Three’s Corporation star and health and fitness-exercise guru Suzanne Somers dead at 76

Suzanne Somers, who became a star in the 1970s on the hit ABC comedy “Three’s Company” and later parlayed her fame into sizeable wealth as a health and fitness exercise guru and creator, is dead. She handed absent Sunday at 76.

In a assertion, Somers’ longtime publicist R. Couri Hay said, “Suzanne Somers handed away peacefully at home in the early morning hours of October 15. She survived an aggressive sort of breast cancer for about 23 years. Suzanne was surrounded by her loving husband Alan, her son Bruce and her immediate loved ones. Her spouse and children was collected to rejoice her 77th birthday on Oct 16. In its place, they will celebrate her amazing life, and want to thank her hundreds of thousands of lovers and followers who loved her dearly.”

Somers to start with attained public attention as they hot blonde in the white Thunderbird in George Lucas’ strike “American Graffiti” in 1973. Soon after a sequence of smaller roles, she ultimately hit paydirt after remaining solid as just one of the pair of woman qualified prospects (along with Joyce DeWitt) opposite John Ritter in “Three’s Company,” based mostly on the British sequence “Man About the Property.” Somers was “dumb blonde” Chrissy Snow who endeared herself to the audience in a clearly show whose figures embodied improbable chemistry. The ABC sitcom swiftly became a breakout strike in the 1977-78 Television time and ranked 3rd in the Nielsen rankings for the 12 months although telling the wacky tale of three chaste roommates.

“Three’s Company” remained a smash via its initially a few seasons. But points strike a roadblock in 1980 when Somers demanded a fivefold salary raise to $150,000 for each episode – reportedly the similar amount remaining pulled in by her costar Ritter – together with 10 p.c of the show’s profits. But the network and studio refused, and Somers was confined in the fourth season to short cameos, ultimately prepared out of the show and changed in the cast by Jenilee Harrison.

The collection would go on for many extra seasons, and Somers’ endeavor to transition to element movies never acquired a great deal traction. Neither did a thrust for a Vegas act as a singer and entertainer at the MGM Grand and Las Vegas Hilton. So Somers stuck with tv and ongoing to obtain continual work, very first for two many years on the syndicated comedy “She’s the Sheriff” and then, in 1991, again on ABC with the new blended household comedy “Step by Step” along with Patrick Duffy. It caught all around for eight seasons, the ultimate 1 on CBS.

But by the late 1990s, Somers had moved on from standard showbiz, founding a multimillion-greenback fitness empire. She took to Television set infomercials to pitch the ThighMaster and later on the ButtMaster that produced she and her household wealthy. (At the time of her death nowadays, her net really worth was approximated at $100 million.) The exercising products led to a sequence of other well being and magnificence products and solutions bearing the Somers brand and much more than two dozen guides on wellness, aging, fat reduction and sex. There was also a 1988 memoir, “Keeping Strategies,” that was tailored into an ABC produced-for-Television set film.

Somers also returned periodically to demonstrate organization more than the past quarter-century. She cohosted an version of “Candid Camera” in 1997, fronted a 2005 1-girl musical display on Broadway entitled “The Blonde in the Thunderbird” and hosted the 2012 Life time discuss demonstrate “The Suzanne Display.” She’d been married to her spouse Alan Hamel since 1977.