The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Jeanne Beker's Obsession with Style

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

For more than two decades, FashionTelevision had people all over the world obsessed with host Jeanne Beker's compelling interviews with top designers and supermodels, her intel about what goes on behind-the-scenes at runway shows around the world, and what was in and out of style. Before that, her interviews with the hottest musicians on The NewMusic made for some of the most talked about TV moments, from Iggy Pop to Keith Richards, Paul McCartney and Madonna. Both shows were ground-breaking in the 1980s and '90s. In her new memoir, "Heart on My Sleeve," Beker talks about her early influences, highlights some of her more memorable interviews, and poignantly discusses her recent experience with cancer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. this information one story at a time. Subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Instagram. Every birthday I would wish on my birthday cake that I would have my own TV show. I'm Jeannie Becker. I'm Jeannie Becker. Jeannie Becker Fashion Television. Ah yes. Okay thanks. Jeannie Becker is a legend, absolute legend, not just here, but all around the world. Your memoir thoroughly enjoyed it. It was really a wonderful read, but you've structured it in a very interesting way. It's not sort of a standard chronological order, here we go. You've structured it around pieces of wardrobe, which of

course makes great sense for you. This amazing suede and leather jewel encrusted dress was gifted to me by the House of Dior. Why did you do that? How did you come up with that? It worked as a wonderful template, of course, because I started just thinking about the pieces of clothing or accessories or pieces of jewelry throughout my life that had significant meaning, many of them which I held on to,

got very sentimentally attached to. And I thought, if I use these pieces as springboards for the storytelling, it'll help me edit my life. Because I've got so many stories. I mean, I could write 5,000 books, but this really kept me in line. And if I didn't have a particular garment or a piece of jewelry or an accessory to go with the story, well, the story wouldn't be told. You know, we'll save that for another book.

And this dress is so meaningful to me because this was given to me by the late, great Karl Lagerfeld. This past decade, and I think every decade or so really demands that kind of reflection, was very profound to me. The things that happened to me, you know, I lost my mom. I met the love of my life. I went through a cancer journey. My show of 27 years got canceled just like that.

So a lot of stuff happened. I thought, you know, time to reflect and write a book. This is my sixth book, but the easiest one that I've ever written. It was just an absolute joy to write it from beginning to end. Your father's factory. What did he make?

Slippers. Do you think by spending time at that plant, it planted a seed with you about fashion? Well, I think my mother certainly planted those fashion seeds in me at a very, very early age. I didn't really see my dad's business as one that was fashion related. He was making these novelty slippers that weren't really on trend. They were just whimsical, fun, kooky little slippers for little kids that were, you know,

plush little bunny heads and tiger heads and clown heads. They had googly eyes, they had squeakers in the heads. You know, they were more like toys than they were fashion. But in later years, I realized how much my father's business really did teach me about the business of fashion and that you had to keep coming up with novel ideas, that you had these collections that you would have to sell every season, that you always had to worry about undercutting the competition. So without question that factory, that shop as he called it, taught me a lot about the business of fashion. But your eye for style came from your mom.

Absolutely, absolutely. Where would she have acquired that taste? She was an Eastern European woman and I just think she had a great eye for style and a great passion for style. And of course, as a Holocaust survivor, who went through the Holocaust at an age when most young women are really thinking about the way they wanna present themselves to the world and they're really playing with dress up. My mom could never do that at all.

The war broke out when she was 19 years old. She just had a penchant for fashion that was, and then my dad too always used to say This is the first thing that people will judge you on the way you're dressed So you have to really be careful about the way you're dressed. It's all you know it was like oh, okay And and he would because he worked in the garment industry in Toronto He would take me to various showrooms, you know, because we would never play retail for anything. I mean that was like, oh no, you didn't do that.

So he would get all these, you know, all these invitations to showrooms from, you know, various garment manufacturers. Because I wore a sample size as a, you know, as a teenager I got to get some pretty neat stuff. But my mom also was a great craftswoman. And in 1959, when we moved to the suburbs, my dad bought her a sewing machine. And we just had a field day.

She always had subscriptions to Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. And my sister and my mom and I would sit there and pour over the pages and dream about all these fantastic designer frocks that of course we could never afford to buy, but my mom might be able to replicate them somehow and we would go to this wonderful fabric emporium in downtown Toronto called Stitskies.

