Photograph by Greg Rannells
Judee Sauget says she gets her energy from her husband, who’s “zoom, zoom, zoom.” A former Minor League Baseball player who’s been chair of the St. Clair County Public Building Commission for the past 27 years, Richard Sauget helped build the county courthouse, jail, and dog pound, not to mention MidAmerica Airport and Center Ethanol Co. He’s also president of baseball’s Frontier League and a director of two hospitals for the underserved, and his Grizzlies ballpark has become a national model. “So with him doing all that, I can’t just stay home and knit,” Judee says with a grin. She runs Zin-Graff Motion Pictures and volunteers in East St. Louis and invents products and brainstorms fundraisers and serves on commissions and throws parties, and nuns come to swim in her pool every afternoon. She exults in the lives of her five kids and nine grandkids (eight under 6), but she’s just as lively as they are, bored by complacency and habit, curious about everything.
How did you and Richard meet? None of the Saugets were Catholic, but his mother was an O’Leary, and she wanted Rich to go to Blessed Sacrament in Belleville. He came in sixth grade; I was in fifth.
Is it odd bearing your town’s name? Your husband’s the founder’s grandson, your son’s the mayor… Sometimes my sister calls and says something like, “Well, if you do it, everybody will think it’s right.” And I say, “What are you talking about?” I don’t ever think about it.
Surely there have to be some perks to being a Sauget in Sauget? Every time we went to New York, I’d call a place I didn’t think I’d get into—Studio 54, Club A, Sardi’s—this was back in the early ’80s—and they’d take us right through the ropes. I’d say, “Rich, isn’t this a lovely town? People are so kind.” And then I was reading W magazine, and it said the president of Cartier in New York was Claude Sauget. I was getting Claude’s tables!
I’m surprised you never ran into him! Well, I did have a maitre d’ say, “Oh, Mrs. Sauget, it will be so lovely to see you, your husband eats here all the time.” And I said, “He’d better not!”
Sauget was once the biggest industrial town in America. It started as the Village of Monsanto, right? Yes, and then they renamed it in 1968 to honor Rich’s grandfather. He and Mr. Queeny and Mr. Busch used to hunt together at Goose Lake. They decided to build a chemical works and then incorporated the village.
Your husband’s been responsible for the business park, the stadium, lots of brick and mortar all over the county. I always have to beg him not to give the Tour de Sewer—he talks about bond issues and sewer systems and says, “But Judee, you can’t have business without it!”
You also own Oliver’s Restaurant at the St. Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia? Nineteen years ago, Rich said, “Should we buy Oliver’s?” I said, “The only thing we know how to do in a restaurant is order.” So I called my sister, and she’s managed it ever since.
But you did your part in the beginning? Oh my God, I scrubbed floors and washed dishes and bused tables and redecorated three times. We’ve had everybody from Paul McCartney to Willie Nelson there. We gave Ollie North an Oliver’s T-shirt. Paul Newman used to come in all the time with his racing team. He was always sponsored by Budweiser, but he’d only drink Sam Adams.
You also volunteered at your kids’ schools. Mmmm. I started auctions, monitored recesses, helped the teachers… When J.J. was on his high-school football team, I even did the Mother’s Day event where we all had to learn how to play our sons’ positions. They took a picture of me in pigtails running through tires, and it got picked up all over the country. Then Good Morning America called, liking the novelty of it, and flew me to New York. I remember meeting Tony Orlando in the greenroom.
What was your next escapade? Well, when our girls were in college, I was worried about them, and I decided they needed a self-defense necklace. So I invented and patented one. Pepper Spray Gear. I designed it upside down, so if somebody grabbed it they only got the cap, and I put it on a stretchy cord so they could hold it up and spray it, and loaded it with a UV dye so you could ID the perp for a week afterward. The tubes were all wild designs, disco and leopard skin and stripes, and we sold them in college bookstores and beauty salons.
You even met with a big pepper-spray manufacturer, hoping he’d buy your idea. Yep. I told him that his were ugly, and that they were only sold in places women never went, like gun stores. He said he thought my product was the future—and I never heard from him again. I think he’s just waiting for my patent to run out!
You’ve always loved the arts, but what got you interested in making movies? I’d only gone to college for two years, so after the kids went off to college, I went back to SIU Edwardsville and majored in mass communications. The kids would call saying, “Oh, I’ve got this paper due and an exam tomorrow,” looking for sympathy, and I’d say, “I know what you mean!”
