‘Three’s Company’ star was 76 years old

Suzanne Somers, who rose to television stardom on the hit sitcoms “Three’s Company” and “Step by Step,” and made a personal fortune as a health and fitness saleswoman and author, has died, People magazine reports. reported. She was 76 years old.

“Suzanne Somers passed away peacefully at her home early on October 15th. She survived an aggressive form of breast cancer for more than 23 years,” Summers’ longtime publicist R. Khoury Hay said in a statement. said in a statement to People magazine on behalf of the actress’ family.

“Suzanne was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce and her immediate family,” the statement continued. “Her family came together to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th. In return, they celebrated her extraordinary life and thanked the millions of people who loved her dearly. I would like to thank my fans and followers.”

The buxom, leggy blonde first attracted attention in George Lucas’s hit 60s comedy-drama, where she rides a white Thunderbird to charm departing college freshman Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss). She played the role of an unknown beauty and attracted attention on the big screen with her small but eye-catching role. “American Graffiti” (1973).

After a series of bit roles in television and movies, Summers finally made it big in Hollywood in 1977. She was cast as one of the film’s two female leads after a difficult development period during which the producers were unable to decide on a new female lead. A thought-provoking new ABC comedy based on the successful British show ‘Man About the House’ (as well as earlier hits ‘All in the Family’ and ‘Sanford & Son’) He was the third successful pilot.

In “Three’s Company,” Somers plays Chrissy Snow, the quintessential “stupid blonde” who becomes the roommate of smart and level-headed Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt) in a cheap Santa Monica apartment. John Ritter, the best-known of the three stars, was the highest-paid actor to play Jack Tripper, a culinary school student who takes advantage of a cheap hotel, but decides to buy a gay man to appease the girls’ disapproving landlord. I had to pretend. For mixed gender tenants.

“Three’s Company,” which provided viewers with a steady diet of improbable developments, Ritter’s nonsense, and ambiguous humor, seasoned with Somers’ hilarious, decorative, and often revealing presence, began in 1977. In its first full season, it rose to No. 3 in the U.S. ratings. 78.

In a retrospective feature for the Television Academy Foundation, “‘Three’s Company’ entered the television world in the midst of television’s ‘Jiggle Era’, which began in 1976 with ABC’s ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ and was in the midst of the sexual revolution and swing “It was the media’s reaction to the single.” . Although apolitical in its content, Three’s Company was the first sitcom to deal with the sexual implications and frustrations of coed life, which in 1977 was still considered taboo. In the minds of many people, cohabitation between a man and a woman is by no means harmless, and will only bring about the obvious negative effects of premarital sex. ”

The show never stopped talking about sex, even though none of the main characters actually had sex, but its excitement kept it in the Nielsen Top 5 rankings until the beginning of the 1980 season. I continued to dig into it. However, the highly publicized business conflict at the beginning of season 5 was ultimately resolved with Summers leaving the show.

The actress requested a five-fold increase in her salary to $150,000 per episode and a 10% cut from the show’s profits. Ritter and DeWitt were furious, producer Michael Ross balked, and Summers’ role was eventually reduced to a weekly appearance. A short scene, staged as a phone call to Chrissy’s roommate, was shot separately. In the aftermath of the ’80-’81 season, she was removed from the show entirely, and Chrissy was replaced by other characters (and less difficult actors).

Summers was unable to make a successful transition to theatrical films, and concentrated on her singing career in Las Vegas immediately after “Three’s Company.” She worked for two seasons as the star of the syndicated sitcom She’s the Sheriff. In 1991, she returned to ABC in a new sitcom, where she starred opposite Patrick Duffy on Dallas, a former star of another hugely popular hit from the 70s and 80s.

“Step by Step” followed a sitcom blueprint as antique as “The Brady Bunch.” Duffy and Somers play a divorced contractor and a widowed hair salon owner who marry after a whirlwind romance and then struggle to merge two families of four children. Each had lived under the same roof from previous marriages. varietyJean Rosenbluth of “The Show” described the series as a “moderately funny and occasionally heartwarming show,” and its charm carried it through eight seasons, ending with one season on CBS from 1997 to 1998, when it jumped from ABC.