It was like a Mervis Street village, right around Bloor and Bathurst. And we would spend days there looking at all these great fabrics and buying patterns and my mom would whip up fantastic garments for us. This gown was made for my mom by her German dressmaker, Mrs. Boleson, and it was one of her prized wardrobe possessions and when she couldn't wear it anymore, she gave it to me hoping that my daughters would perhaps resurrect it't wear it anymore, she gave it to me, hoping that my daughters would perhaps

resurrect it and wear it. I do want to go back and talk more about your parents' background because, you know, based on the discussions I've had with Holocaust survivors over the years, you can almost divide them into two different camps. There are those who want to talk about it and want to impart the stories to their kids, and there are others who feel they can't burden their children With that much heaviness and they never talk about it. Your parents were in the first camp What impact did that have on you having to listen to all of that? Well my parents I

Think really because they both lost their entire families in the war and they lived through the war together on the run the entire time. Like thankfully they weren't in concentration camps, but hiding in bunkers, underground cellars, attics and barns and just depending on the kindness of strangers really. And they were very tenacious and obviously they were very fearless. That was my dad's motto, you know, don't be afraid and never give up. And I think by the end of the war they realized that was the way to live a life. That you had to be fearless and you had to be tenacious and they were hell bent on teaching

that to their kids. So they told us a lot of war stories and maybe also not so much just to teach us about you know How dark a place the world can be? But because it was very therapeutic for them to talk about they didn't have a lot of people to talk to they you know their families had all been Decimated I mean it was just like my sister and I so as you know two young girls We would sit there listening to these war stories every night after dinner. I mean I remember as a five-year-old hiding under the bed because I didn't want to hear any more war stories.

But now I thank them for telling me those war stories and being that open about it. Because I think it's those you know tales of toughness and tenacity that really helped make me who I am. And my mom was also adamant about speaking to high school groups. She would go out there a lot and was very painful for her, very painful for her to talk about that, but she knew she had to keep those stories alive. Okay, I'm gonna take you to your teenage years here and I'm going to show you a picture. And I want you to tell me, at a Ronnie Hawkins concert in 1969, who is this girl in the yellow top and what is she doing on stage? Wow, well darling, it wasn't merely a Ronnie Hawkins concert.

This was the, they called it the first Toronto pop festival at Varsity Stadium in 1969 in the summer. There were 60,000 people there. I got a ticket to go with my girlfriend Esther. I decided that this would be a good place to flaunt my stuff. I always wanted to be famous. Can I tell you? You don't say. I just did. Ever since I was a little kid. I grew up with TV.

I wanted to be like Lucille Ball or Captain Kangaroo. That's all I ever wanted. I always thought I could get discovered. I actually had already started working professionally as an actress the year before when I was 16. Here I was 17, going to my first pop festival. I wore this little yellow bikini top that had little black pom-poms on it. I actually had a big yellow shirt that I wore over it.

When I got to my little spot on the ground because we sat right up near the stage and Ronnie Hawkins came on stage and started singing Hey Bo Diddley I just got up and I started booging my brains out because it was just a feel-good thing and all of a sudden Ronnie saw me and he points over to me you know it's like hey you come on up here and I'm thinking you're talking to me and my girlfriend Esther is going yes He's talking to you go and she's like pushing me to go and before I knew it these cops were helping me up on stage They put me up on stage. I whipped off my yellow shirt because I thought I've got a great little bikini top under here And I'm gonna shake those pop pops and I bikini top under here and I'm going to shake those pom poms.

And I started dancing my butt off and it was just, you know, my brush with greatness. You know, it was a wonderful, wonderful feeling. New music and fashion television were really groundbreaking shows when they came out and lasted for a long time. What role did you play in the development, in the producing, in the directing, in the whole nine yards of those shows?

Well, I had the incredible privilege of just being me and taking the ball and running with it. And under the leadership of the brilliant Moses Neimer, who was a total visionary, truly a genius, under the leadership of the brilliant Moses Neimer, who was a total visionary, truly a genius ahead of his time, and taught us all, all those that worked at CityTV, so much about the potential of this incredible medium, television.

For me, I was just, I got to be myself, which I thought was pretty cool. I got to play in a sandbox that no other kids had really had a chance to play in before in that way. So, you know, we were just flying by the seat of our pants, but, you know, making it up as we went along. And, you know, again, I was fearless and I was tenacious and all those things that my parents taught me to be and I also had all this training in acting in

improvisation I was I was even a trained mime artist you know so I was aware of communicating in a theatrical kind of way that I think suited the medium. Sometimes maybe not so much. I had to maybe play it down a little bit, but I could have fun with it. I mean, there was a reverence to the way we did stuff that I think was quite welcome. And I never pretended to be anything that I wasn't.

