good habits, and I am so out of shape…. I didn’t feel that I was a good example to my children because I always taught them how important it is to be in shape.”

No longer active in Hollywood or on TV, Kennedy-Overton now devotes her time to community causes and to writing her memoirs. A devout Christian, she is deeply involved in her church. She has also done charity work for groups including the National Lung Association, the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation, and the National Endometriosis Foundation, and has served as a spokeswoman for the National Council of Negro Women and on the board of the Efficacy Institute, which offers a program that teaches motivation to college-bound students.