Loni Anderson, star of WKRP In Cincinnati, dies at 79

LOS ANGELES – American actress Loni Anderson, who played the platinum-blonde receptionist on the TV sitcom WKRP In Cincinnati (1978 to 1982) and who later became a tabloid mainstay during her contentious divorce from late American actor Burt Reynolds, died in Los Angeles on Aug 3. She was 79.

Her death in a hospital, just days before her 80th birthday, was confirmed by her publicist Cheryl Kagan, who cited an unspecified prolonged illness.

Loni Kaye Anderson was born on Aug 5, 1945, in St Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of chemist Klaydon Carl Anderson and model Maxine Kallin.

As a young woman, Loni Anderson epitomised the American beauty standards of her time with her fresh face, dimples and big, sparkling eyes. She got her start in acting on television shows in the mid-1970s.

Her big break came in 1978 when she was cast as receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP In Cincinnati. The show, which aired on CBS, was about an easy-listening local radio station in Cincinnati that switched to a rock format.

Her role earned her three Golden Globe nominations, as well as two Emmy nominations. She later appeared in two episodes of a sequel, The New WKRP In Cincinnati, which aired from 1991 to 1993.

Anderson’s seemingly ditsy, bombshell character was anything but, and her performance as Jennifer showed that looks and smarts could go together.

“I was against being like a blonde window-dressing person, so I made my feelings known,” she said on Australian television in 2017. “And as we know, Jennifer was the smartest person in the room.”

She added: “She just turned into a great ground-breaking kind of character for women to be glamorous and smart.”

Anderson’s blonde locks were not her natural hair colour, and she initially had conflicted feelings about them. She had been a brunette for most of her life, including during her early acting career, and worried that she would not be taken seriously as an actress if she dyed her hair.

“I was very much on the fence about it,” she said in the interview.

She entered into a relationship with Reynolds, who would become her third husband, in 1982 when they were filming Stroker Ace (1983), a comedy movie revolving around car racing.

Anderson played a “rather sweet, Marilyn Monroe-like turn as a virginal public relations woman”, who was the love interest of Reynolds’ character, late American film critic Vincent Canby wrote in his review in The New York Times.

Reynolds and Anderson married in 1988 and adopted a son, Quinton Reynolds.

The marriage ended in 1993 in one of the bitterest splits Hollywood had seen, one that would serve as tabloid filler for decades to come, with both Burt Reynolds and Anderson jabbing at each other in interviews.

In 2015, American gossip website TMZ reported that Reynolds had finally paid off his settlement to Anderson.

“It was one of the longest and nastiest divorces in Hollywood history,” the website wrote.

“The truth is,” Reynolds wrote in a memoir released that year, “I never did like her.”

The two seemed to have patched things up before Reynolds died at age 82 in 2018. “We were friends first and friends last,” Anderson said in 2019. “It’s time to move on.”

In 2008, Anderson married musician Bob Flick, her fourth husband, who was a founding member of the 1960s American folk group The Brothers Four.

The two had met more than four decades before, on May 17, 1963, as part of a fan photo opportunity for Flick’s band. Exactly 45 years later, they cut into a wedding cake decorated with that first photo of them.

In addition to Quinton Reynolds and Flick, Anderson is survived by her daughter, Deidra Hoffman; her stepson, Adam Flick; two granddaughters; and two step-grandchildren.

Over the decades, Anderson amassed more than 60 acting credits.

In 1980, she starred in the biographical drama and made-for-TV movie, The Jayne Mansfield Story, opposite a young Arnold Schwarzenegger as Hungarian actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay.

Anderson continued working well into her 70s. In 2023, she appeared in the Lifetime movie Ladies Of The ’80s: A Divas Christmas, which follows five soap opera actresses who reunite to shoot a Christmas episode.

Anderson remained true to her early television persona well into her later years, still donning a well-kept head of bleach-blonde hair.

At the premiere of Ladies Of The ’80s, she reflected on acting in the 1970s and 1980s compared to doing so in more recent times.

Young actors in the 21st century could be “chameleon-like”, she said, whereas in her generation, “everybody had an image and you stuck with your image”.

She added: “We were kind of put into our image. Into our Loni-suit.” NYTIMES