Jean Bennett

From Missouri to Hollywood, Paris, and Around the World 

Jean Louise Million Bennett 

This site is dedicated to the life and accomplishments of Jean Bennett, one of the first and most important women in the music industry.  From prize winning singer in Carterville, Missouri, to the publicist who took The Platters to the top of the charts, life has been an E-ticket ride for this small town gal. 

Jean Louise Million was born on April 25, 1923, in Barnsdahl, Ohkahoma.  Her mother bathed her, dressed her and named her after her brother's daughter, Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner (aka Lana Turner), but within hours Jean's mother died from complications of giving birth.

Devastated, Jean's father took her to live with her Grandmother Turner in Webb City, Missouri.  It was a happy household filled with many cousins, aunts and uncles.  Jean would live with her grandmother Turner for the next two years. 

When Jean's father remarried, she went to live with him and her "new mother."  She was fortunate.  Alice Million was a very loving and devoted step-mother who supported Jean in all of her endeavors, especially her love of singing.  When Jean was in Junior High and wanted to enter a singing contest, Alice dipped into the household money to pay for a few singing lessons at the budget breaking price (at the time) of fifty cents each.  Jean won the contest and every one afterward. She was hooked on singing and determined to make it her career.  However, at her father's insistance, she went to secretarial school.  The skills she learned there, coupled with her love of music, would prove invaluable, and lead her to a career as one of the first women in the music industry.

Jean got her first job at the Red Cross where she wore an Army uniform.  One of her most rewarding responsibilities at the Red Cross was helping soldiers get home on leave and reuniting families.  Every day was different and left her with a feeling of accomplishment.

When her work day at the Red Cross was over, Jean would sing at the USO.  There she met Corporal Wilbur "Ben" Bennett from Michigan.  Hooked on love, they were married three months later.

After the war, the couple moved to L.A. with their daughter so that Jean could finally pursue her dream of singing.  However, fate would prove that her father's insistance on secretarial school had been a good decision.  The skills she learned there would pay off when she had a chance meeting with songwriter/talent manager, Buck Ram.  It wasn't what she had dreamed of, but her success would be phenomenal.

Ram agreed to represent Jean but said she needed to adapt her operatic vocal style to the pop market.  He asked her to do part-time secretarial work for him.  In exchanged he would get her a vocal coach.  Jean agreed.  That decision would lead to a business partnership that lasted until Ram's death, thirty-nine years later. 

Jean would never go back to singing.  Instead she would become one of the first women in the music business, beginning with a part-time postion with Gabbe, Heller & Lutz, the Public Relations firm that represented Liberace, Larence Welk and Freddy Martin.  That position quickly turned into a full-time office manager job while she still worked part-time for Ram.  She also began writing The Personality Plugger, a music industry newletter that touted both Gabbe, Heller & Lutz acts and Ram's roster. 

She eventually began to work full-time for Ram's Personality Productions.  In 1956, she formed her own public pelations company, Personality Promotions, and on July 17, 1956, was hired by The Five Platters, Inc. to be the Platters publicist for the whopping salary of $25 per week.

Jean would continue to work with the Platters their entire career, moving from publicist to manager to finally to owning the corporation, therefore, the group.*

Jean ran the offices of The Five Platters, Inc. and Personality Productions, Inc. in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago until she moved to Las Vegas in 1964.  She bought Personality Productions from Buck Ram in 1966.  However, there was a time when Jean came very close to leaving Personality and The Five Platters.   Art Talmadge of Mercury Records offered her a job.  They had lunch to discuss it, and Talmadge made an offer.  Jean was about to accept when Talmadge asked, "You do take dictation, don't you?"  Surprised by the question, Jean hesitated a moment before answering,  "No.  In my office I GIVE dictation."  That ended the conversation.

About the same time Jean bought Personality Productions, bogus Platters groups began to spring up around the world including a white group in Israel claiming to the "The Original Platters." Trademark law requires suit be filed against anyone infringing on a trademark.  Thus began thirty years of legal battles that have taken place in all corners of the globe.  The legal wrangling continues today demonstrating that when you create the success Jean Bennett, Buck Ram and The Platters did, there will always be someone who wants to take credit for your accomplishments - without doing the work.   The Platters are a prime example.  There  have been hundreds of singers, "managers," agents and rip-off artists who have preyed on the success of The Platters.

In 2008, seeing the name of the group she worked so hard to take to the top of the charts compromised to the point of absurdity, Jean stepped away and began a new company, Personality Plus Talent Management, that promotes talent for the baby-boomer generation.

* Unlike most of the groups of the '50s, The Platters were incorporated.  The singers were employees of the corporation.  As the original singers left, Jean and Ram bought their stock and continued the group as a marketing tool for Ram's songs.