I was a stranger in a strange land. I was always in that world, but I wasn't. I was a stranger in a strange land. I was always in that world, but I wasn't of that world and didn't pretend to be. So to be able to take viewers by the hand every week and show them what that scene was really like behind the velvet ropes, or blow away some of the smoke and mirrors, both in music and in fashion,

was really a great joy. You're going to interview Paul McCartney, and you gotta figure out, what am I gonna wear to an interview with Paul McCartney? How did you figure it out? Well, I thought, okay, Paul to me was my first love. I mean, I grew up with a poster of him over my bedroom wall.

I went to see the Beatles in 1963, I guess I was 13 years old. The second time they came, yeah. And I was just a total Beatle maniac. So when the opportunity to interview Paul McCartney came along, wow, it was just after he had done a film called Give My Regards to Broad Street, which wasn't really meeting with critical acclaim. But he was giving these junket interviews for the movie studio at the Plaza Hotel, you know, great place to go to meet a Beatle. And I thought, you know, what am I going to wear?

And I really had this romantic vision of Paul was just such a grounded guy. And so I thought, I'm going gonna wear this plaid flannel roots shirt so I could sort of look like the girl next door and I'll team up with these you know trendy big voluminous parachute pants and I have these edgy metal earrings on but I thought there was something comforting about this plaid flannel roots shirt which was you know ultimately Canadian too of course and I walked into the the interview and voila there was Paul looking like oh so gorgeous and he was wearing plaid a plaid shirt double plaid because he also

has a plaid blazer over the plaid shirt it was like this is Kismet we're talking the same sartorial language here. How did you end up interviewing Andy Summers of the police in a bathtub? Well initially when I first interviewed Andy Summers of the police, it was in the very early 80s when the police first came out and he was a very kind of naughty, very funny guy and I had the opportunity to go to his hotel room and interview him with my new music very kind of naughty, very funny guy. I had the opportunity to go to his hotel room and interview him with my new music cameraman. He suggested that, you know, let's do something really different here. Why don't I get into the bathtub?

You could interview me in the bathtub. I went, ooh, okay. So I sat on the side of the tub as Andy was in the tub. But he had a little bottle of bubble bath and he put it in the bathtub trying to hide his privates. He was wearing a t-shirt on top, nothing on the bottom. And partway through the interview the bubble starts to dissipate and you can kind of see his junk and it's like, ugh, get me out of here. But anyway, we did the interview. It made for dissipate and you can kind of see his junk and it's like, ugh, get me out of here. But anyway, we did the interview.

It made for great television and that was that. So fast forward like 20 odd years later and I'm at that point hosting fashion television. And how old was this one? I was like in my mid-50s. Okay. Mother of two And here I am Covering lots of photographers as well as we did on fashion television So Andy came out with this book a photography book because he was an avid photographer of great backstage shots And I thought wow we should have him on

Fashion television would be great to you know to meet up with him again after all these years. He said but this time Andy wants to get into the bathtub with her as well. Like she's got a guy, like what? So I'm like, whoa, I mean, on one hand, it's like this is gonna make for great television. My producers would love it, this is so great, but how am I ever gonna do this at my age?

Am I gonna get into any kind of a bathing suit and get into a bathtub with a rock star? My mother, of course, was like, don't do it, are you crazy, who does such a thing? But I went to the shoot with a giant bottle of Mr. Bubble because I knew if we were gonna get into a tub, we'd have to have lots of bubbles. It was just the best interview.

He was going on about the meaning of art and life. And we had ordered cosmos from room service. And Andy lit up a big fat joint, you know, before it was legal. And he takes a big toke and he's sipping his cosmos. And he throws his hair back and his hair gets on fire. The little votive just ignited his hair and Isaac screamed as I dropped the microphone. Oh, for f***ing sake, did we get that on camera?

I thank God we weren't electrocuted and that was the story. And then we just resumed after that. That's the positive side of an interaction with a rock star Mm-hmm. There's another story where the interaction wasn't so positive Iggy Pop you really went after him Hard and gave him H e double hockey sticks. What happened there? Well, I mean I went after him hard

What do you mean? Well, I mean he started to get very obnoxious with you. Obnoxious. And you told him to basically... Yeah, I just wrapped it, I think, in a very cool, calm and collected way. I wasn't going to stand for that crap anymore. A few months before this interview opportunity with Iggy Pop cropped up, I was at a festival called Heatwave with him, and he was really coming on to me and he was being very you know friendly to me and we got along really well and I knew

that Iggy could be very difficult so my producer was thrilled that I managed to get some great sound bites from him and so then a few months rolled by and I'm at my parents house at a Friday night and I'm over there having a Friday night dinner dressed very conservatively I mean that's the thing I've always seen And I'm at my parents' house on a Friday night, and I'm over there having a Friday night dinner, dressed very conservatively. I mean, that's the thing, I've always seen clothing as costume, I guess, in a way. So you always sort of want to dress

