Omaha FACES Story by Leo Adam Biga • Photos by minorwhitestudios.com
Ageless Elaine Jabenis
A
A creative for all seasons
ge is just a number to Elaine Jabenis. The always-in-vogue actress, writer,
producer, fashion director and host began her multi-faceted creative career during the second World War and she shows no signs of slowing down seven decades later. The Lifetime Achievement Award she accepted at the February Omaha Entertainment Awards, added to lifetime honors from the Omaha Community Playhouse and the Theatre Arts Guild, shouldn’t be construed as a swan song. Not for someone collaborating on her third musical with writing partner Karen Sokolof Javitch. 22
september/october • 2011
The pair’s previous works, Generation to Generation and Princess Diana, the Musical, have enjoyed local and regional productions. They’re now at work on a new show, Out to Lunch. Then there’s the new romance novel Jabenis is penning: The Beautiful Deceiver, available Fall 2012. She previously wrote a suspense novel. She’s also the author of two long-inprint fashion merchandising college textbooks. Her passion for creating things never stops. “It is a hunger. It’s something that drives me,” she says. “I just always want to express something. I don’t know where it comes from.” She may not know the source of her inspiration but she’s heeded the instinct as long as she can recall. Her first love, writing, saw her active on Omaha Central High’s newspaper, The Register. When it came to theater though, her shyness confined her to backstage. On the strength of a few journalism courses at Northwestern University and on a chutzpha-fed whim, she applied at the New York Times. To her astonishment, she got hired. There, she assisted legendary theater critic Brooks Atkinson. Under his tutelage she became a Broadway devotee. She says, “That’s where I really got the bug about theater. After awhile, something happened, and I didn’t want to be down there (in the audience), I wanted to be up there (on stage).” By the time she and her late husband, Mace Jabenis, married and started a family, she was back in Omaha, working in radio and television at WOW. She sometimes shared the air with future icon Johnny Carson — cutting commercials and co-hosting shows…all of it live. Then, in 1952, she finally mustered up the courage to audition at the old Playhouse. She lived across the street from it and she was a regular attendee. The place beckoned to her. She auditioned for a production of Father of the Bride and, to her amazement, she landed the lead actress part. “I just don’t know how that happened, but it happened, and I was off and running.”
continued on page 24 www.OmahaPublications.com