Jule Campbell, editor behind Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, dead at 96

Jule Campbell, the creative mind and editor behind the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, died Nov. 19. She was 96.

>> Read more trending news

Campbell died Nov. 19 in Flemington, New Jersey, according to her obituary. Her granddaughter, Hannah Campbell, told The New York Times that the cause of death was complications of pneumonia.

Fans called the annual swimsuit issue a celebration of women’s bodies, while critics called it objectification. Either way, the issue annually generated buzz among its readers.

“Campbell championed women from the start of her professional career and revolutionized the fashion industry we know today,” Sports Illustrated wrote.

Campbell joined Sports Illustrated as an assistant and reporter in the magazine’s fashion department during the 1960s after working at Glamour, CNN reported.

The “sunshine issue,” as it would be nicknamed by Andre Laguerre, Sports Illustrated’s editor at the time, was invented to fill the editorial void of early winter, the Times reported. For an issue that ran the penultimate week of January 1964, the magazine featured a travel story about diving in the Caribbean Sea. For the cover, a model named Babette March was featured wearing a two-piece bathing suit, but Laguerre was not impressed.

Later that year, Laguerre spoke with Campbell. According to the Times, he asked her, “How would you like to go to some beautiful place and put a pretty girl on the cover?”

Campbell chose Sue Peterson, an 18-year-old model, and featured her on Sports Illustrated’s cover in late January 1965. Peterson was featured in a black, one-piece bathing suit, according to the newspaper. Inside the magazine were other images, including Peterson wearing a nude body stocking and a white fishnet jumpsuit.

“Middle America blew a gasket,” Michael MacCambridge wrote in his 1997 book, “The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine.”

The magazine was bombarded with letters, both complimentary and critical.

The first critical letter that made it to print, according to Sports Illustrated in its 50th-anniversary issue of the swimsuit issue in 2014, came from a resident in Columbia, South Carolina.

“I most certainly do not want such pictures coming into my home for my young teen-age son to ogle, much less myself,” the person wrote. “Think of the thousands of other youngsters around the country that you people are influencing, and don’t do this just for what may be financial gain.”

The swimsuit issue’s 1978 edition, featuring model Cheryl Tiegs on the cover wearing a white mesh swimsuit, reportedly broke records for the number of reader letters, CNN reported.

“We thought it was a throwaway photo,” Tiegs said of the image in a 2014 interview with the Naples Daily News in Florida.

Other models featured on the cover included Paulina Porizkova, Elle MacPherson, Carol Alt, Kathy Ireland and Christie Brinkley.

“Modeling is not the kind of job where you walk out on a stage and people cheer,” Brinkley said in an interview, according to the Times. “I was not aware of my burgeoning notoriety. But all of a sudden it was like, ‘Yo Christie, I love you girl!’ Jule knew what she wanted and what the public wanted. Yet she walked a fine line. She always kept it classy.”

“Jule and SI humanized models,” Ireland told Sports Illustrated in 2014. “With other magazines, our job description was to shut up and pose. What Jule did was give us a voice and an opportunity to speak.”

Models said the protests did not faze them.

“At the time, I paid pretty much zero notice to it,” Porizkova told the Times. “In retrospect, I think the protesters had a point, because of course it’s the objectification of women — an annual titillation issue, in a sports magazine for men -- but so is all modeling.”

Campbell retired in 1996. Her last issue featured Tyra Banks, the first Black model to appear on the magazine’s cover, CNN reported. Banks shared the cover with Argentinian model Valerie Mazza.

©2022 Cox Media Group