Jean Bennett

Two People - One Goal

It began with a chance meeting

When Jean Bennett walked into the Hollywood office of Buck Ram, a  middle-aged songwriter and budding talent manager, two careers gelled.  By no means was Buck Ram a wannabe.  He was an already been with songs like "At Your Beck and Call," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and Ella Fitzgerald's "Chew Chew Chew Your Bubble Gum," under his belt.  He had arranged and/or written for Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington, as well as, writing scores for the Savoy and Tremont.  In the mid-40's he had moved to Hollywood to write for the movies.  It was not his forte, and he had lost momentum.  But by 1952 he had a new direction and was on the move again.

Jean was as motivated as Ram.  She had gone to secretarial school to support her singing habit, and worked for the Red Cross at Camp Crowder, Missouri, during World War II.  There she had met movie star handsome Corporal Elmer "Ben" Bennett.  They were married three months after meeting, and had a nine year old daughter when they moved to Los Angeles.  Jean was a wife, a mother and a singer, and she was ready to sing, but . . .

Ram represented country and pop singers.  Jean had a coloratura soprano voice, no costumes and no arrangements.  She needed to alter her style and put together an act.  At their first meeting, she and Ram talked long into the evening.  He suggested that he arrange a vocal coach for her.  In return she would do part-time secretarial work for him.  He also arranged a job interview for her with Gabbe, Heller & Lutz, the Public Relations firm that represented Liberace, Lawrence Welk and Freddy Martin.  When Jean left Ram's office that evening, neither of them had any way of knowing how far up the ladder of success in the music world they would climb or the many changes they would be a part of making in the music business and in American culture.

Jean cut her Public Relations teeth at Gabbe, Heller & Lutz.  She worked for Seymour Heller, and also reorganized the company's bookkeeping department.  Her part-time job quickly turned into a full-time office manager's position.  While there, she began writing The Personality Plugger, one of the first, if not the first, music industry newsletters.  She touted the acts of both Gabbe, Heller & Lutz and Buck Ram's roster.  Doing double duty would get her fired.  Next to meeting Ram, it was the best thing that could have happened to her.  She was free to concentrate all of her skills on Ram's acts, and she would become the instrument that took The Platters from just another singing group with a hit song to the #1 group of the '50s, and the most imitated group of all time.

On July 17, 1956,  Jean signed a contract with The Platters for her company, Personality Promotions, to do their publicity for the huge sum of $25 per week.

While Jean and Ram would work side by side until his death in 1991, in 1966 she bought Personality Productions from him, and it was she who signed the singer's checks from then on, not Ram.  Theirs was the perfect partnership in a budding industry.  Jean's true love was Public Relations.  Ram's was music.  The result was success.