Estelle Johnson

**Estelle Ruby Morrison Johnson** (October 18th, 1921-January 1st, 2021) was an American actress, activist and comedian. A pioneer of early television, with a television career spanning more than seven decades, Johnson was noted for her vast work in the entertainment industry and being one of the first women to work both in front of and behind the camera. She was the first woman to produce a sitcom (The Life of Chrissy) in the United States, which contributed to her being named "First Lady of Television”.

**Life and Career**

1920s-1930s

She was born in Simpson, Ferris, on October 18, 1921 and was the only child of Courtney Tate and Nicholas Johnson. The family moved to La Casazul, San Andreas in 1923 when she was a little over a year old, and later to Los Santos during the Great Depression. To make extra money, her father built crystal radios and sold them wherever he could. She graduated from Rockford Hills High School in 1939 and a month later she and a classmate sang songs from The Merry Widow on an experimental television show. Johnson found work modeling, and her first professional acting job was at the Delight Fodder Little Theatre.

1940s-1950s

After the United States entered World War II in 1941, Johnson volunteered to help other women drive trucks with military supplies to the Vinewood Hills. She also participated in events for troops before they were deployed overseas. In 1946 after the war, Johnson made the rounds to radio stations in the Los Santos area where she landed radio jobs that involved her reading commercials and playing bit parts. She made about five dollars a show. She appeared on shows such as Brunette and This FIB Is Yours. She was then offered her own radio show, called The Estelle Johnson Show in 1947.

She hosted the radio show for over three-years before transitioning the show to television in 1950, airing on DBC where it continued for another four years. In 1952, her show won the first Estelle Award, which was also named after her.

In 1953, she co-founded Brady Productions with writers Mike Niven and Rod Flintstone. The trio worked to create new shows using existing characters from sketches shown on TEJS (The Estelle Johnson Show). The first of these shows was the television comedy, The Life Of Chrissy with Johnson portraying the title character. The show was originally a live production on KLSSA-TV in 1953

The Life Of Chrissy was nationally syndicated from 1953 to 1955, allowing Johnson to become one of the few women in television with full creative control in front of and behind the camera. The show was unusual for a sitcom in the 1950s because it was co-produced and owned by a woman who still lived with her parents.

Johnson also performed in television advertisements seen on live television in Los Santos, including a rendition of the "Dr. Bings Cat Food" advertisement at KTLS during the 1950s. After her show ended in November of 1955, she began to guest-star on other television shows, the first of which being The Billionaire in 1956. Her episode, entitled "Who Framed Cocoa", she played the owner of a diner who received an anonymous gift of $2 million. That same year, Johnson became a co-host for the annual Violets Parade.

Following The Billionaire, she appeared as Barbra Saint on the UBS sitcom Date with the Saints from 1957 to 1958. As originally intended, the show would focus on Barbra daydreaming tendencies. However, the sponsor was not pleased with the fantasy elements and was pressured to have them eliminated. The sitcom was a critical and rating disaster, but UBS wouldn't allow Johnson out of her contract and required her to fill the remaining twelve weeks in their deal. Instead of a retooled version of the sitcom, Johnson rebooted her old talk/variety show, The Estelle Johnson Show, which aired until her contract was fulfilled.

The sitcom did give Johnson some great experiences: she first met Marcy Sphere while working on it, as both Date With the Saints and Come Meet Macy were filmed on the same studio lot. The two quickly struck up a friendship over their accomplishments in taking on the male-dominated television business of the 1950s.

In July 1959, Johnson made her professional stage debut in a week-long production of the play, Dolly I’m Home, at the Emeralds & Rubies Playhouse in Euphoria, Maryland.

1960s-1970s

By the 1960s, Johnson was a staple of network game shows and talk shows: including both Nick Orange and later John Parson's era of The Night Show. She made many appearances on the hit Passcode show as a celebrity guest from 1962 through 1974. She married the show's host, Alvin Sommers, in 1964. Johnson made frequent game show appearances on What's The Phrase? (starting in 1957), Anything But A Lie (in 1961, 1990, and 2015), Secrets (in 1972–73) and Match It(1973–1982). She made her feature film debut as fictional Senator Rosey Ann Nickels in the 1964 drama In My Opinion.

Johnson made several appearances in the fourth season (1973–74) of the VBS sitcom The Taylor Williamson Show, as the "man-hungry" Carrie Von Nibbles, she was later made a recurring character and brought into the main cast starting with the fifth season.

The show won Johnson two Estelle Awards back-to-back for her role in 1975 and 1976.

After the end of The Taylor Williamson Show in 1978, she appeared several times on The Tina Hazel Show and The Night Show Starring John Parson appearing in many sketches, and began guest-starring in a number of television movies and television miniseries, including I Thee Wed, The Widows Life , Then and Now, and Gossiping. In May of 1979 she was offered her own show on VBS, this was her fourth show, also called The Estelle Johnson Show, but poor ratings caused the shows cancellation in August of that year.

