Episode 017: Remembering Suzanne Somers

In this episode, Frank remembers the life of Suzanne Somers.  Well known for her role as Chrissy on Three's Company, she died one day before her 77th birthday after a long battle with breast cancer.

Frank reviews her career and mentions some of his favorite episodes starring Chrissy, then discusses at length a couple of incidents including her salary dispute with the Three's Company brass.  He also discusses some trivia and what he was hoping to see at the next show reunion.

The theme song is called Retro Funk by SoulProdMusic and can be found at pixabay.com.

--The best way to contact is:
Twitter: @frankwebertx
Web:  frankwebertx.com
Email:  frankoweber@hotmail.com

Transcript

Frank: 0:00

All right, in this episode, I'm going to pay tribute to Suzanne Summers, as you know, Chrissy from Three's Company. She just lost a long time battle with breast cancer and we'll be talking about her for the entire show. So stay tuned Well, hello once again to the party. It's your host Frank Weber I'm so glad that you could join me once again today on this show Kind of doing something a little bit differently. I actually Rearrange my schedule or my plan for shows to come out here pretty soon. I, record this on October 16th. So yesterday on the 15th, we got news that Suzanne Summers, who played the beloved Chrissy from the beloved show threes company that I'm a big fan of passed away. from along, kind of off and on battle with breast cancer, and that was a day before her 77th birthday. So today, on October 16th, she would have turned 77, but she was apparently surrounded by family and, they are celebrating her life, today as we speak. So I am meeting you today with the A bit of a heavy heart, but we'll try to keep this as light hearted as possible and discuss a lot of things about her life and career. it was very varied and interesting to say the least and, I'm a little disappointed in one way because, Suzanne didn't really participate, to my knowledge, in any of the Three's Company reunions, which I'm sure there have been several over the years, partly, I guess because of the dispute that she had, over her salary, led to a dispute with John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt for a number of years, she, made up with both of them, though. I was hoping that everybody who's still alive would be around for the 50th anniversary in 2027 and, would have liked to have seen her there, So a lot of you know already that I'm a bit more of a Terry fan. You know, Priscilla Barnes fan who took over. permanently for Suzanne Summers in 1981. But, they're all family. We all, a lot of us, let them all into our home for many years. And so they were like family to us. I like Chrissy a lot. I think Suzanne played a tremendous Chrissy I even asked one time, when I was maybe three or four, Watching, the show as it was new with my older half brother and half sister and wondering what happened to Chrissy. And I think my older half brother went into an explanation for it, that she wanted more money and got fired I have some interesting stories to tell about him, by the way, especially when we watched the old Bill Bixby Incredible Hulk. But anyway, I don't want to get off on, too much of a tangent, but I like Chrissy too. I think she was a unique character. Suzanne played her to a tee. the story there was that there was something like 200 girls that tried out for that role in 1976, including Priscilla Barnes. but the role went to Suzanne Summers. She wound up playing largely a ditzy blonde on the show. a lot of lines were especially written for her. An interesting sequence to see her go through those first four or five seasons. Her hair actually got blonder as the series went along. she was beautiful. She embodied jiggly television in several episodes there with TNA and breasts bouncing up and down and everything, which I never thought was... sexist like a lot of people think. I mean after all John Ritter occasionally didn't have a shirt on or his shirt was open or he was in his underwear and in one episode I think they even said a scrotum was showing but she was a unique character and played that well and had a great career beyond that show that we'll get into here. So let me go and get into a little bit of a bio here. She was born October 16th, 1946 in San Bruno, California, San Francisco area, for an Irish family, I believe. she married a guy named Bruce Summers and was married to him for a few years in the 60s. They had a child, Bruce Jr. That was her only child that she had. And then of course, she met Alan Hamill in 1969. He was a Canadian game show host. Also did some commercials, especially out west for an old grocery chain named Skaggs Alpha Beta. Seems like a really nice guy, and so she married him eventually in 1977 and they have been together ever since. Before I get into some of her acting credits, and I'm not entirely certain on the exact timing of this, her biggest break it seemed was becoming a semi-regular player on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson doing comedy skits or singing or one of the many different things that she did over the years, later on in variety shows. For example, when Johnny. Carson takes notice of you. There's a good chance that you're going to become a big star, whether it's in standup or acting or whatever. And he did that and she benefited greatly from that. Was a regular on that show for quite a few years, in fact. she got into acting, had a lot of small roles. there was The scene in Bullet, I think she had already been found dead. She had been strangled in that movie, and, then, Magnum Force, she was the topless pool girl. Got shot in the middle of the chest. Kind of gruesome there. I think it was by Tim Matheson. I'm not 100 percent on that, but that was the Vigilante cop movie. And then she was the blonde in the Thunderbird in American Graffiti. Did a number TV shows other than movies like Starsky and Hutch was on there two or three times and 6 million man played a villain on that show. Also a love interest of Steve Austin was on