Anita Bryant, whose singing career was ruined by anti-gay politics, dies at age 84

Singer and former beauty queen Anita Bryant had a solid and illustrious music career in the 1960s and '70s, including hits such as “Paper Roses,” but she effectively opposed gay rights and criticized homosexuality. called it “an abomination.” Her career was ruined and she passed away on December 16th. She was 84 years old.

He died of cancer at his home in Edmond, Oklahoma, his son William Green said. The family published an obituary Thursday in the Oklahoma City newspaper, The Oklahoman.

Bryant was just 18 years old when she won the beauty title of Miss Oklahoma and was runner-up in the Miss America pageant. She quickly turned that success into a lucrative show business career.

For nearly 20 years, she enjoyed a successful career, entertaining soldiers on USO tours with Bob Hope, performing on Billy Graham's evangelical tours, and co-hosting nationally televised parades. He led an easy life. He sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at President Lyndon B. Johnson's grave.

Most memorably, she sang “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” on behalf of the Florida Citrus Commission in a long campaign of television commercials, singing “Breakfast without orange juice is breakfast without sunshine.” It's like a day in the life.'' Dressed in gingham or ruffles or both, she strolled down country lanes with a juice pitcher in hand, chatting with cartoon birds and beaming with joy about the wonders of vitamin C.

Then, in early 1977, Dade County, Florida, which includes Miami, where Bryant lived, gave final approval to an ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals. A group of protesters led by Bryant showed up at the protest. “This ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against children's right to grow up in a healthy and decent community,” she said.

She founded the anti-gay group Save Our Children and gave birth to the modern Religious Right's strategy of linking homosexuality to a perceived threat to children. Her public image (many called her a “Christian celebrity”) was forever changed.

Less than two months later, a television producer told her that she would not be cast in a planned variety show pilot because of publicity about her “controversial political activities.”

“Anita Bryant's blacklisting has begun,” Bryant announced to reporters. The Citrus Commission officially announced that her activities would not affect her $100,000-a-year contract, which was canceled before the end of the decade.

At a press conference in Des Moines in October 1977, a protester walked up to Bryant and shoved a banana cream pie in her face. “At least it was a fruit pie,” Bryant said, improvising.

Some took the comment as an innocent allusion to her work promoting fresh food. Others saw it as a pointed comment on long-standing adjectives for homosexuals. As the cameras rolled and pie filling stuck to her cheeks, she began to pray — “We pray that he would be saved from his deviant lifestyle, Father” — and broke down in tears.

“I have no regrets, because I did the right thing,” Bryant said in a 1990 television interview. “Sometimes you have to pay a price for what you believe is right.”

Anita Jane Bryant was born on March 25, 1940, in her grandparents' home in Barnsdall, a small town in Osage County, Oklahoma. She was the daughter of Warren G. Bryant and Lenore Annis (Berry) Bryant, whose occupation was listed as a tool organizer on the 1940 census. When Warren joined the Army, Lenore took an office job at a nearby Air Force base. The young couple divorced when Anita and her sister were small.

As a child, Anita sang in church and at local festivals. As a teenager, she appeared on television stations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. When CBS's “Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts” visited Tulsa, she was invited to compete in the show's New York competition, which she won.

In 1958, she graduated from Will Rogers High School in Tulsa and was crowned Miss Oklahoma.

The first decade or so of her show business career included appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,'' “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show,'' “Perry Como's Craft Music Hall,'' and “George Goebel.'' This included appearances on prime-time variety series such as “The Show.'' She first sang on “The Tonight Show” in 1959, when Jack Paar was the host.

From 1959 to 1961, she starred in four productions: “Paper Roses,” “Til There Was You,” “In My Little Corner of the World,” and “Wonderland by Night.” The song had a top 40 hit.

Before working in orange juice advertising, Bryant also appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola, Holiday Inn, Friedrich's Air Conditioning, Phillips 66, and Tupperware.

After her reputation for her anti-gay views waned, she returned to television with a two-hour variety show special, all smiles, but one media critic gave her a big chip on her shoulder. It gave me a shocking shock. “Dr. Bryant's cause is by no means clearly defined,” wrote John J. O'Connor in his New York Times review of The Anita Bryant Spectacular (1980). . And the cleanliness. ”

O'Connor went on to say that despite “careful projections of sanity and benevolence,” Bryant's message seemed “consistently hostile and aggressive.” The feature was sponsored by her religious organization, which supports “conversion therapy” for gay men.

Two months after the special, Bryant ended her marriage to her manager, Robert Einar Green. She is a New York-born former disc jockey who was married in Oklahoma in 1960. Some conservative Christian fans were shocked by the divorce and turned away.

Bryant later publicly said that he had considered suicide in the late 1970s. “I was in hiding,” she said in a 1990 “Inside Story” interview. “Today, I can honestly say that this amount of peace, confidence, and maturity came from a time when I was so depressed and depressed that I thought about taking my life.”

Ms. Bryant first became an author with books such as “Amazing Grace'' and “Celebrate This Food: The Anita Bryant Family Cookbook,'' but her most talked-about title was “Anita Bryant's Story: Our Nation's Cookbook.'' The survival of the family and the threat to humanity.” Militant Homosexuality” (1977).

She was always the subject of teasing. When her wallet was stolen in 1974, a Times column cast her as “a singer who sells orange juice on TV.” So it was probably inevitable that she would be skewered on TV shows like “Saturday Night Live.” In 1977, Jane Curtin, co-host of the show's news section, screened the pie incident and said, “Mr. Bryant, who was fortunately uninjured, burst out laughing and said it was okay for her attacker to date her husband.'' “I spoke,” he reported.

In a skit on “The Carol Burnett Show'' that year, Mr. Burnett donned a life-size orange corsage and sang about the Queen, a double meaning, and a Promised Land that was “bright and gay'' while Tim Conway appeared in a similar style. He appeared as a character. He looked a lot like Truman Capote.

The 1980 comedy film Airplane compared a plane full of nauseating passengers to an Anita Bryant concert. In Michael Moore's “Roger & Me'' (1989), Ms. Bryant embodies forced optimism as she sings “Joy to the World'' to an audience in economically devastated Flint, Michigan. (pop music version). Movie “Milk” (2008). And plays like “Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins” (2009) and “Anita Bryant's Playboy Interview” (2016) opened on both coasts.

In 1988, she attempted a comeback tour, performing in trailer park rec rooms in Florida.

In 1990, Bryant married Charlie Hobson Dry, an Oklahoma native and former NASA test crew member. He spent the next decade trying to revive her career, opening the Anita Bryant Music Mansions in Branson, Missouri and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but both businesses were plagued by financial problems. . The couple returned to Oklahoma, where they operated Anita Bryant Ministries International.

She is survived by two sons, Robert Green Jr. and William Green. two daughters, Gloria and Barbara; and two stepdaughters. Mr. Drai passed away in 2024.

“I was a sacrificial lamb,” Bryant said in a 1988 syndicated newspaper article. And once I started, I couldn't get out of it. ”

Sara Ruberg contributed reporting and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.