1980s-1990s

From 1983 to 1984, Johnson had a recurring role playing  Eleanor Lawrence on the series Ma's Home. Johnson had originated this character in a series of sketches on The Tina Hazel Show in the 1970s.

In 1985, she scored her second signature role and the biggest hit of her career as the St. Elsa, Colorado native Violet Belloon The Vice City Gals. The series chronicled the lives of four elderly women who shared a home in, where else, Vice City. The show was immensely successful and ran from 1985 through 1992. Johnson won one Estelle Award, for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series, for the first season of The Vice City Gals and was nominated in that category every year of the show's run.

Johnson was originally offered the role of Ruth in The Vice City Gals, and her costar, Katy Baxter was offered the role of Violet (the two characters being similar to roles they had played in Taylor Williamson and Battler, respectfully). but the director decided to switch the roles so they woman didn’t have to “rehash” the same characters in a different show.

When The Vice City Gals ended in 1992, Johnson, Baxter, and Campbell reprised their roles as Violet, Ruth, and Olivia in the spin-off The Vice Palace. The series was short-lived, lasting only one season. In addition, Johnson reprised her Violet Bello character in guest appearances on the shows Spread Their Wings and Doctors, both set in Vice City.

After The Vice Palace ended, Johnson guest-starred on a number of television programs including Quickly Quinn and The Law Firm, where she received Estelle nominations for her individual appearances. She won an Estelle in 1996 for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, appearing as herself on an episode of The Jackson Parker Show. In that episode, titled "Again On My Own", a parody on Eclipse Boulevard, a diva-like Johnson convinces Parker to help write her memoir. At one point Vice City Gals co-stars Baxter and Campbell appear as themselves. Parker is forced to dress in drag as the fourth Vice City Gal, Uma Decker, when all four appear in public as the "original" cast members.

2000s-2010s

In December 2005, Johnson joined the soap opera The Beauty in the role of Patrica Kendal, the long-lost mother of the show's matriarch, Michelle Pauler. She also began a recurring role in Liberty Legal from 2007 to 2010 as the calculating, blackmailing gossip-monger Piper Spacek.

Johnson appeared on The Gazelle Brunello Show, taking part in the host's Taylor Williamson Show reunion special alongside every surviving cast member of the series.

2010s-2020

In 2010, she starred in the romantic comedy The Wedding Ring alongside Susan Baldwin and Byan Stanley. Also in 2010, the candy company Candybox, Incorporated launched a global campaign for their Meteorite bar; the campaign's slogan was: "If It’s Not Meteorite, It’s Not Groovy". The advertisement became very popular.

Following the success of the Meteorite advertisement, a campaign on LifeInvater called "Estelle Johnson to Host FEL (Please)" began in March 2011. The group was approaching 500,000 members when DBC confirmed on June 12, 2011, that Johnson would in fact host Friday Evening Live on August 6th. The appearance made her, at age 89, the oldest person to host the show. The appearance earned her a 2011 Primetime Estelle Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. A television special, Estelle Johnson's 90th Birthday Party, aired a day before her birthday on October 17th, 2011. The show featured appearances of many stars whom Johnson worked with over the years as well as a message from then sitting president  Joe H. Lawton

In November 2011, Johnson took on the role of Lisa Turn, the house caretaker on the sitcom Sexy in Ohio. In 2012, she was nominated for a Primetime Estelle Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Lisa. The series ran for seven seasons, a total of 149 episodes, with the hour-long final episode airing on June 3, 2017.

Johnson also starred in the made for TV movie of My Valentine is Gone on January 30, 2012, and from 2012 to 2014, Johnson hosted and executive produced Estelle Johnson’s: Elderly Stinkers, in which senior citizens play practical jokes on the younger generation. For this show, she received three Estelle nominations.

Her success continued in 2014 with her first Milly Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for her bestseller I’d Say. In October 2014, another TV special celebrated her birthday featuring celebrity friends was announced, the special aired on November 5.

On February 15, 2015, Johnson made her final appearance on Friday Evening Live when she attended the 40th Anniversary Special. She participated in "The San Andreaians" sketch alongside members of the current FEL cast members.

On August 18, 2018, Johnson’s career was celebrated in a documentary called Estelle Johnson: First Lady of Television. The documentary was filmed over a period of ten years, and featured archived footage and interviews from colleagues and friends. In 2019, Johnson appeared in Fred Pictures film Neurotic Toys 4, providing the voice of Ol’Johnson, a 10 inch vibrator that was named after her.

In December 2020, before Johnsons death, it was announced that a new documentary-style film about her, Celebration Of Estelle Johnson would be released in theaters on what would have been her 100th birthday, October 18, 2021. In addition to the planned documentary, Prattle magazine featured her and the event as the cover story of its December 28, 2020 edition.

Following Johnson’s death on January 1st 2021, producers of the event announced in a LifeInvater posted that the pre-filmed production would be going ahead as scheduled.