Loni Kaye Anderson (born
August 5, 1945) is an
American
actress best known for her role as Jennifer Marlowe on the television sitcom
WKRP in Cincinnati and
as a former wife of Burt Reynolds
(from 1988–1993). Her divorce from Reynolds was a bitter,
well-publicized debacle.
Early life
Anderson
was born in St.
Paul
, Minnesota
, the daughter of Maxine Hazel (née Kallin), a
model, and Klaydon Carl "Andy" Anderson, an environmental
chemist. As she says in her autobiography,
My Life in
High Heels, her father was originally going to name her
"Leiloni", but then realized to his horror that when she got to her
teen years it was liable to be twisted into "
Lay Loni". So it was changed to just
plain "Loni".
Career
Anderson's most famous acting role came as receptionist Jennifer
Marlowe on
WKRP in Cincinnati. Her pinup photo in a bikini
became one of the best-selling wall posters of the 1970s. She and
Reynolds made one film together, the 1983 stock-car racing comedy
Stroker Ace, a huge box-office
failure.
Shortly after her divorce from Reynolds, she appeared as a regular
in the final season (1993–1994) on the
NBC
sitcom Nurses. Anderson portrayed actress
Jayne Mansfield in a made-for-TV
biopic with
Arnold
Schwarzenegger as her husband, Mickey Hargitay. She teamed with
Lynda Carter in a 1984 television
series,
Partners in
Crime.
Anderson made a series of
cameo
appearances on television shows in the late 1990s and early
2000s, such as the Spellmans' "witch-trash" cousin on
Sabrina, the Teenage
Witch and Vallery Irons' mother on
V.I.P..
Personal life
Anderson has been married four times; her first three marriages
were to: Bruce Hasselberg (1964–1966), Ross Bickell (1973–1981),
and actor (and one-time co-star)
Burt
Reynolds (1988–1993). On May 17, 2008, Anderson married
musician Bob Flick, one of the founding members of the folk band
The Brothers Four. The couple had
met at a movie premiere in Anderson's native Minneapolis a few
years after Flick's group hit #2 on the pop charts with
"Greenfields" in 1960. The ceremony was attended by friends and
family, including son Quinton Reynolds.
She has
two children: a daughter, Deidra Hoffman (from her first marriage),
who is a school administrator in California
; and a son, Quinton Anderson Reynolds (born August
31, 1988), whom she and Burt Reynolds adopted.
Her autobiography,
My Life in High Heels, was published in
1997.
Filmography
Selected television work
- WKRP in Cincinnati
(1978–1982)
- The Incredible
Hulk, "Of Guilt, Models and Murder" [1.5], March 24, 1978
(playing "Sheila Cantrell")
- Three's Company,
"Coffee, Tea, or Jack" [2.25], May 16, 1978 (playing "Susan
Wallace")
- Partners in Crime
(1984)
- A Letter to Three
Wives (1985)
- Easy Street
(1986)
- Blondie and Dagwood
(1987, voice)
- Too Good to Be
True (1988)
- Sorry, Wrong Number
(1989)
- Nurses (cast member
from 1993 to 1994)
- Without
Warning (1994)
- The Mullets
(2003–2004)
- So NoTORIous (2006)
References
- According to the State of Minnesota. Minnesota Birth Index,
1935–2002. At Ancestry.com
- http://www.filmreference.com/film/55/Loni-Anderson.html
- "Deidre Hall's Miracle." The American Surrogacy
Center, Inc., 1996, retrieved September 7, 2006
- BURT AND LONI, AND BABY MAKES GLEE (The Philadelphia
Inquirer – September 3, 1988)
External links