1971 Jackson 5 Fan Club Report: Part 2

Yesterday I posted the copy of the 1971 Jackson 5 Fan Club report that I bought as part of an eBay lot. The stuff in the lot had belonged to Joe Jackson, and most of it turned out to be a lot of uninteresting photos of Joe from the 1990s, as well as photos of singers who had contacted him as a possible manager. There were some miscellaneous documents, a script for an obscure movie that had nothing to do with the Jackson family, some family pictures that were of interest to me, and a dozen or so audiotapes in an obsolete professional format I cannot play. (Someday I'll get around to finding a way to play them. Just in case.)

Among all the miscellaneous trash-bin candidates in the lot I had won was a yellowed copy of the Jackson Five Fan Club Report from 1971. La Toya Jackson's name was written on the front with a purple Flair pen, followed by a colon.

Had the fan club report belonged to her? Had she written her name on it so no one else could claim it? The colon after her name is curious. Had someone started to write her a note, and then had either an interruption or a change of mind? I picture the report lying on the kitchen counter at Hayvenhurst, next to the telephone.

The back of the report was clearly used to take notes during a phone call. Someone -- probably Mrs. Jackson -- had made a phone call to International Canine Services, and had used the fan club report for note taking.


The Jacksons owned German Shepherds that were used as guard dogs to keep adoring fans at bay -- ironically, the same adoring fans who would lap up the details in these sorts of fan club reports. We see how much it would have cost to train their three dogs, Heavy, Black Girl, and Duke, in obedience, and two, Heavy and Black Girl, as attack dogs, and how long said training would take. Those are the kinds of details you wouldn't have found in Tiger Beat magazine, although you would have found many photos of Michael posing with one of his beloved family guard dogs.