according to the act that you're going to be appearing in. So we know at my parents' house, of course, I would, you know, wore very conservative, I remember the olive green suede pants and a little red cashmere sweater. It was the 80s, I'd gone there in my big fox fur coat, never would wear that now, but hey, it was the 80s. So I was there having a very pleasant late night dinner with my parents and I get a call

for my producer, John Martin Martin the late great genius John Martin Always you know is putting me up to things Okay, we just got a call from Iggy Pops people and he will give you an interview If you go down to the Danforth music hall where he's just wrapping up his show I said John I haven't seen the show I feel awful just like parachuting in at the last minute to say like, no, no, no, he's gonna give you the interview and I know you'll get a good interview with him. Just go, go, go.

So I was like, ugh. So I drive down, this is probably after midnight by this point, and I get to the Danforth Music Hall. I go down to the basement where the dressing room is and I walk in and I was the only female there, as was often the case back in the day my cameraman met me there and the whole room was just filled with guys who were knocking back you know paper cups filled with Jack Daniels like

getting an Iggy of course sitting in the corner holding court they just come off the set you know and so it was it was bad I guess the way I made my entrance at that big Fox fur coat and dressed like, you know, so chicly for my parents' dinner. And he didn't, it seemed like he didn't really recognize me at all, but I said, hi Iggy. You know, and I just sat down and we started talking and he said something about he was writing this book and I stupidly, wrong choice of words. I said, oh is this your first Attempt at writing and that he just he went attempt attempt

Oh, I've got more talent than you could ever imagine and I and he just started becoming very abusive with me I think he was probably posturing in front of like all these guys like who is this bourgeoisie chick? I'm gonna show her her place. I'm honoring you. You're honoring me? Yeah. I don't think so. Oh, well.

And I was just so appalled. And I have never walked out of an interview in all my career. And I've been interviewing people since the mid 70s. And you know, to this day, never shut down an interview. But I thought, wow. And I just stood up. I said, okay, I'm out of here.

Gee, Iggy. He went, oh, I'm sure you can do a good cut up job with this. You'll be able to do something with it. And I just left. I was mortified because, of course, it made for great television to have the great Iggy Pop putting me down. And I had a lot of detractors back in those days too. A lot of people who just didn't give me much credibility. They just thought, you know, she doesn't probably deserve that job to be interviewing these rock stars anyway.

And they were, you know, all these guys I'm sure were rubbing their hands and glee that Iggy had put me down and my Producer John of course was thrilled with the footage and he put it on TV And I had all these people like you know Ah, Iggy Pop really put Jeannie in her place, and I was so embarrassed And I just felt dreadful about it and then the thing ended up on YouTube, and it sounded like thousands of views But recently I went back to look at that interview and the way I you know handled it I thought damn pretty proud of myself you know there was I was just probably you know

early 30s at that point and you know I had the confidence to stand up to someone like that you know and on camera and just say I'm out of here so I'm really proud of myself so in that way you know, on camera and just say, I'm out of here. So I'm really proud of myself. So in that way, you know, it did end up being a great life lesson for sure. And an interview that in a crazy kind of way, I am proud of. Linda Evangelista, the supermodel who wrote the forward for your book. She said you were the first person to actually want to get the views of the models and not just the designers.

Where do you think that came from? Well, I mean, it was the views of the models and not just the designers. Where do you think that came from? Well, I mean it was the age of the supermodel and they were the leading ladies, the designers were like the directors and these gals were their leading ladies. So of course we wanted to give them a chance to say something and happily back in those days a lot of those gals really did have something to say they were great personalities They were encouraged to be great personalities the area of the supermodel I mean it became a little bit different, you know as the years went by and you know models should maybe be seen and not heard and people didn't really

Care about them the way they cared about them during those early years because they didn't want them to overshadow the clothing. Because in a way the supermodels became more interesting than the creations that were coming down the runway. Designers sort of didn't like that after a while. But I just always wanted to expose the humanity behind the artistry. And I did see many of these great models as performance artists. And I thought that, you know, they were caught up in such a crazy kind of world. They've got to have something interesting to say.

And they certainly did, so many of them. They were great. Okay. Let's talk about the scariest moment of your life. You got a cancer diagnosis. Did you know you were going to make it? No, how can you possibly know you're going to make it? Well you kept asking the doctor over and over, right? Am I going to make it?

