Green, Jo
Long-time CBC-TV host Jo Green was a keen Klondike Days booster, an accomplished musician and a dedicated volunteer.
Don Retson, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Wednesday, May 30, 2007
EDMONTON — Even when undergoing treatment for breast cancer, popular CBC television host Jo Green would always come into the local TV studios as cheerful as ever.
Armand Baril, program director of CBC TV back in the 1970s and 1980s, says Jo Green, as host and interviewer, took professionalism to a different level.
“Even when she was in pain and discomfort, you were never conscious of the fact when she was on air that she was suffering in any way,” recalls Baril.
“She was a pretty remarkable gal.”
Ms. Green died from asbestos-related cancer after a two-year fight on April 18. She was 76.
Baril was among several former CBC colleagues and others who paid tribute this week to a woman of immense charm, compassion and wit, who stayed young in spirit till the end.
Ms. Green’s 20-year TV career began with a series of fashion spots on CFRN.
Her first show for CBC was Ladies First, which began in 1963. Later programs were called Mainly for Women, Here’s Jo, Jo Green and Company and Midday.
She also did the commentary for numerous Klondike Days parades, and presented the Grey Cup parade nationally from Ottawa in 1967.
Robert Everett-Green of Toronto said his mother, who was married three times, embraced a large blended family and lived a double life in the 1970s as a TV celebrity and farm wife.
“She was a glamorous and practical woman who could dazzle an opera ball and milk a cow with equal ease,” he said.
Jennie Diment, who was head of make-up at CBC, said her close friend had a knack for extracting gems of information from visiting celebrity types who appeared on her various noon or mid- afternoon shows.
“She was very comfortable with everyone,” said Diment.
“I still remember Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, just stopping dead when she was interviewing him. He said: ‘Good grief! Why am I telling you all these things about my honeymoon?’ ”
Closely identified with Klondike Days, Ms. Green’s period costumes were the talk of the town.
“Her talents extended in so many directions,” said Diment, who believes Ms. Green’s costume creations were even more historically correct than those done for whoever happened to be playing the role of Klondike Kate.
Born Joan Hamlett in Berkhamsted, England, Ms. Green was enrolled in a convent boarding school in London after her parents divorced. At 16, she became a dancer at the Windmill, the London theatre memorialized by the film Mrs. Henderson Presents.
In the early 1950s, she came here with Robert Everett, her first husband, who worked for a construction company that built the previous City Hall. Ms. Green worked as a model.
Ms. Green’s second husband, Harlan Green, said his wife of 14 years was an extraordinary woman who could be “as sophisticated or frivolous as the occasion required,” and easily blended into his life as a farmer and flute player.
Green taught her to play the flute so she could play in the Cosmopolitan Band. After he taught her the recorder, the couple became the nucleus of the Plumbers Union.
For about 20 years, the unique recorder quartet produced a number of recordings and also did TV shows, toured Canada and performed concerts in New York and Cleveland.
“With an old school bus towing an old VW bus, the family — hers, mine and ours — we sometimes went on holidays,” recalled Harlan Green.
“She always had a menagerie of dogs, cats, birds, and even an alligator, so with pit stops for all, we were quite a procession.”
Dave Smiley, who produced Guess Again, a popular Alberta quiz show modelled after Front Page Challenge, said Ms. Green’s warmth and outgoing nature made her “absolutely ace perfect” as one of three regular panelists on that show.
“She had a heart of gold,” Smiley said. “She’d do anything for anybody.”
Also paying special tribute this week to his former CBC-TV colleague was ex-city councillor Larry Langley, who with Ms. Green co-hosted the popular Midday show in Edmonton.
“We had to stop doing Midday because the network came along and said we want that time slot, thank you very much. They even went so far as to take the title as well.”
In 1986, Ms. Green retired to Vancouver where she ran a successful annual lottery campaign for the Vancouver Opera, worked as a hospice volunteer and served as a hospital board member in Maple Ridge.
At age 70, she took up dragon-boat racing, competing in regattas in Canada, the United States and Europe.
Ms. Green is survived by her children Robert Everett-Green, Miranda Sparks and Eliza Carter, five step-children, numerous nieces, nephews and grandchildren and one great-grandson.
She was predeceased by her daughter Jane Everett Gellhaus, first husband Robert Everett and third husband Eric Moncur, a Scottish-born journalist and broadcast executive who served as CBC regional director in Alberta.
dretson@thejournal.canwest.com