the first ever episode of the love boat, the first ever hour long episode and yet never returned to do another spot on that show. And then she spent, as far as air dates go officially 1977 to 1981 on three's company. But by that last season, And the salary dispute, which I'll get into a little bit later in the show. Uh, I think she wound up having only two full episodes in the fifth season, missed at least one, didn't even show up, and then was brought back for some others, where it looked like she was phoning in remotely. Her character was actually from Fresno and had a minister father, if you recall, and then she was eventually fired at the end of that fifth season. And she did a lot of, uh, Vegas shows. I think she was doing a lot of them even during Three's Company. And, some of them she tried to do Chrissy And the producers and the show owners, of course, of Three's Company didn't like that very much. And she had a hard time getting back into TV and acting. She did have a couple of Playboy pictorials. one of them was some older pics in 1980. And then a new pictorial in 1984. And, then she eventually did get back into TV full time on a TV show called she's the sheriff, which Priscilla also has a connection to. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. I think those are, those are the two most interesting stories, but. That TV series was not a big success. It didn't last more than two seasons. and then she found new stardom in the nineties on a show called step by step, which my brother Tom personally hated. I don't know if he still does or not. I watched it once not too long ago. It was okay, but she was on there, sort of a. Brady bunch type show where they had children from previous marriages presumably and they bonded together as one family. But she was on that show with Patrick Duffy who had just ended on Dallas. And then Stacy Keenan was one of the children as well. She was on my two dads, if you recall, and Stacy Keenan, in fact, went a really. Difficult and trying job, especially nowadays. But, I kind of thought, Suzanne was most beautiful on step-by-step. one of those ladies that got better looking with age, if you will, as far as attractiveness goes. And she probably wasn't quite as blonde as the later Chrissy days by then. But, in the nineties of course, that was also when she started doing the Thigh master commercials. I can't remember what exactly what her saying was on those, but, I know Jay Leno and probably some others made jokes about it looked like she was having sex with the Thighmaster or something. We always, joke about crazy stuff like that, crazy shit, But, uh, that step by step was on for a while, from like 91 to 98. And after that, she did various things, wrote a lot of books, mostly about alternative diets and health advice. she did write a book of poetry that was somewhat older. she, incidentally, just as me as a dentist, Suzanne was known as not being a big fan of water fluoridation. I can tell you that too much of anything is unhealthy, but you know, things in the right amounts like water fluoridation should be healthy. Okay. That's what I've been told and what I've read up on, and then she did a number of other shows, guest spots on talk shows, her own talk show for a little while that, Joyce DeWitt visited once in 2012 and they appeared, to make up for their. Conflicts over the years before I mean that was at the time over 30 years since Suzanne had left the show And of course, you know, she has a lot of family now extended family Started fighting the breast cancer in the year 2000 and like a lot of times with cancer sometimes you feel like you have it beat and everything is going fine and and then it comes back and didn't know she had been sick as of late, but, uh, that's, the news that we got, yesterday and very saddened by it. I like Susanna a lot. she has a big fan base, in general, but also on three's company. And like I said, there's different tastes and different preferences about which girl was your favorite. some people like Janet the most. You know, I like Terry the most, a few people like, Cindy, played by Jenna Lee Harrison, and a lot of people like Chrissy, and so, that's, variety is the spice of life, I guess you could say in that regard. a couple of interesting subjects that I'm going to get into here. So I don't think I told this earlier. I don't know how many people knew this or not. It's not really that important, but she was the oldest of not just the original trio, but all the roommates. I can't remember exactly how much older she was for John Ritter. Now if you count Richard Kline who played Larry, who was not really a roommate, you know, but was a neighbor, Richard Kline's a couple years older than she is. that's just a little bit of a trivia there. But as far as favorite episodes, Go, the easiest answer to that would be as far as acting and stealing the show would be the show called Chrissy's hospitality where she hit her head and had everybody worried that she was dying, especially Jack and Janet. Probably Mr. Furley as well, but, she was in the hospital cracking everybody up. it's a very classic episode. It actually came right after the camping episode, Camping We Will Go, which is also great. But she didn't have quite as big a role in that one. And then, of course, another one that I really liked was, I believe was called Handcuffed Together, where Jack and Chrissy are... Accidentally handcuffed and they have to stay that way for several hours and have a lot of problems and dilemmas of that including a funny scene at the regal beagle trying to negotiate that situation in the the bar there And like I said, I think she was very attractive beautiful They had the jiggly TV, especially on the original opening when Janet poured water on her and she was in her bathing suit There was another one where Chrissy and Jack and Larry were in a, I think a Moroccan restaurant and there was a belly dancer. Actually, Mr. Roper was there too, and he was enamored with the belly dancer, and she was making some funny moves, and I think at the end of that show was the