Rosalind Jarrett ’69 is Executive in Charge of Publicity for the Screen Actors Guild Awards® and has contributed to expanding the audiences for the SAG Awards telecasts on TNT and TBS since 1999. She has lectured on entertainment public relations at UCLA, USC, NYU and Loyola Marymount University. She was formerly director of program publicity, west coast for the ABC Television Network Group. She is the current Aquathlon World Champion in her Age Group and will compete as a member of Team USA in the 2009 International Triathlon Union Age Group World Championships in Triathlon and Aquathlon in Gold Coast, Australia in September.
Rosalind will be teaching a workshop at UBC2C Hollywood entitled, The Changing World of Entertainment News Media, which includes a behind-the-scenes visit to Variety.
Q1: What was the last project you added to your resume? The Screen Actors Guild Awards®, for which I’ve been in charge of publicity since 1999.
Q2: What was your first job in the industry? My first career was in arts administration. In 1978, I was able to parlay my experience with the arts media into my first industry job – as a publicist handling primarily cultural programming and editing the log listings for Los Angeles Public Television Station KCET/28.
Q3: Who were your mentor/s? My first mentor was Eric Larrabee, former UB Provost of the Faculty of Arts and Letters. In my junior year I approached him to create a joint major in Theatre and English (UB’s first) for me. Not only did he champion my request, but he created and mentored my senior honors project-a study of public support of the arts. After he became executive director of the New York State Council on the Arts in 1970, he made it possible for me to join the Council’s Special Programs staff. In 1976, I was working under Darlene Neel, manager of the famed Bella Lewitzky Dance Company in Los Angeles. The company was to premiere “Inscape,” the first collaboration between groundbreaking choreographer Lewitzky and iconic fashion designer and former dancer Rudi Gernreich, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center-the first time a modern dance company had ever performed on the Chandler stage. I was asked to take on the publicity campaign and it was Rudi Gernreich, the subject himself of so much media attention in the ‘60′s, who taught me the fine points of writing a press release. At the ABC Television Network, where I spent 13 years, my mentor was Bob Wright, Vice President of Public Relations on the West Coast. Sadly, all of them are now gone. I’m grateful for all that they taught me and with 20/20 hindsight know I could have learned even more had I fully realized the gifts that were being given so generously.
Q4: What did you study while a student at UB? Primarily English and Theatre, supplemented by some terrific courses in Film and Art History.
Q5: What’s your favorite memory of UB? There’s not one favorite memory, but I look back most fondly on the many hours spent in student theatre productions, first as a production stage manager and then as an actor; and on the hours spent in the Norton Union viewing classic and contemporary films, a passion I still follow to this day.
Q6: If you could go back to UB now as a student what course would you take? I would endeavor to be accepted in UB’s brilliant Arts Management Masters Program, which, under the direction of innovator Ruth Bereson, combines courses in the College of Arts & Sciences, School of Management and School of Law, as well as priceless summer study abroad. And I’d take courses in the new Journalism Certificate Program under the direction of Jody Kleinberg Biehl.
Q7: What’s the last book you read? My reading for pleasure is done primarily by listening to audio books on my car’s CD player (we spend a lot of time driving in Los Angeles). I just finished “The Kite Runner,” read by the author, Khaled Hossein and I’ve just started listening to J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” read by the incomparable Jim Dale, in anticipation of the film version’s premiere this summer. On the printed page, I just finished “The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats” by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a gift from my youngest nephew in appreciation of his feline ‘cousins.’
Q8: What would you be doing if you weren’t working in the entertainment industry? Traveling the world and training for triathlons full-time.
Q9: What was the smartest career decision you ever made? Moving from New York City to Los Angeles, where I made the shift from working in the arts to working in the entertainment industry. New York City and UB gave me an invaluable intellectual and cultural foundation, which I treasure, but I came fully alive in Southern California.
Q10: What would you still like to accomplish career-wise? To see the Screen Actors Guild Awards® on the front page of the New York Times as we have for the Los Angeles Times (yes, I still believe in the importance of newspapers).
Q11: Can you offer any advice for people breaking into the industry? Join the professional organizations in the field you wish to enter, and then volunteer enthusiastically for the organizations’ committees and projects. Not only will you get terrific hands-on experience under the direction of leaders in your desired field, but you will have an opportunity to showcase your talent and to become known for your creativity and hard work. Take advantage of educational programs like UBC2C HOLLYWOOD, which also provide superb networking opportunities. If you’ve identified a company you’d like to work for, be open to more job possibilities than those that fit your dream job description. It is often easier to move within an organization than to come in from the outside. Ours can be a tough business, with many strong personalities. Maintain your sense of humor, don’t take things personally, and most importantly, treat everyone you encounter with courtesy and respect.
