The Three’s Company star and infomercial queen
Suzanne Somers 1946–2023
Suzanne Somers made the most of her memorably peppy screen presence. As one of John Ritter’s two female roommates in Three’s Company, Somers sparkled with effervescence and sex appeal, and her performance helped keep the farcical 1977–84 ABC series among the top shows on television for the first half of its run. But in 1981, when she demanded equal pay with Ritter—who commanded $150,000 per episode to her $30,000—her role was sharply reduced and then cut altogether. A decade later, Somers launched a lucrative second act as the head of a $300 million health-and-fitness empire. Appearing in heels and a leotard in 1990s infomercials, she sold millions of viewers on the virtues of the ThighMaster workout device. “I was suddenly kicked out on the streets,” she said in 2020, “but I kept reinventing myself.”
Somers, born Suzanne Marie Mahoney in San Bruno, Calif., had a “challenging and troubled” youth, said Variety. Her day-laborer father was “an abusive alcoholic,” and her dyslexia held her back in school. After an unplanned pregnancy at 19 and a brief marriage, she began modeling and winning bit parts in movies such as the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller Bullitt and 1973’s Magnum Force with
Clint Eastwood. A “small but eye-catching role” as the young woman who mouths “I love you” from the seat of a Thunderbird in American Graffiti, also in 1973, boosted her profile, and four years later she “hit the Hollywood jackpot” with Three’s Company, as a stereotypical dumb blonde who constantly finds herself in compromising-looking situations with her male roommate.
After being booted from that show, Somers continued to work in entertainment, but “her later reputation sprang from her business acumen,” said The New York Times. She made “many leggy appearances” hawking the ThighMaster, turning it into “one of the most recognizable products in infomercial history.” More controversially, she also promoted alternative medical treatments, said USA Today. After her 2000 breast cancer diagnosis, she argued against the use of chemotherapy in books and on talk shows, which “drew criticism” from the American Cancer Society. Last July, she revealed on Instagram that the cancer had recurred. “When you get that dreaded ‘It’s back,’ you get a pit in your stomach,” she wrote, but “this is not new territory for me. I know how to put on my battle gear and I’m a fighter.”