By Bob Barney
Born Suzanne Marie Mahoney, Suzanne Somers (October 16, 1946 – October 15, 2023) actress and businesswomen died Sunday morning from cancer at age 76, just one day before her 77th birthday.
The Plain Truth sends condolences to her family, and I want to especially remember her as the person who first led my wife Tammy, and thus my family, to the haunting truth about the modern medical, health, and food industry; all of which have wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people.
Tammy was able to find information from Somers’ that would put her on a healing path after a battle with a host of health issues many doctors just could not diagnose. Tammy first learned about gluten and celiac disease from Somers as well as many other answers to her health problems that resulted in not only her regaining her health but also brought healing to our family in many ways.
It is a sad day indeed at the Barney home.
Somers gained fame with a brief part as the blonde girl in the white T-Bird in “American Graffiti.” Though a small part, it launched her in the minds of the public into stardom the role as “Chrissy Snow” and she rose to fame in 1977 in the ABC sitcom Three’s Company. It was then a controversial comedy about a single man (John Ritter) who moves in with two single women (Somers and Joyce DeWitt), that put her in the forefront. Three’s Company was an immediate sensation, rising to No. 2 overall in primetime (behind Laverne & Shirley) in the 1978-79 TV season. She received a Golden Globes nomination. But a contract dispute in the middle of season five resulted in Somers being downgraded to only a small closing scene at the end of each episode until she was ultimately released from the sitcom.
Somers was not, as it turned out, the dumb blonde she portrayed, much to the anger of studio execs who routinely paid female actresses a fraction of the salary that they paid their male counterparts. Somers claimed she was fired for asking to be paid as much as popular male television stars of the day such as Alan Alda and Carroll O’Connor, whose shows did not have the ratings of her show. In 1980, Somers asked for a raise from $30,000 an episode to $150,000 an episode, equal to what co-star John Ritter was making and comparable to the salaries of other male sitcom stars at the time. ABC offered only a $5,000 hike, and the network fired her.
Suzanne Somers has not been the befuddled blond she once played as she was able to look at what happened with a certain detachment, if not awe. “It was phenomenal when you think about it,” she says. “In one year, I was on 55 national magazine covers. I know that because after a while you just start counting because it gets so incredible. That included the cover of Newsweek, and I was also featured on ’60 Minutes’ with Morley Safer. I really couldn’t figure out what was happening. I wasn’t going to push it away, if you’re lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time you can have a great ride”.
Somers, a great businesswoman who re-invented herself and became her own boss in the health awareness field having written about 25 books, helped expose the modern healthcare system, as well as the evils of Big Pharma and Big Food monopolies.
Somers started life as Suzanne Mahoney, one of four children born to a medical secretary and a gardener in San Bruno, Calif. — a not altogether idyllic childhood, as she will reveal in “Keeping Secrets.” It is a subject she “does not want to talk about — wait for the book” — but she continues to say, “it is a brutal account … about being the child of an alcoholic. It’s not about being a star. It’s my life up to being a star. I never planned to write it, it just, I just couldn’t help myself.” Warner Books publisher Nancy Neiman would say only, “It’s a powerful and moving story.” Somers says she wrote it with her father’s blessings.
Her high school nickname was “Boney Mahoney.” At 17, in her first year at a Sacred Heart college in San Francisco, she got pregnant, which was, as she puts it, “frowned upon” — and hastily married. “You’re raised with this concept of sex is bad, nasty, dirty, unclean and you save it for the one you love,” she says. “Which is always a huge mixed message to me. If it’s bad, nasty, dirty, terrible and unclean, why are you going to give all that to somebody you love?”
Within a year, she was divorced, and at 19 she met Alan Hamel on the set of a show called “The Anniversary Game.” “He was the game show host and I was the prize model and I got fired after the first day because I kept looking at the wrong television camera.” Hamel, who for years ran a popular talk show in Canada, married Somers in 1977 and is now her personal manager. The two had a very rare Hollywood love affair that last 46 years.
Many in Hollywood paid tribute to her after her death. “Devastated to hear about the passing of Suzanne Somers,” comedian Adam Carolla wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “A true icon and overall amazing human being. You will be greatly missed, my friend.”
Bethenny Frankel: “Suzanne Somers has passed away, which is such tragic news. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know her. She is a force, she is groundbreaking, she is love. She was married to her soulmate, best friend, they were inseparable. She’s a family person, she’s about research and fighting for what she believes in when that takes tremendous courage and it’s not popular. Wow, I really, really had so much respect for her…what a wonderful person.”
Megyn Kelly: “Oh no! So sad to see this. She loved to make people laugh. I met her once and she just beamed kindness and beauty and love. R.I.P. Suzanne Somers.”
Her husband Alan Hamel wrote a beautiful poem to his wife of 46 years, Suzanne Somers that she read the night before she “died peacefully in her sleep” on Sunday morning. Somers’ longtime publicist R. Couri Hay tells PEOPLE that Hamel, 87 — whom Somers had been married to since 1977 after dating for 10 years — “gave it to her a day early and she read the poem and went to bed and later died peacefully in her sleep.”
Written in all caps, the poem reads: “LOVE I USE IT EVERY DAY, SOMETIMES SEVERAL TIMES A DAY. I USE IT AT THE END OF EMAILS TO MY LOVING FAMILY. I EVEN USE IT IN EMAILS TO CLOSE FRIENDS. I USE IT WHEN I’M LEAVING THE HOUSE.”
“THERE’S LOVE, THEN LOVE YOU AND I LOVE YOU!! THEREIN LIES SOME OF THE DIFFERENT WAYS WE USE LOVE. SOMETIMES I FEEL OBLIGED TO USE LOVE, RESPONDING TO SOMEONE WHO SIGNED LOVE IN THEIR EMAIL, WHEN I’M UNCOMFORTABLE USING LOVE BUT I USE IT ANYWAY.”
“I ALSO USE LOVE TO DESCRIBE A GREAT MEAL. I USE IT TO EXPRESS HOW I FEEL ABOUT A SHOW ON NETFLIX. I OFTEN USE LOVE REFERRING TO MY HOME, MY CAT GLORIA, TO THINGS GLORIA DOES, TO THE TASTE OF A CANTALOUPE I GREW IN MY GARDEN. I LOVE THE TASTE OF A FRESHLY HARVESTED ORGANIC ROYAL JUMBO MEDJOOL DATE. I LOVE BITING A FIG OFF THE TREE. I LOVE WATCHING TWO GIANT BLACKBIRDS WHO LIVE NEARBY SWOOPING BY MY WINDOW IN A POWER DIVE. MY DAILY LIFE ENCOMPASSES THINGS AND PEOPLE I LOVE AND THINGS AND PEOPLE I AM INDIFFERENT TO.
“I COULD GO ON AD INFINITUM, BUT YOU GET IT. WHAT BRAND OF LOVE DO I FEEL FOR MY WIFE SUZANNE? CAN I FIND IT IN ANY OF THE ABOVE? A RESOUNDING NO!!!! THERE IS NO VERSION OF THE WORD THAT IS APPLICABLE TO SUZANNE AND I EVEN USE THE WORD APPLICABLE ADVISEDLY.”
Like her husband, we will miss Suzanne Somers. She will not be easily replaced in the hearts of all those she has helped.
also: Read: How Suzanne Somers became a multi-millionaire and got the last laugh after be fired for standing up for equal pay.