Jackie Stallone, the matriarch of a celebrity family who became something of a celebrity in her own right as an astrologer, died on Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 98.
Her death was confirmed by Michelle Bega, a family spokeswoman.
Mrs. Stallone was best known as the mother of Sylvester Stallone, who starred in the Rocky and Rambo movies, and of Frank Stallone, a musician, singer-songwriter and film composer who, with Vince DiCola, wrote the 1980s hit song “Far from Over.”
But she had an entrepreneurial spirit, trying her hand at many careers — circus aerialist, chorus girl, wrestling promoter, gym owner — before gaining notice as an astrologer, writing “Starpower: An Astrological Guide to Super Success” (1989) and at one point drawing the attention of the society columnist Bob Morris of The New York Times.
“As she walked around the room with a psychic friend and a cocktail,” he wrote of her appearance at a charity benefit in Manhattan, “predictions were spinning out of her like food from a lidless Cuisinart.”
Mrs. Stallone was interviewed on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Larry King Live” and “The Howard Stern Show” and appeared in the British version of “Celebrity Big Brother.”
She is believed to have coined the term “rumpology,” which she defined on her website as “the art of reading the lines, crevices, dimples and folds of the buttocks” to understand a person’s character and predict one’s future.
Jacqueline Frances Labofish was born on Nov. 29, 1921, in Washington. Her mother, Jeanne Victoria Anne Clerec, was a Parisian socialite; her father, John Paul Labofish, was a lawyer. Charles Atlas, the famous bodybuilder, lived with the family and trained them in gymnastics, weight lifting and jogging.
At 15, Jackie ran away to join the Flying Wallendas act for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
“My father, who was a wealthy lawyer, wanted me to go to law school,” she told The Times of London in 2005. “But I wanted to be onstage.”
She was a chorus girl on Broadway for a time before returning to Washington, where she started an exercise program on a local TV station. Ahead of her time, she opened Barbella’s, a women-only gym, in the 1950s.
In the 1980s, she appeared as a trainer on “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling,” a television show that promoted women’s wrestling as mainstream entertainment (and inspired the 2017 Netflix drama “GLOW”). Mrs. Stallone finished high school in her 40s and attended a community college in Florida.
She married Frank Stallone Sr. in 1945 and had her sons with him. The marriage ended in divorce in 1957. So did her marriage in 1959 to Anthony Filiti, with whom she had a daughter, Toni. She married Stephen Levine in 1998.
In addition to her sons, she is survived by her husband; a sister, Renee Link; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Her daughter, Toni Ann D’Alto, an actress, died in 2012.
Mrs. Stallone was still active into her 90s, posting on her Instagram account as she tap danced, dressed up and exercised. And she continued to offer astrological services, with “rumpology” readings costing $300 per cheek.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
