If Farrah Fawcett-Majors was the queen of 1970s pin-up models, running a close second was another statuesque blonde in a red swimsuit, Loni Anderson. The TV/film actress, who rose to fame on the 1978-82 CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati and had a stormy six-year marriage to Burt Reynolds, passed away earlier this week at 79.
Born in 1945 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Loni Kaye Anderson (her father considered naming her Leilani but shortened it to avoid risqué variations) was a teenage veteran of the regional beauty pageant circuit, finishing as a runner-up in the 1964 Miss Minnesota contest. Turning to acting, she appeared as Billie in a local staging of Born Yesterday and later performed opposite Pat O’Brien, who suggested Loni try her luck in Hollywood.
Anderson’s film debut came in a bit part as a dance hall girl in the 1965 Steve McQueen western Nevada Smith. It wasn’t until a decade later, though, that she began turning up in TV guest spots on S.W.A.T., Police Woman, Barnaby Jones, The Bob Newhart Show, and other series. In 1976 she auditioned for the part of Chrissy on Three’s Company, losing out to Suzanne Somers. Loni’s breakout role came two years later in WKRP in Cincinnati. As Jennifer Marlowe, savvy receptionist for a small-time Ohio radio station whose new program manager (Gary Sandy) changes the format from MOR to Rock, Anderson’s performance deftly combined beauty and brains. It also earned her two Emmy and three Golden Globe nominations during the comedy’s four-season run.
During her WKRP tenure Loni starred as the ’50s screen sex goddess in the 1980 TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story, opposite a pre-Conan Arnold Schwarzenegger, and played a Nashville singer afraid a younger rival (Linda Hamilton) will steal her career and her man in 1982’s Country Gold. The following year Anderson co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Jim Nabors, and Ned Beatty in Hal Needham’s NASCAR comedy Stroker Ace, a box office misfire which earned the actress a pair of Razzie Award nominations. By this time, though, she and Reynolds were dating (they met on The Merv Griffin Show in 1981), and they would wed in 1988. Loni had a cameo in Steve Martin’s 1984 seriocomedy The Lonely Guy and joined hubby Burt to do voice work for the 1989 animated feature All Dogs Go to Heaven.
On the ’80s small screen, Anderson shifted from comedy to drama with ease, starring in remakes of A Letter to Three Wives, Three Coins in the Fountain, and Sorry, Wrong Number while voicing comic strip housewife Blondie Bumstead in a pair of animated specials co-produced by Marvel Productions. She co-starred in two short-lived series, the 1984 private eye drama Partners in Crime with Lynda Carter and the 1986 comedy Easy Street with Jack Elam. She even had a guest shot on Reynolds’ 1989-90 drama B.L. Stryker and reprised her Jennifer Marlowe role in two episodes of The New WKRP in Cincinnati in 1991-92.
After CBS nixed her plan to co-star with Reynolds on his 1990 sitcom Evening Shade (Marilu Henner got the job), Anderson would join the cast of NBC’s Nurses for its third and final season in 1993. She received favorable notices for her portrayal of ’30s comedy actress Thelma Todd in the 1991 TV biopic White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd. When it came to feature films, however, the ’90s were less than kind (Munchie or 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, anyone?). She was one of the better things in 1998’s A Night at the Roxbury, playing the mother of nightclubbing brothers Steve (Will Ferrell) and Doug (Chris Kattan) Butabi. It would be Loni’s last big-screen appearance.
Over the next two decades Anderson would step away from the spotlight, preferring to spend time with her family and fourth husband Bob Flick. Her autobiography, “My Life in High Heels,” was published in 1995, and her final TV performance came in the 2023 Yuletide tale Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas, co-starring with Linda Evans, Morgan Fairchild, Linda Gray, and Donna Mills. Loni passed away from what her publicist termed “an acute prolonged illness” on August 3rd, just two days shy of her 80th birthday.