Passing of Chicago Gossip Columnist Ann Gerber Marks End of Era

CHICAGO, IL -- Ann Gerber, who dished out the dirt in Chicago’s longest running gossip column, if not the country, died Tuesday. She was reported to be in her mid-nineties, but like any true lady, she never divulged her age and depending on who was doing the asking, it fluctuated.

Gerber was an old-school gossip columnist who knew where all the bodies were buried and what they were wearing -- or not wearing. Her column ran for over 65 years, mostly from the storied Lerner Newspaper chain that in its heyday published 56 community newspapers that covered the Near North, North and Northwest Sides.

Petite, jeweled, and blond, Gerber showed up at every opening and every society event well into her eighties. Although she had ceased writing her column last year due to complications from Parkinson’s disease, she remained busy with various projects. At the time of her death she was working on a book which was being shopped to publishers -- Life, Love and Sex Chicago Style.

“Ann Gerber represented a tremendous institutional memory,” said former Lerner executive editor Leigh Hanlon. “She was a consummate professional and a formidable writer. She never turned in not enough copy. We could have filled an entire paper with Ann Gerber.”

Gerber told Michigan Avenue Magazine that she had always wanted to be a writer. While a student at Senn High School, Gerber was 16 when she began her writing career at Lerner Newspapers. By 17, she was promoted to editor. She watched Clark Gable drink six bourbons for lunch at the old Pump Room, and turned down a 30-year-old Marlon Brando for a date. .

Her column became the lifeblood of Lerner’s Skyline Newspaper that catered to the tony Gold Coast crowd, but was just as much at home next to the aldermanic shenanigans and pothole coverage of the chain’s neighborhood newspapers.

A sharp social observer, Gerber’s columns dished out a buffet of catty comments, juicy celebrity gossip and delicious blind items. She was also the go-to columnist if you wanted to promote a charitable benefit. If it wasn’t in Gerber’s column, it didn’t happen.

“I specifically remember a blind item -- I won’t name the celebrity -- that said ‘pretty blankety blank of Dynasty seen dining at Gibson’s has much larger breasts than in previous visits to our city,’” Hanlon recalled. “She didn’t care whether your cake was done or not, she was going to put frosting on it.”

It was such a blind item that caused her to part ways with the Chicago Sun-Times in 1989, when she put into print an oft-circulated rumor about Oprah Winfrey and long-time boyfriend Stedman Graham. Gerber insisted that Winfrey had never called the newspaper to complain and never harbored hard feelings. The two ran into each other at RL restaurant in 2011.

"She came over and said, ‘Ann, you look great,’” Gerber told Michigan Avenue Magazine in a 2012 interview. “I told her she looked great, too, and we shook hands."

Gerber returned to her beloved Skyline, where floating around the newsroom was a file folder marked “A Treasury of Ann Gerber Deletions.”

“It was stuff that Ann was not permitted to put in her column,” Hanlon said. “I think any gossip column is bordering on bad taste. She didn’t aim to please, she just aimed.”

Gerber’s frequent lunch companion in her later years, former Lerner colleague Jack Bess, recalled Gerber as direct, down to earth and witty, who could sometimes be sharp in her comments..

“She made you feel alert and engaged and ready to be shocked by the next thing she said,” Bess said. “She was open to talking about anything except her illness. She was very focused on her projects. She wanted to keep active and writing.”

In the end, Gerber never set out to destroy the socialites and celebrities she wrote about. "I don't try to judge people ... I would never want to disrupt a family, marriage or anyone's job."

Her former Lerner colleagues -- and there were many -- remember her generosity, kindness, and love for dogs and liberal causes.

“Ann was really a trailblazer back when got into business,” Hanlon said. “You you can only imagine the crap that a petite, attractive blond woman in her early twenties took in a male dominated newsroom, but she toughed it out in an industry that wasn’t too welcoming. She was in it for the long haul

Gerber leaves her husband of 50 years, Bernard Kaplan, who recently celebrated his 100th birthday.