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National/ News/ Top Stories

Remembering Wallis Annenberg, lesbian philanthropist who did much for the LGBTQ+ community

The Advocate, Trudy Ring August 7, 2025

Wallis Annenberg, the Los Angeles-based philanthropist who died Monday at 86, is being remembered for her generosity to arts, culture, and wildlife. But most obituaries are not mentioning that she was a lesbian — albeit semi-closeted — and how much she did for LGBTQ+ and HIV and AIDS charities.

An exception is a Substack column written by L.A. journalist Karen Ocamb, who was in a relationship with Annenberg for two years. Ocamb also emailed remembrances of Annenberg to The Advocate.

“I met Wallis in 1986 when she was the speaker at a 12-Step meeting at Cedars-Sinai,” Ocamb wrote in the email. “Truthfully, my back was up because she was this rich heiress/TV Guide editor in the Beverly Hills ‘ladies-who-lunch’ crowd. What the hell could she say to me — especially in traumatized West Hollywood?

“But addiction is a great leveler, and I could feel the pain and loneliness under her sharp witticisms. I asked her to have lunch sometime — and that led to a two-year relationship at her Ridgecrest Estate.

“Wallis had been outed in court during her acrimonious divorce but was still doing performance heterosexuality, so we walked around as a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ couple. People whispered, but most fawned over her with their hand out.

“Others, however, especially in the 12-Step recovery community, knew how much she contributed quietly and publicly to struggling AIDS and LGBTQ+ organizations, such as Project Angel Food and Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing. Perhaps her most courageous contribution was agreeing to her friend Marylouise Oats’s request to cochair [AIDS Project Los Angeles’s] Commitment to Life dinner in 1985, right after Hollywood star Rock Hudson died of AIDS. Wallis called her friend Betty Ford, asking if the former first lady would be the gala honoree. Ford said yes. Wallis’s friend Elizabeth Taylor also agreed to cochair.” The event “raised $1.3 million,” and the stigma of even talking about AIDS started to lessen,” Ocamb noted. Annenberg’s friend Joan Rivers had tried to raise awareness about the disease, but it took Annenberg’s work to kick-start the effort. Taylor, for her part, went on to raise millions more to fight AIDS.

Ocamb ended the email by saying, “The last time I saw Wallis she was cochairing an event for her dear friend, out philanthropist David Bohnett, who I’d met before his beloved Rand Schrader died of AIDS. I was happy Wallis had such a kind friend who really liked her for herself.”

Wallis Annenberg was the daughter of Walter Annenberg, the head of Triangle Publications, parent company of TV Guide, Seventeen, and more. Wallis worked for TV Guide for 12 years, scoping out potential interview subjects, Ocamb noted in her Substack column. She left in 1991, three years after her father sold the company to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., as Walter Annenberg didn’t want to have family members take over the business.

“I expected to be the first to be let go, but Rupert Murdoch kept me on and fired all these executives of my father’s who used to treat me like I wasn’t there,” she told Vanity Fair in 2009. “And did I get a kick out of the worm turning.” 

She went on to work for the Annenberg Foundation for 20 years, “overseeing more than $3 billion in grants and donations,” Ocamb wrote, adding, “She broadened the foundation’s philanthropic scope beyond media, arts and education to include animal welfare, environmental conservation and healthcare, giving about $1.5 billion to thousands of organizations and nonprofits in Los Angeles County.”

Many praised her work for LGBTQ+ and AIDS organizations. “The extraordinary generosity of Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation sends a message of reassurance to elder gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people with lower incomes that they will not be forgotten,” Ocamb quoted Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing Executive Director Brian Neimark as saying.

She also quoted Bohnett, who said, “Wallis leaves a towering legacy, and her impact will be felt for generations to come. … Wallis had a great empathy for those less fortunate and spent her life trying to make the world a better place for everyone, including nature and wildlife.”

Ocamb added that when she heard of Annenberg’s death, “I imagined Joan [Rivers] and [celebrity florist} David Jones and Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan and Elizabeth Taylor and a slew of grateful gay people ushering her into a new world where she didn’t have to wonder if she was liked for her money or for herself.”

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