Jackie Stallone, the famed astrologer and mother of movie star Sylvester Stallone, has died. She was 98 years old. Her death was announced Tuesday by Frank Stallone, the singer-songwriter and younger brother of Sylvester, who shared that Jackie died in her sleep.
“This morning my brothers and I lost our mother Jackie Stallone,” Frank wrote in a Facebook post. “She was the mother to four children, Tommy, Sylvester, Frankie and my late sister Toni Ann. She was a remarkable woman working out everyday full of spunk and fearless . She died in her sleep as she had wished.”
He praised his mother as an “eccentric and flamboyant person” and shared details about her long, colorful life, growing up through Prohibition, the Great Depression, and World War II. “I would talk to her for hours about the 20’s 30’s and 40’s,” he wrote. “It was a history lesson. Her mind was as sharp as a razor till the day she died. She never wore a mask a true revolutionary gal.”
Jackie, born Jacqueline Frances Labofish in 1921, always had her eyes trained on becoming an entertainer. She ran away from home at 15 to become a circus aerialist, going on to work as a wrestling promoter for the original 1980s program GLOW, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (which later inspired Jenji Kohan’s Emmy-winning Netflix series). She transitioned to astrology in the late ’80s and ’90s, setting up a psychic hotline, and making appearances on television doing astrological readings and more outré activities such as what she called “rumpology”—an analysis of someone’s rear end. “I read it the same as a palm,” she once calmly explained in an interview with an intrigued Howard Stern.
Stallone later pivoted to reality fame, memorably appearing as a contestant on the third season of Celebrity Big Brother in 2005.
She married Frank Stallone Sr. in 1945, with whom she had two children, Sylvester and Frank. She remarried two more times and had another daughter, the late Toni D’Alto. In his Facebook post, Frank wrote that Stallone has left behind seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
“My brother Sylvester took care of her like a Queen for all of her life,” he wrote. “I will never be able to call my mom again or have her yell at me why I never got married . But we all loved her and her sprit to survive and prevail . I’ll miss you always mommy.”
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