Good Morning POU!
The alleged Jackie Jackson and Paula Abdul situation is a wild story and according to Jermaine Jackson’s former common-law wife of 7 years, it’s also a very true story.
Only a select few of you are going to remember the Victory Tour of 1984, but it seemed like it was going to be the biggest things in the history of the (black) universe.
It was announced all over the radio, there were television commercials, contests to win tickets to go, and all sorts of cheesy 80s marketing campaigns to keep that tour top of mind.
Margaret Maldonado-Jackson, the former common law wife of Jermaine Jackson. In her book called “Jackson Family Values,” Maldonado has quite a few stories to tell. Including the “true” story about why Jackie Jackson wasn’t on the Victory Tour way back in the day.
According to Maldonado, Jackie’s wife, Enid caught him having an affair with Paula Abdul (at the time, a Laker Girl and would-be choreographer for Janet). Maldonado claims Jackie did little to keep it a secret during its long run. Well, in 1984, it came to a head when Jackie took Paula to a Drive-In theater in the LA area. Marlon’s wife, Carol, found out about it and told Enid and that’s when the heat got turned up.
She goes on to say, Enid drove to the theater and located Jackie and Paula and yanked ‘Ms. Straight Up’ out of the Range Rover by her hair and dragged her across the theater lot. Then Jackie tried to pull his wife away. He was still trying to help Paula when Enid got into her car and put it in reverse and ran into Jackie’s leg and broke it. All we kept hearing back in the day was Jackie broke his leg and would have to miss the tour because of a “car accident.” (well….technically, it was a car accident).
The broken leg kept Jackie from performing on the first half of the massive “Victory Tour.” Three years later, he and Enid divorced. Shortly afterwards, Enid had Jackie arrested for violating the terms of the divorce, by showing up to their former house together to use his home studio.
The teller of this incident, Margaret, is no longer with Jackie’s brother, Jermaine, but she and Jermaine have two children together and based on her book, she seems to have several stories to share about her former ‘in-laws.’