Jack E. Jett

Jack E. Jett is primarily known for being the first openly gay American talk show host.

Early life and career

Jack E. Jett grew up in Dallas, Texas and moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21. There he went through various jobs in entertainment like AFTRA where he worked as the Talent Agency Representative. He then went through the Creative Artist training program. Through a fluke meeting at The China Club in the early 1980s, Mr. Jett was offered a contract to model for Cinq Deux Un, an agency in Tokyo, Japan. This began a career that lasted for the next eight years. Jack E. Jett, then known as Jhett, became one of the highest paid male models in the world in 1982 with contracts in Milan, Paris, Los Angeles, and Barcelona. Jhett also appeared in "Playgirl" that year in a profile about his career and life in Beverly Hills. He met singer Belinda Carlisle and they quickly became best friends. Upon retiring, or being retired from, modeling, Jhett began to travel with The Go-Go's in various capacities that ranged from press, travel, interview schedules and luggage handling. He later worked as the personal assistant to Belinda Carlisle during her successful solo career.

Television production

In 1988, he dropped the name Jhett in favor of Jack E. Jett and was offered the position of U.S. Representative for the Prime Television Network in Australia. His duties included working as a liaison between the American productions companies and the network executives in Australia. Prime Television was going through a process called aggregation, and Mr. Jett helped this process by developing projects for these local stations to produce, in addition to finding new programs from the United States for them to broadcast. After a few years he grew tired of the long distance travel and wanted to stay near his home in West Hollywood, California. He then accepted the position as a coordinator for CBS Television City comedy casting department. Jack was thrilled to have this position as it allowed him to find up and coming comedy talent in various equity waiver theatres and comedy clubs and have the ability to bring them in for meetings with various casting executives.

During this period, Jack E. Jett was struck very hard with the AIDS epidemic. At the age of 40, he had lost exactly 40 friends to this disease. He began volunteer work with Aid For Aids, Elizabeth Taylor’s AMFAR, and Cable Positive.

The Jack E. Jett Show and The Queer Edge

In early 1990, Jack E. Jett returned to his native Dallas, Texas. Having been an avid fan of cable access television in Los Angeles, Jett found the selections on these channels very limited in Dallas. He decided to stir things up a bit and created a show that featured various odd ball characters and freaks of nature. The show became a local cult classic and soon became available on cable access stations in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and Austin. PrideVision Television in Canada, which later became known as OUT TV, offered Jack E. Jett the chance to move from cable access to cable television. He co-produced with Chris Rentzel, 65 episodes of "The Jack E. Jett Show", which later became one of the first programs on the first GLBTQ Television Network in the United States called Q Television Network.

When radio DJ Jagger bowed out of a new program on QTN entitled "On Q Live", the job of host/anchor was offered to Jett. The show was a four hour chat fest that included various guests with viewer call ins, and web cam conversations and emails. A true interactive show that produced over 150 episodes and that was seen five nights a week and catered exclusively to the gay and lesbian community was the first of its kind and has not been duplicated since. As someone who preferred his programs to be a little more on the edge he developed a show that would eventually become the network’s top premiere program. "The Queer Edge with Jack E. Jett" became an instant hit on the network. A quick wit combined with a unique interview style quickly made both Jett and the show a success. Each week a different co host would join Jack. These co hosts included ranged from Charo to Kim Coles, and from
Butch Patrick (The Munsters) to Randy Jones (The Village People) as well as regular co hostess, Jackie Enx. Jackie Enx is a transsexual radio personality who hosted a segment called Fun with Hypocrisy. Jackie was formerly known as Liam, the drummer for the rock band Rhino Bucket.

One of the co hosts was the internationally famous Sandra Bernhard. Jack E. Jett and Sandra Bernhard hit it off right away and she signed on to become a regular part of The Queer Edge. The Queer Edge with Jack E. Jett and Sandra Bernhard ran for another 40 episodes prior to the downfall of the network. When QTN began to falter and a new management team was sent in, the network was never able to get back up to speed. As a result, Jack E. Jett ended up with total ownership of the 145 episodes of "The Queer Edge". Those shows can now be seen in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. In addition the shows can be seen on TLA on demandAs well as Jett’s own network he started in conjunction with the folks at World of Wonder called FUTV in JettVision. This show has had critical acclaim from everyone from Richard Donner to most every gay publication in the United States.

In the year of 2001, Jack E. Jett released a DVD via TLA Video entitled "The Gayest Show on Earth". This DVD quickly became a cult and viral classic. The DVD’s were duplicated and sent to various college dorms around the world. This may be one of the reasons that the Jack E. Jett receives over 500 hits a day from China alone. The DVD quickly sold out and is out of print.

"The Queer Edge with Jack E. Jett" and Sandra Bernhard was one of the first chat shows picked up by Mania TV along with Tom Green and Dave Navarro.

In the past year, Jack E. Jett has been involved with Ring My Bell for World of Wonder TV, as well as the sub host for Cheaters, and a new pilot for Bobby Goldstein Productions, Love Sick.

In addition to the many articles that have been written about Jack E. Jett, he also has conducted many interviews and been published in such publications as Radar, Queerty, Planet Out, and the Dallas Voice. He currently resides in Dallas, Texas where he has been referred to as a “bomb thrower” for his take no crap blogging style.

References

External links

*Imdb name|1796128|Jack E. Jett