Loni Anderson played Thelma Todd in the movie WHITE HOT.

Loni Anderson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Loni Anderson
Loni Anderson, 1992
Born	Loni Kaye Anderson (1945-08-05) August 5, 1945 (age 67) Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1975–present
Spouse(s)	Bruce Hasselberg (m. 1964 – 1966) Ross Bickell (m. 1973 – 1981) Burt Reynolds (m. 1988 – 1993) Bob Flick (m. 2008)

Loni Kaye Anderson (born August 5, 1945) is an American actress who is known for having played the role of Jennifer Marlowe on the CBS television sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati and for playing Jayne Mansfield and Thelma Todd in television movies.

Early life

Anderson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, August 5, 1945, the daughter of Maxine Hazel (née Kallin), a model, and Klaydon Carl "Andy" Anderson, an environmental chemist, and grew up in suburban Roseville. As a senior at Alexander Ramsey Senior High School in Roseville in 1963, she was voted Valentine Queen of Valentine's Day Winter Formal.^[1] She attended the University of Minnesota.^[2] 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 likely to be twisted into "Lay Loni." So it was changed to just plain "Loni."

Career

Anderson's most famous acting role came as the resourceful receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982). She was offered the role when producers saw the poster of her in a red bikini; a pose similar to Farrah Fawcett's. WKRP's creator, Hugh Wilson, admitted that Anderson got the part because "She had a body like Jayne Mansfield and the overall sex appeal of Marilyn Monroe." She remained on WKRP until its end in 1982, after four seasons. She and future husband Burt Reynolds made one film together, the 1983 stock-car racing comedy Stroker Ace, a 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 1950s actress/sex symbol Jayne Mansfield in a made-for-TV biopic, The Jayne Mansfield Story in 1980, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mansfield's husband, Mickey Hargitay. She teamed with Wonder Woman actress 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.. In 1991, she played the 1930s comedienne actress, Thelma Todd, in the TV movie White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd.

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.^[3]^[4] The couple had met at a movie premiere in Anderson's native Minneapolis a few years after Flick's group hit No. 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^[5] (from her first marriage),^[6] who is a school administrator in California;^[7] and a son, Quinton Anderson Reynolds (born August 31, 1988), whom she and Burt Reynolds adopted.^[8]^[9] Her autobiography, My Life in High Heels, was published in 1997.
Anderson has been a spokesperson for the National Lung Health Education Program’s campaign to increase awareness about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.^[10]
Anderson is currently a practicing Lutheran.^[11]

Filmography

Vigilante Force (1976)
Stroker Ace (1983)
The Lonely Guy (1984)
All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) (voice of Flo)
Coins in the Fountain (1990)
Munchie (1992)
3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998)
A Night at the Roxbury (1998)

Selected television work

S.W.A.T. (1 episode, 1975) – "The Steel Security Blanket" (playing "Miss Texas")
WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982) (88 episodes)
The Incredible Hulk (1 episode, 1978) – "Of Guilt, Models and Murder," (playing "Sheila Cantrell")
Three's Company (1 episode, 1978) – "Coffee, Tea, or Jack," (playing "Susan Walters")
The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980)
"Country Gold" CBS TV movie (1982)
Partners in Crime (1984)
A Letter to Three Wives (1985)
Amazing Stories (1 episode, 1985) – "The Guilt Trip"
Easy Street (1986)
Blondie and Dagwood (1987, voice)
Too Good to Be True (1988)
Sorry, Wrong Number (1989)
White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd (1991)
The Price She Paid (1992) TV Movie, she played Lacey.
Nurses (cast member from 1993 to 1994)
Without Warning (1994)
The Mullets (2003–2004)
So NoTORIous (2006)

References

^ "classmates.com yearbooks Ramsey High School 1963". http://www.classmates.com/yearbooks/Alexander-Ramsey-Senior-High-School-/19778?page=184.
^ "Loni Anderson Biography (1945?-)". Filmreference.com. http://www.filmreference.com/film/55/Loni-Anderson.html. Retrieved 2010-07-27.
^ "Loni Anderson marries folk singer Bob Flick 15 years after divorce from Burt Reynolds". Star Tribune. May 18, 2008. Accessdate used without URL
^ "Loni Anderson". Biography.Com. http://www.biography.com/people/loni-anderson-474322. Retrieved October 11, 2011.
^ Dougherty, Margot; Linda Marx, Victoria Balfour, Lois Armstrong (1988-05-16). "Burt & Loni's Wedding Album". People. Time Inc. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20098964,00.html. Retrieved June 28, 2008.
^ Schindehette, Susan (1993-09-13). "What a Mess!". People. Time Inc. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20106248,00.html. Retrieved June 28, 2008.
^ Lipton, Michael A. (September 15, 2003). "Red-Hot Grandmama". People. Time Inc. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20141062,00.html. Retrieved June 28, 2008.
^ "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)
^ "Ability Magazine: Loni Anderson interview by Chet Cooper and Gillian Friedman, MD". http://abilitymagazine.com/Loni_Anderson.html. Retrieved 2012-04-05.
^ Famous Lutherans

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Loni Anderson

Loni Anderson at the Internet Movie Database
Loni Anderson at AllRovi

* * *

Loni Anderson ( MY LIFE ON HIGH HEELS ): "In early 1991 I was cast as thirties vamp Thelma Todd in the tv movie WHITE HOT: THE MYSTERIOUS MURDER OF THELMA TODD. Todd was a comedienne and restaurant owner who had an affair with mobster Lucky Luciano, played in the movie by actor Robert Davi. At twenty-nine she was murdered, a crime that's still unsolved to this day. My costars wee Paul Dooley, who's Brent Butler's boss on GRACE UNDER FIRE these days; Linda Kelsey, my old friend from the University of Minnesota showboat: and Scott Paulin, who played the detective / narrator."

A review of WHITE HOT I wrote at the internet movie database:

White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd is basically faithful to the Andy Edmonds biography on which it is based, but ads fictional details such as private eye investigating the case and an imprisoned gangster who tells him some of the details of the case. Roland West is portrayed as quite a bit younger than he really was, and Pat di Cicco is portrayed as quite a bit older than he really was. Somehow, Zasu Pitts is left out of the story altogether, Patsy Kelly is here portrayed as being Thelma's screen partner all along ( actually Thelma Todd was first teamed with Zasu Pitts ) but Loni Anderson did a good job of portraying Thelma Todd and altogether it made and entertaining mystery movie for television.

Much of the same information that was in HOT TODDY had previously been published in Laurie Jacobson's HOLLYWOOD HEARTBREAK. I also have a word from Laurie Jacobson about this movie:

"I hated the Loni version. And when they had her getting into bed with Luciano...no way, made me crazy."

It doesn't sound like Luciano actually made it out to Los Angeles. William Donati in his books THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THELMA TODD and LUCKY LUCIANO: THE RISE AND FALL OF A MOB BOSS states that there are records of Luciano's whereabouts in the latter part of 1935 and that he was somewhere else.

But I liked Loni Anderson in WHITE HOT. It was just that the story could have stood some improvement.