FAREWELL to a TV Favorite

THE THREE'S COMPANY ALUM MADE HER OWN LUCK AND BECAME A PIONEER IN WOMEN'S ISSUES

- LOUISE A. BARILE

SUZANNE SOMERS (1946-2023)

In 1973, Suzanne Somers met Johnny Carson by chance at the NBC commissary and told him about the book of poetry she’d written, leading to her first appearance on The Tonight Show. “He started having me on every month. I would read him poems, and it became great shtick,” Suzanne told Closer last February.

Those comic appearances would help Suzanne land her starring role as ditzy but sweet Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company. But after being fired from the series for demanding a hefty raise in Season 5, Suzanne, who passed away on Oct. 15 at age 76 following a long battle with breast cancer, might have become a pop culture footnote. Instead, she parlayed her personal story and struggles into a wellness empire directed at women. “My constituency is from 45 to 65,” Suzanne explained. “We’re all kind of interested in the same things.”

Despite her fresh-faced beauty, Suzanne’s California childhood, with an alcoholic father prone to middle-of-the-night rages, was far from idyllic. She married and divorced very young and struggled to support her son, Bruce, born in 1965. “I was a single mother at 18, and we needed to eat,” said Suzanne, who was once arrested for passing a bad check. She saw showbiz as a way out of debt. “It wasn’t that I wanted to act so badly,” she confessed. “I wanted to make some decent money.”

KNOCK ON OUR DOOR