Burt Reynolds sells bits of his past
Actor denies money problems the motive for auction in Las Vegas
Don’t weep for Burt Reynolds. To hear him tell it, there’s nothing sad about the fact he auctioned off hundreds of items from his home in a recent two-day sale at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas (with bidding online) — paintings, furniture, cherished mementos from his movie career, like the TransAm he drove in Smokey and the Bandit and the helmet he wore in the original version of The Longest Yard.
“I want everyone to know that contrary to what all the news outlets are saying, I am not broke,” he told ET. “I have been dealing with a business dispute for many years as well as a divorce settlement. I am simply selling some of my memorabilia that I have enjoyed for so many years but do not have use nor room for.”
Reynolds and Loni Anderson were married for only five years, but they’ve now been arguing over money for 21 years.
Their dispute is mostly over Reynolds’s alleged failure to pay the full amount of alimony due Anderson. As the years rolled by, the cumulative interest on the $97,000 he is said to owe her brought his reported debt to $159,000.
By all rights, Reynolds, 78, should be very rich. His string of hits includes Boogie Nights, Deliverance, The Longest Yard and Smokey and the Bandit. But he’s also dabbled in real estate, and that’s not gone so well. He was forced to declare bankruptcy in the 1990s. He lost the Burt Reynolds Ranch, where scenes from Smokey were filmed. In 2011, his big house in Florida was foreclosed, and is now being turned into a development near West Palm Beach.
He showered Anderson with diamonds, which she got in the divorce. But the actress who played a blond bombshell on WKRP in Cincinnati is having her own auction. She’s selling off the diamond ruby ring Reynolds gave her, the wedding gown she wore when they were married in 1988 and a painting of her posing naked, which Reynolds commissioned and named: Loni in the Sky With Diamonds.
Anderson, too, treated the occasion like any old fleamarket sale. “We’d been thinking about scaling back,” she said.
Among the items Reynolds offered at auction: A personally inscribed photo of former heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano, a personally autographed Muhammad Ali boxing glove, the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas cowboy boots, and autographed baseball memorabilia.