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| 1946-2023 |
Creating her was actually intellectual. How do I make her likable and loveable? ...Dumb blondes are annoying. I gave her a moral code. I imagined it was the childhood I would've liked to have had.
--Suzanne Somers, on her Three's Company character Chrissy Snow.
Hello Kirk, As so often, you are honoring someone that I never really knew or have seen perform. I cannot therefore comment about Somers' acting career or persona, but I just read her Wikipedia article, and she appears as a kind of a nut--especially when espousing unproven, alternative theories to treat serious situations/illnesses. However, after reading about her early life, I was impressed by her spunk and early acting successes after such a horrible home life, that I am sure would have crushed many other people.
ReplyDelete--Jim
Jim, one reason I no longer do the kind of obituaries that encompasses the entirety of an artist's life is because what the person was best at tends to get drowned out by all the extracurricular activities. When I hear the name Suzanne Somers, I think not of quack health theories but of Chrissy Snow in Three's Company. Having already been ably, even superbly, rendered by the likes of Thelma Todd, Jean Harlow, Judy Holiday, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Goldie Hawn, you'd think the dumb blond persona would have been pretty much exhausted by 1977 when Company first went on the air. But Somers managed give the tired old stereotype a shot of adrenalin, thoroughly rejuvenating it. It may be the one quack cure of hers that actually worked!
DeleteI'm glad you brought up her dysfunctional upbringing, Jim. As you can see by the quote, it did have an effect on her art.
RIP Suzanne Somers. She was so brave and so right to fight for salary parity with John Ritter in the 1980s. It cost her the role of Chrissy Snow, but she struck a real blow for women. She deserved whatever success she found after that sit-com too, although she was mocked for her endorsements of things like Thigh Master.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think, Debra, she struck that blow while playing a girly-girl on TV!
DeleteIt's possible to connect the numbers with a line without crossing over itself. It's a convoluted plan but it works.
ReplyDeleteYou referring to that diagram, Mike? It's an illustration of the Stanislavski acting technique, often referred to as "The Method". I don't know if Somers considered herself a method actor, but judging by her own comment, she "created" a new kind of dumb blonde, rather than just take the easy way out and mimic Judy Holiday or Goldie Hawn. That old Russian thespian Konstantan would have approved.
DeleteI've spelled it Judy Holiday twice. It's actually Judy Holliday, two L's.
DeleteStood up for herself and lost the battle, but won her own war and proved herself to have real talent.
ReplyDeleteShow biz may even be more cutthroat than the other kind of biz, Mitchell.
DeleteJust adored her on Three's Company as Chrissy Snow. I stopped watching soon after she left. Terrible how she was treated especially of all by Joyce DeWitt.
ReplyDeleteMaddie, Somers and DeWitt eventually settled their differences, and the latter has expressed her condolences in a public comment.
DeleteYes, I saw that on a news segment...but Dewitt should be ashamed to let 30 years pass and the "no talking treatment", all because Sommers had the balls to want equal financial treatment. Had not been for Sommers, that show might not have been what it was.
DeleteHere's hoping Richard Klein treated her better.
DeleteHere's one cast member who didn't hold a grudge. Let me set it up. Before she was let go permanently, there was a spate of shows where Somers was seen only at the very end, talking on a phone. Here's some support she got on the set during one of those visits:
Delete"Yet, Don [Knotts] empathized with Somers, who was, in his view, being punished for seeking a raise, a scenario Don himself had experienced a decade earlier with the producers of The Andy Griffith Show. He didn't like the way the rest of the cast was shunning her. One day, he strode up to John [Ritter] and Joyce and said, 'Excuse me, I'm going to talk to Suzanne.' Later, Don traveled to Las Vegas to help Somers launch her solo act."
--Daniel de Visé, Andy & Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show
Thanks for that tidbit Kirk! That is nice. Don Knotts always gave me the willies with his crazy eyes, but I always enjoyed him. Yes, it was shocking the treatment she got from everyone, including Ritter. I wonder if it was because they all knew she was really "the act" people tuned in for? Jealous a bit? I mean I loved the show for her and the Ropers alone. And let's face it...her replacements Jamie Lee Harrison and Pricilla Barnes never really caught on like Sommers, though Barnes much more then Harrison.
DeleteMaddie, if I'd known you were such a Suzanne Somers fan, I think I would have put much more effort into this post than I did. I very much appreciate your enthusiasm.
DeleteI do have to confess that John Ritter's skills as a physical comedian kept me watching the show long after the sex farce plots began repeating themselves. And of course
Don Knotts was no slouch in that area, so seeing Ritter and Knotts perform together could be a treat, though overall I have a slight preference for the Ropers. But that's just my opinion. People watched the show for all kinds of reasons.
Speaking of the Ropers, I loved Norman Fell break-the-fourth-wall smile every time he threw a wisecrack Helen's way. If fact, the smiles were often funnier than the wisecracks themselves.
RIP...she truly is amazing, memorable and brilliant!
ReplyDeleteThank you, JM.
DeleteHello again, I was just looking up the end of Serial Mom to append to another blog comment (the white shoes), and had forgotten about Somers' cameo ("this is my bad side!") at the very end of the movie. Obviously Somers' perky persona must have been truly ingrained for in audiences for John Waters to incorporate it, using her real name, as the climax of his film:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YYw55WUyKw&pp=ygUTc2VyYWlsIG1vbSBiYWQgc2lkZQ%3D%3D
--Jim
Jim, I forgot about the cameo, too. Somers tongue-in-cheek glamour was just right for that movie. Her 1970s TV sex symbol rival Farrah Fawcet wouldn't have been as effective. She took herself much too seriously.
Delete