St. John was born Jill Arlyn Oppenheim at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles on August 19, 1940, to Edward Oppenheim, a restaurateur from Brooklyn, and his philanthropist wife Betty (née Goldberg), from Philadelphia.[1][2][3] She has no siblings, but grew up with many cousins, her mother being one of eight surviving children and her father one of three.[4] St. John's parents married in 1934.[5] Her maternal grandparents were Russian, of partial Jewish descent, while her paternal great-great-grandparents emigrated from Hessen, Germany and Amsterdam.[6][7][8][9]
Raised in Encino, St. John was a member of the Children's Ballet Company with Natalie Wood and Stefanie Powers.[10][11] All three would later marry or co-star with actor Robert Wagner. When she was 13, her stage mother Betty changed Jill's last name to the more marketable St. John.[10]
Career
Child actress
St. John made her stage debut at age five in The Conspiracy at Geller's Theater Workshop on January 31, 1946.[12] Her television debut came two years later, when she joined the cast of Sandy Dreams, a musical fantasy series for children featuring Richard Beymer. In December 1949, she played Missie Cratchit in The Christmas Carol, one of the earliest filmed adaptations of Charles Dickens' classic 1843 story. Shot in kinescope, it is a rare example of a 1940s live TV broadcast still surviving in entirety.[13]
She attended Powers Professional School and received her high school diploma from Hollywood Professional School in the spring of 1955 at age 14.[10] With a reported IQ of 162, at age 15 St. John enrolled at UCLA's Extension School.[10]
St. John appeared in the first and second episodes of the television series Batman as the Riddler's moll Molly. She became the first character to die in an episode of Batman in that second episode. She was also in an episode of The Big Valley at that time.
Universal reprise
Wagner and St. John in How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1967)
In 1966, she said "My goal is to be at a point where I have so proved myself as an actress that I can be more discriminating in the roles I choose. I want to be able to choose the parts I know I can do next."[21] St. John nearly landed a starring role in The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), which instead went to Sharon Tate.[22]
St. John achieved her biggest success starring as diamond smuggler Tiffany Case, the love interest of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), opposite Sean Connery. She was the first American to play a Bond girl.[23] The character Tiffany is argumentative, abrasive, loud, and brash when compared to previous Bond girls who were more demure; film scholars have inferred that she is meant to be a stereotypical commentary on American women.[24]
In 1972, St. John appeared alongside Oliver Reed in the British crime drama Sitting Target. After the shoot wrapped, she took a break from her career. She later explained that "two pictures in a row was exhausting... I decided I needed a new way of life."[25]
In 1981, following a decade-long sabbatical in Aspen, Colorado, St. John made Hollywood her primary residence again. "I really don't have to work," she said of her return. "But you know what? I got bored."[27] St. John did the TV movies Two Guys from Muck (1982) and Rooster (1982) and was top-billed in the feature The Concrete Jungle (1982), a woman in prison film in which she played Warden Fletcher. She had a small role in The Act (1983).
During 1983–1984, she starred with Dennis Weaver on the short-lived soap opera Emerald Point N.A.S., in which she played Deanna Kinkaid, Thomas Mallory's conniving former sister-in-law. It also starred another former Bond girl, Maud Adams.
In 1996, they started appearing together on stage in a national touring production of Love Letters.[28]
In 1997, the couple appeared together at the end of "The Yada Yada" episode of the television sitcom Seinfeld.
St. John appeared without Wagner in Out There (1995) and The Trip (2002).
In 2014, St. John played Mrs. Claus in the TV movie Northpole alongside Wagner, who played the part of Santa Claus. The film marked her first acting role after a 12-year absence from the screen. She has since officially retired from acting, but remains involved in civic activities.[29]
Avocation
In 1972, St. John largely left Hollywood behind and moved to Aspen, where she focused on personal interests and cooking. She is among the celebrities credited with increasing the popularity of the town along with Goldie Hawn and Jack Nicholson.[30]
Her interest in cooking eventually led to her becoming a culinary personality, appearing in monthly cooking segments on ABC-TV's Good Morning America and her writing a column in USA Weekend magazine through the 1980s. This culminated in authoring The Jill St. John Cookbook (1987), a collection of healthy recipes and some anecdotes.[31]
St. John also developed a handmade Angora sweater business, and became interested in orchid growing, skiing, hiking, river rafting, camping, and gardening. In 1987, she said "I'm a mountain gal now. I love the outdoors and I love harvesting and using fresh vegetables and herbs."[31]
She is founder of the Aunts Club, a Rancho Mirage-based group of women who contribute at least $1,000 per year to provide financial support for a child.[33][34]
Politics
St. John ran unsuccessfully in 2023 for a board seat on the Aspen Fire Department.[35] She is a Republican.[36]
Personal life
St. John has been married four times. Her husbands:
Neil Dubin (May 12, 1957 – July 3, 1958; divorced) St. John was 16 years old when they eloped to Yuma, Arizona.[lower-alpha 1] Dubin was heir to a linen fortune. St. John complained that he harassed and ridiculed her.[37]
Lance Reventlow (March 24, 1960 – October 30, 1963; divorced) Reventlow was the son of Barbara Hutton, heir to the F. W. Woolworth fortune. St. John received a settlement of $86,000.[39] Despite their divorce and subsequent remarriages, she refers to Reventlow as "my late husband" in interviews.[40]
Jack Jones (October 14, 1967 – February 28, 1969; divorced) Jones said demands on his singing career and the involved traveling contributed to the breakup.[10]
Robert Wagner (May 26, 1990 – present) The couple first met in 1959 when they were contract players at 20th Century Fox, and have been together since Valentine's Day[41] 1982.[42]
St. John has also had amorous relationships with criminal court judge Jerome M. Becker, ski instructor Ricky Head, Olympic ski champion Brownie Barnes, plastic surgeon Steven Zax, investment broker Lenny Ross, Chicago businessman Delbert W. Coleman and Brazilian entrepreneur Francisco "Baby" Pignatari.[48][49][50][51] She was engaged to Miami real estate developer Robert Blum in 1974, but called off the engagement.[10]
In 2007, Wagner and St. John sold the Brentwood ranchette they'd lived on since 1983 for a reported $14 million and relocated full-time to Aspen.[52][53]
Mutual animosity between St. John and her husband's former sister-in-law, actress Lana Wood, extends back to 1971, when Sean Connery was simultaneously involved with both women during the filming of Diamonds Are Forever. The pair's half-century feud has been highlighted by two well-documented public altercations: one in September 1999, when St. John refused to be photographed with Wood at a Bond girl reunion for Vanity Fair magazine,[54][55] and another in February 2016, when Wood crashed an event honoring St. John in Palm Springs and confronted Wagner over the reopened homicide case of her sister Natalie,[56] who drowned in 1981 while yachting with Wagner off the coast of Santa Catalina Island.
↑ Because St. John was a minor, concern arose whether the Arizona ceremony was legal.[37] To ensure the validity of the marriage, Dubin's parents insisted on a Los Angeles wedding, which took place 11 days after they eloped, on May 23.[38]
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↑ "Stardust Row". Hollywood Citizen-News. January 26, 1946. p. 13.
↑ Guida, Fred (2000). A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations: A Critical Examination of Dickens's Story and Its Productions on Screen and Television. McFarland. p.179. ISBN0786407387.
↑ Field, Matthew; Chowdhury, Ajay (2015). Some Kind of Hero: The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films. The History Press. p.254. ISBN9780750966504.
↑ Brady, James (February 26, 1982). "A new romance for Jill St. John?". The Buffalo News. p. 19.
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