joke about, Jack trying to fix the phone, and she said it wasn't for him, or something like that, it was really funny, and she had a lot of specially written lines for her, And then when she had the dispute in season five, a lot of those lines went to either Larry or Mr. Furley. But, those were a couple of my very favorite episodes of hers. A lot of great memories. obviously the time when she was on the show, her years were a little bit different than Terry's years. Not just because they were different characters, but I think the times were changing a little bit. I'm always amazed at how the clothing and hair and music styles changed fairly quickly in that show over eight seasons from the late seventies to basically the mid eighties. but then let's go ahead and Talk about a couple of things here before we close it up. I always wanted to talk about the contract dispute. If you really want to know, things in detail and objectively, there's a great book out there called common knock on our door by a guy named Chris man. It was published in 1998. It's not in print anymore, but you can occasionally find some copies on Amazon and I happen to be fortunate enough to have one, but he goes into a great detail about her contract and salary dispute that happened in the 1980 and 81 season and, A lot of the genesis of the problem is that Suzanne wanted to be a superstar from the get go. Whereas John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt, they enjoyed acting, they enjoyed getting recognition for it and appreciation from fans, but they didn't really care too much for the celebrity status. However, Suzanne did and what was happening at the beginning of the fifth season. I always find this to be kind of hard to comprehend, because they were getting at least the three on the show were getting paid a lot of money in those days. Joyce and Suzanne had to get paid the same, they had been bumped up to 30, 000 an episode in 1980. And then John Ritter was at 150, 000 an episode, with some of the show's profits as well in 1980. So, if they're doing 22, usually more like 24, 25 episodes, I mean, they're making, the girls anyway, 600, 000 to 700, 000. a year from that show easily, which is not chump change, certainly not then. And it's certainly not chump change. Now. A lot of people would take 30, 000 an episode if they could get it, which is basically whatever weeks that they worked. But, the thing is she had apparently fired her agent, before this and decided to. Have her husband, Alan Hamill negotiate this. And she decided, well, I'm a woman and this is, you know, a lot of feminist equal rights stuff was going on at the time. And she decided that I would like to get the same thing that John Ritter is getting paid a noble idea. And one that I would support in concept, but there's a lot of complexities and nuances that existed in the business of that show and the contracts there and why it wouldn't have been possible. John was the star of the show and everybody else was supporting actors and actresses as one of the things. And so that was the market issue. It wasn't really an experience issue there. so she and Alan Hamill decided to negotiate for Let's at least get what John Ritter is getting paid, which, contractually would have required Joyce to also be bumped up to 150, 000 plus profits. I don't know how they would have reworked the profits. But when you think about all this, if she had gotten everything that she wanted, They would have been paying three actors probably over a half million dollars per episode for every week they had a show in 1980. And the show, based on that math, would have been broke pretty quickly. And then the other part of it, I think, uh, they may have violated some laws of negotiation. Like for example, when you go and buy a house or even a car, I guess, you can't go in and insult the other party, right off the bat because then they'll stop negotiating with you and they'll be annoyed with you. And I think that was big part of the problem. And, so there wound up being, Because of all this stuff and all this was in the media back then, especially the print and news media and didn't have any internet or anything. But, John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt were a little upset with her because they had this great show going. It was a real ratings winner and, they were this family and. She was disrupting this family and that's what led to the conflict. she was there for the season opener and I think she didn't show up for the second show, maybe came back for the third and, then the fight was on after that and she only appeared sporadically and. a few remote scenes. She would call Janet usually and talk to her on the phone and they actually brought her to a separate door through the studio and shot her scenes there and that was pretty rough. I mean, I have to admit that was pretty rough to have to do that and be separated from the people that you have been working with for several years already. but then they eventually fired her at the end of that season five in the spring of 1981 and they had already hired, of course, generally to play her cousin Cindy snow And of course Priscilla was, going to be Terry in the fall of 1981, her permanent replacement. Have to note, of course, uh, regardless of who you think was right or wrong on that situation, all the women, all the young women except for, generally Harrison had problems with the producers there. And, Priscilla's are very much noted. I mean, she said that Three's Company was the worst three years of her life because of the producers, but not because of the. Friendships that she made with the other actors, but that was Suzanne's story that was the dispute there Case you didn't know about it Not only is that detailed in the book that I discussed, but there's a lot of specials about that there was even a show like a 2003 or something that was on NBC that had other actors playing the actors and Talking about this, There was also a story in the fall of 1983 or thereabouts. I don't know how substantiated it was, but Three's Company was going