Gertrude Gipson-Penland; L.A. Sentinel’s Entertainment Editor

Gertrude Gipson-Penland, a syndicated columnist and for many years the entertainment editor at the Los Angeles Sentinel, has died.

Penland died of pneumonia May 25 in Los Angeles. Throughout her decades-long career, she did not reveal her age.

A native of Orange, N.J., Penland came to Los Angeles as a child and attended local schools.

She began work for the California Eagle, one of the first African American newspapers, as a writer and entertainment editor. She later moved to the Sentinel, where she was the entertainment editor and wrote a popular column.

In the late 1950s, Penland and her husband, Elledge Penland, ran a Western Avenue nightclub called Night Life, which featured rising African American performers such as Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. She discovered Sir Lady Java, a female impersonator who was popular in the 1950s and ‘60s. Penland also worked as a publicist for artists such as Little Richard, Sam Cooke and Pryor.

She spent more than 30 years at the Sentinel, retiring in the early 1990s but continuing to write her column on Hollywood. Called “Gertrude Gipson’s Candid Comments,” the column was syndicated in more than 120 African American newspapers around the country.

She used her column to advocate increased job opportunities for blacks and other minorities in the entertainment industry. And she kept track of progress in that area in the column and on a hourlong daily program called “Hollywood Update” that ran for several years on KJLH, an Inglewood radio station.

She was the first woman and the first black to be appointed to the California Motion Picture Development Council by then-Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. She also served on the Los Angeles Film Advisory Commission, which was established in 1982 to help the motion picture industry cut through the red tape that often slowed or stymied film production.

Around town, she was a founder and onetime president of the Regalettes, a club that did social and charitable works in the African American community. In 1980, she was given the Image Award by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People for her community service. In her long career she also received awards from the National Assn. of Media Women, the Los Angeles chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the Sugar Ray Robinson Foundation Youth Award. Her work at the Sentinel was recognized five times by the National Newspaper Publishers Assn. as best entertainment section.

Her funeral June 1 at Good Shepherd Baptist Church 1 was attended by a who’s who of politicians and entertainers, including Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), City Atty. James K. Hahn, former state Sen. Diane Watson and school board member Barbara Boudreaux. Sidney Poitier, who is also the godfather of Penland’s daughter, Shonte Penland Abraham, headed the list of entertainers, which also included actress Marla Gibbs and singers Nancy Wilson, Lou Rawls, Linda Hopkins, Ernie Andrews and Frankie Beverly.

Waters, who spoke at the funeral, said that Gertrude Gipson-Penland was “our People magazine before there was People magazine.”

Her husband, a businessman, died in 1968. She is also survived by daughter Reve Gipson and a brother, Randolph Lomax.