I know, and of course they say, you know, oh yeah, you'll be okay, but then you know they're probably just saying that because how does anybody know if anybody's gonna be okay at any time? No matter what, you just don't. And you know, cancer is a funny thing because it manifests itself in different ways and in different, you know, extremes. And some people really manage to recover and some medications really work for some people and they absolutely don't work for others. Everyone's case is totally different.

That's one thing. You had surgery, you had surgery and chemo and radiation. Yeah, at first I had chemo to try and shrink the cancer. My doctor did explain that if I had chemo first, they could see whether the chemo was working. They could see whether the chemo was shrinking the tumor, you know, and that would be a good thing. Whereas if I just had the whole tumor out and then they gave me chemo, well, they wouldn't really know what the chemo was doing.

So I thought, okay, I'll be tough and opt for that. You know, of course, I asked my brilliant doctor at Princess Margaret Cancer Center, Dr. Aitanamir, you know, I said, you know, well, what would you tell your mother to do? What would you tell your sister to do? You know, and he said, well, you know, if it was me, yeah, maybe I'd go for the chemo first. So I said, okay. So I had 12 rounds of chemo that summer every week, you know, that's like three months.

And I went through that whole summer going down some rabbit holes every once in a while because I thought I've got this thing inside me and I can't wait to get it out, I can't wait for the surgery, but as I went for my regular checkups, they found that the tumor was shrinking, it was like a three centimeter tumor, which is pretty sizable that the tumor was shrinking. It was like a three centimeter tumor,

which is pretty sizable, but it was shrinking. By the time I had my surgery in the fall, the tumor had practically been eradicated, which was great. There was hardly anything left of it, so that was really good. But it was scary. It was the most extraordinary year of my life.

It made me a bigger, better, braver, wiser person for sure. No question. And I didn't see it as a test. Some people are like, oh, it's a universe testing me to see if I can make it through this. thought no, this is my chance to prove to myself that I'm all those things that I always said I was that I am fearless and that I am tenacious and I am gonna get through this and I made the very conscious decision

I was gonna live in the light and leave fear on the table. Because I did not, I just loved my life so much. Love it still, loved it, you know, back then as the stories prove. But I just figured I love my life so much I don't want to let fear rob me of, even if I only had, God forbid, six months to live, I want to live in the light. There is a picture of you in the book getting treatment and you've got the biggest smile on your face like you're about to go off to Disneyland or something like that.

Now you could have chosen any number of different pictures but you went for that one. Yeah. Well because I want to promote positivity. But you were being treated for cancer at that moment. Yeah, okay, but you can be positive about it. And how lucky that I could be treated for cancer. And how lucky that my cancer was found early. So it was not only treatable, but curable.

How lucky that I have a place, you know, like Princess Margaret and these doctors, I mean, and nurses and technicians and Everyone that works in that building are like bona fide angels How lucky that I'm you know that I live in Canada in a place where you can get that kind of treatment So yeah, there was so much to be positive about and how lucky that we're at this point in history Where you know the kind of cancer kind of breast cancer that I had if I would have that like 20 years ago would not because it was not it's not a great not that any kind of breast cancer you have is great but this one like I'm I'm triple positive you know like her to positive

is really you know it's it's a tough one so but thanks to this brilliant drug called Herceptin that was invented a little over 20 years ago, it really helps keep things at bay. How long are you cancer-free now? Well, I was diagnosed in May of 2022, and I had my surgery in October of 2022. And I finished radiation in the spring of 2023. So a while, not too long, but so far so good. You're 72 now? Yeah.

How's life? Good. It's good. Yeah, it's good. It's great. It's great in terms of The work that I love so much and I still get to do it and I just I love it Retirement is a dirty word to me. Like do not talk to me about that. Don't ask me about that I get very when people say to me, oh, are you retired now? It's like I am NOT

No, I just I love my work so much. I mean, obviously it doesn't even feel like work and it's very multifaceted and it's there's just so much variety in the stuff that I do. And I'm working on this big museum show that I'm co-curating that will open in 2026. It's all about my career at Calgary's Glenbow Museum called Obsession, the unscripted life

of Jeanne Becker. I mean, on one hand, I feel like a Mike, because I'm not a dinosaur. They're putting me in a museum. But on the other hand, you know, how wonderful to have reached that point where I can really share so much of what's happened to me in this magical, magical life of mine and try to encourage the next generation to dream and dream big and believe in their dreams and don't be afraid and never give up just like my parents taught me. Jeannie, you're blessed.

Thanks a lot for this. Oh, thank you. I'm blessed that I had you here asking me these questions. You're a brilliant interviewer. We're cutting that out. Thank you. I'm blessed that I had you here asking me these questions. You're a brilliant interviewer. We're cutting that out. Thank you so much.