At that point, Summers was an extremely wealthy woman, running a personal multimillion-dollar business empire based on infomercials for the ubiquitous TV show “ThighMaster” (with her husband, former game show host Alan Hummel). (Director) was established. Summers says that when she began working on the development of “Step By Step,” she began using a simple muscle tightening device developed in Sweden, and she became a high-profile national spokesperson for the product. I did.

It was an instant hit. In 1992, Entertainment Weekly called it “the dirty little secret of the ’90s.” There’s no need to doubt the impact of this blue foam-covered device with a red plastic center. Look at the legs it gave Publicist Summers’ career. In the past year, since she started throwing with the Thighmaster, the 45-year-old Summers has returned to the kitschy hall of fame she occupied in the ’70s. ”

Summers and Hamel’s fortune continued to flourish after the couple bought out their financially struggling partners and assumed sole ownership of ThighMaster and its companion fitness product, ButtMaster. In a 2022 interview on the “Hollywood Raw” podcast, host Dax Holt laid out the numbers provided by Summers and estimated that he would have made $300 million from sales of the original equipment alone.

She made an industry out of herself, peddling health and beauty products on her website and home shopping network, and writing more than 20 books on health, aging, weight loss, and sex. (She also published her poetry collection.)

Her ideas about medicine were not always accepted by experts. Her use of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy as a treatment for menopause came under fire. After surviving stage II breast cancer in 2000, she promoted alternative medicine in her book Knockout, which drew criticism from the American Cancer Society.

Summers never completely abandoned show business, becoming the co-host of the venerable show “Candid Camera” in 1997, the Lifetime talk show “The Suzanne Show” in 2012 and the online talk show “The Suzanne Show” in 2012. He was the host of “Breaking Through”. She reconciled with her estranged “Three’s Company” co-star DeWitt. (She had reconciled with John Ritter at his hospital bedside before he died of heart disease in 2003.) She appeared on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2015.

Summers’ rise to fame was something of a far-fetched story, as her childhood was particularly difficult, difficult, and fractious. She recalled her checkered upbringing and family life in her unflinching 1988 memoir, Keeping Secrets, which became the basis for the 1991 ABC film, in which she starred. (David Burney played Harmel), (used material from the second episode) 1998’s autobiographical After the Fall), a short-lived one-woman show on Broadway called “The Blonde of the Thunderbirds.”

She was born Suzanne Marie Mahoney on October 16, 1946 in San Bruno, California. Her father, a day laborer, was an abusive alcoholic. Over time, her siblings, her sister Maureen, and her brothers Daniel and Michael also began to suffer from alcoholism. Dyslexic and raised in constant domestic turmoil, she was an underachiever at her Catholic school in the San Francisco Bay Area.

At age 19, she married her boyfriend Bruce Summers after becoming pregnant. Her only child, Bruce Jr., was born in 1965. Her husband found out that she was having an affair with a dramatic coach, and her marriage ended after three years.

Summers began her career as a model, and while working as a prize model on the San Francisco syndicated game show “The Anniversary Game,” she became romantically involved with and later married Canadian-born host Hamel. After she became pregnant by him, the two agreed that she should have an abortion, but their relationship would continue.

In 1971, her son, who had mental problems, was hit by a car and seriously injured. Struggling to pay her hospital bills, she participated in a test nude photoshoot for Playboy magazine (she filed a lawsuit over the unauthorized publication of her photo, and the magazine belatedly paid for it). Ta). Her mother and her son began seeing the same therapist to recover from personal trauma.

Summers made her film debut with a small role in Steve McQueen’s action vehicle Bullitt (1968), set in San Francisco. After relocating to her Hollywood home, she made television appearances on “The Rockford Files,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “The Love Boat,” “One Day at a Time,” and more. I did. Her film work includes Clint Eastwood’s second film in the Dirty Harry series, Magnum Force (1973), and the unsuccessful fourth film in Tom Laughlin’s series, Billy He had a small role in Jack Goes to Washington (1977).

When her career finally took off with “Three’s Company,” Hamel, now divorced, Summers finally married in 1977.