to end and be transformed into Three's A Crowd. It's a spinoff where Jack had a love interest that he was going to live with. and supposedly Suzanne and her husband, Alan, lobbied the producers, probably indirectly through the media, for Suzanne to come back as Chrissy and play Jack's love interest on the show. That didn't work out because of the previous conflict, but the role eventually went to Mary Catarat, who played Vicky on that show for its one season in 1984 85. would have been interesting to see What would have happened if that had actually been the case and Chrissy had come back as his love interest some people Think that Janet should have been his love interest But there was a bit of a wrangling that went on over that at the time the other story is that when Suzanne came back into sitcoms, it was on this syndicated show called, she's the sheriff that lasted about two seasons. And I had heard on Priscilla actually had a podcast in 2017 wound up doing only about 10 or 12 episodes, but then she started talking about, she enjoys actually. Was on the show. It was the 40th anniversary talking about that at the time and They had sort of in a backdoor sort of way let Suzanne back into Sitcoms through the show. She's the sheriff. I don't know what Joyce had exactly to do with it But that show was originally set for Priscilla to play Sheriff Hildy Granger Which was kind of a weird premise the the sheriff's widow Was to take over the sheriff's job, even if she maybe hadn't had any law enforcement training or whatever, kind of a weak premise, but, Priscilla shot the pilot, which we can't find anywhere now, has probably never been released, but she, PB, as we affectionately call her, left that show because the guy who created it apparently was sexually harassing her, wanted to, go to bed with her, even though he already had a family is what She said on the podcast, but they wound up going out and getting Suzanne summers. And she wound up getting back into sitcoms because of that. I'm glad that she came back. even though that show wasn't successful, there were some other things that she wound up doing later, such as step by step and Thighmaster and all sorts of other shows of that nature. obviously she's a sheriff was not well remembered in sitcom history by any means. So if you don't remember it. you're definitely not alone and one other important thing I should tell you, was always kind of puzzled by this, but, Priscilla has never met, at least as of six months ago, had never met Suzanne Summers and I don't know if anything has changed after, over 40 years. she said that on a radio show slash podcast. One of the radio stations in Los Angeles that does a retro show. I was doing one on three's company back in the spring. She said that however, Suzanne had met. Jenna Lee Harrison once because Jenna Lee, along with Don Knotts, in fact, played Mr. Furley in the Three's Company, had been cast to, do a sort of a backdoor pilot, from She's the Sheriff. And there are a couple of different stories about what actually went down between them. Suzanne may have been somewhat bitter about the women that replaced her. and so when she met Jenna Lee, one recount, such as in Come and Knock on Your Door, suggests that she gave Jenna Lee a hug and, said, oh, don't worry about it, nothing's wrong or whatever but then Jenna Lee had said that, well, it was a little weird between us, we exchanged. A couple of pleasant words. and that she had called her cousin because Cindy Snow, which was Jenna Lee's character, played Chrissy's cousin on Three's Company That was the, story and I don't know if anything would have changed if Suzanne had hung around a little bit longer. If we had seen her at that 50th anniversary, which is what I would have liked to have, seen her at. But, it's gonna be, a little bit different, you know, watching the old reruns now, and the last thing that I'll tell you that I need to mention here. Before I go, is that she had that real snorty, she created that snorty laugh that Chrissy sometimes did on the show, on Three's Company, I don't think I could recreate it here, but I don't know if it was like, ha ha ha, or something like that, it's not like that at all, it's, the air is going the other direction from what I just did there, but, I know that was a terrible recreation. Probably should give me a little slap on the wrist for that. But that was also what one of the things Chrissy was known for on a three's company. I just wanted to pay tribute to Suzanne today and hopefully that was a pretty good tribute. I know her priorities were a little bit different than John Ritter and Joyce DeWitt, whom she apparently did make up with, she made up with John in 2003, shortly before he died. Made up with Joyce on Suzanne's internet show in 2012. Although watching that, I don't think she and Joyce were ever friends. The way Joyce and Priscilla are friends, and then a couple of years after that, Joyce was still saying that, um, Suzanne was misrepresenting the situation there that occurred with her contract dispute. But it's always sad to see somebody go, like I said, especially in the days when there was only three TV channels, you invited lots of different people, individuals and families into your house. And let them entertain you for a little while. and that's what she did. And, really sad to see her go. Sad that she's passed away. And, hope you enjoy this little tribute to her. I wanted it to be a little bit more humorous than it was. But it's kind of... Hard to do that sometimes, but, rest in peace, Suzanne. We love you. And, we'll continue to watch you on three's company and your other shows. So, thank you once again for being with me on this episode of Frank Webber's party. I look forward to bringing you a lot more. Please be sure to tell your friends and family about me, hit subscribe, leave me a note, send me an email. Send me a question however you'd like to communicate with me. And, for now this is Frank Weber signing off. The theme song is called Retro Funk. And it's by Soul Prod Music. And it can be found at Pixabay. com