And by 2001, you had a short film at the St. Louis International Film Festival. That was because of my daughter, Jilanne Klaus. She’d majored in French and premed, and I thought she was heading to med school, and she called and said, “I’ve been accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts!” I said, “Oh really? What are you going to be, a French-speaking doctor on Days of Our Lives?” And would you believe, her first job was on Days.
She’s made several movies since, but you cast her in her first film, right? Well, she was out in L.A., and every day I was down on my knees praying she’d come home. One night we were sitting in the stands of the Grizzlies’ first, temporary stadium, and I thought, “You know, if I could make a movie about baseball, Jilanne would have to come home to star in it.”
Then she had to fly back again, for the film-festival gala. Yep, and I seated her next to a confirmed bachelor who was an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, and he was smitten, and the rest is history.
And just how much of this did you scheme ahead of time? Only a little. My whole life’s like this! Oh, but my real first film [she’s changing the subject] was the one I made as my school project.
Who starred in that one? Pudgy. He was my dog, part border collie, looked like Lassie with a prettier nose. The film was the life of a poor dog who’d been abandoned, so I had her walking down the railroad tracks by the levee. I taped a rock to her paw so she’d limp, and the music in the background was “Somewhere Out There”!
You’ve…er…grown as an artist. And now you’re finishing a documentary on sculptor Michael Dunbar? Casting Shadows. We should have that wrapped soon. He works in Springfield, Ill., and he makes these 25-foot-high steel sculptures. I met him when the governor invited me to be on the Art and Architecture Board. If the state of Illinois builds anything, we get 1 percent of that money. There will be a dedication soon for one we just put up at SWIC [Southwestern Illinois College]. It’s the first time neon has been used on that campus; we thought it was time to do something for the night students.
You took over Blueberry Hill to shoot a trailer for a ’40s romance you’re now shopping around. Is it hard to make connections in the film industry? Yes and no. I noticed nobody was talking to each other locally, so I said, “Let’s have a party and call it MIFI. Midwest Independent Film Initiative. We invited all the independent filmmakers to Oliver’s, expecting about 30, and 150 came. Everybody’s so hungry in the Midwest; they’re living on a shoestring, and they just work their tushes off.
You do, too, in East St. Louis. Yeah, I’ve been volunteering with Catholic Urban Programs for 20 years; I’m now the chair. We started with one tiny after-school center; now we have four, and a soup kitchen, and Holy Angels Homeless Shelter. In this economy, we’ve gone from feeding 300 families a month to feeding 800 a month.
I understand you even help lead field trips? [Burbling laughter.] Once we took two buses to Cahokia Mounds, and everybody was back on the buses except this one little girl. I said, “Honey, you’ve got to get back on the bus,” and she said, “I don’t wanna get on the bus,” and I’m gritting my teeth and saying, “Sweetheart, you’ve got to get on the bus,” and promising her popsicles, and Sr. Julia comes up and says, “Um…Judee? That’s not one of our kids!”
How’d you keep your own family in harmony, with five kids and two busy parents? Laughter got us through. [She pauses to describe some of her kids’ better pranks—and it’s a long list. Then she turns serious.] I don’t mean to be judgmental—but I don’t think a lot of parents try hard enough. They should all have to watch that nanny show on TV.
Is it the same secret for marriage? I think Rich keeps me around for comic relief. He always says, “I don’t tell blonde jokes, I live them!” But seriously: It’s putting that other person first and knowing he puts you first. You’re in his corner and he’s in yours, and it’s this great team that can’t be separated.
What’s it like when you cross over to the west side of the river—are people impressed or snooty? I’ve had it happen both ways. Once again, a sense of humor gets you through everything. People will say, “Where do you live?” and I’ll say, “In a beanfield.” Because it was 17 acres of beans before we built the house.
Which is now a six-bedroom mansion with a glass conservatory. The nuns loved the conservatory; they called it the Zen room until I turned it into the grandkids’ playroom! We camp there—I take the pillows from the chaises by the pool, and everybody has to sleep out there, including Papa, and we look at the stars. I say, “This is Mimi’s way of camping out: no bugs, air conditioning.”
It can’t be too air-conditioned; isn’t it supposed to be muggy for the plants? Oh, it’s air-conditioned. I’ve killed most of the plants!
