Tedi Thurman obit

Tedi Thurman Obituary

 She was not on the list.

After a long and colorful life, former cover girl and radio personality, Tedi Thurman, passed away peacefully on September 17, in Palm Springs, Calif. Born in Midville, Ga., Dorothy Ruth (Dot, to her family), was the youngest of the four children of Ben and Para Thurman. As a teenager, Tedi discovered a passion for art and drawing and went on to study at the University of Georgia before transferring to the Corcoran Institute in Washington, DC. Her plans soon changed, however, and she moved to New York City where she quickly found work as a model, represented by Ford Models. Tedi's image was soon seen on the covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. During an extended stay in France, Tedi also found work in Paris for Vogue and made a name for herself internationally. Her profile is featured on the opening page of Norman Mailer's Of Women and Their Elegance. To become an actress was her ultimate goal, and Tedi did have a featured role in Ed Wood's Jail Bait. It was on radio, though,that Tedi became most successful as "Miss Monitor' on NBC's Monitor show where she famously made national weather reports with her deep and sultry voice and always began with Atlanta in tribute to her Georgia roots. This led to a year long engagement as the weather girl on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar beginning in 1957. After retiring from radio and television, Tedi lived in New York for several years. In the 80s, Tedi relocated to California where she lived in Los Angeles and Palm Springs. From there, she traveled often and extensively. Tedi returned to Georgia many times in the last several years. Her family always enjoyed her stories of her youth in Midville, and also of the great and famous with whom she had rubbed shoulders. Tedi was preceded in death by her parents, her sister Vida Prevatt, her brothers Ben and Sidney Thurman, and niece Linda Waller. She is survived by her long time companion, Elke Schliwa, of Los Angeles and Palm Springs. A graveside service will be held in Georgia.

In 1957, Thurman appeared with Jack Paar on The Tonight Show, and TV Guide did a feature article, "Tedi Thurman: Weathergirl Supreme" that year. She also can be seen as Miss Monitor in the trailer for the movie Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957). Sammy Davis, Jr., hired Thurman to introduce him when he played Harrah's, Lake Tahoe, in April 1961. In "Fair-Weather Friends", Time (April 12, 1968) remembered Thurman.

Just about every TV station in the nation has its own weatherman nowadays, but the trouble with a great number of them is that they are cloudy and mostly windy. In the beginning, weathermen talked so much about 'occluded fronts' and 'thermal inversions' that viewers wondered if they shouldn't start building an ark in the backyard. Then came the era of fair-weather girls. Preoccupied with their own frontal systems, they postured before the weather maps in the latest gowns and spun out sultry spiels. NBCs Tedi Thurman used to peek from behind a shower curtain to coo: 'The temperature in New York is 46, and me, I'm 36-26-36.'

Thurman was interviewed about her life on Fire Island for Crayton Robey's documentary film When Ocean Meets Sky (2003). Edge editor Steve Weinstein, reviewing the film June 4, 2006, noted:

Robey traveled to Palm Springs to interview Tedi Thurman, the campy weather girl of Jack Paar’s "Tonight Show”, who had a stormy longtime relationship with Peggy Fears. Fears, a former Broadway vocalist and producer, built the original Yacht Club and the cinderblock hotel that still stands today, Ciel being its most recent incarnation.