Posted on 01/09/2025 4:44:44 PM PST by Borges
Anita Bryant, a Grammy nominated singer, TV personality and orange juice pitchwoman whose show business career was submerged in the public eye by her anti-gay crusades of the late 1970s, died December 16 at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma. She was 84.
Her death was announced in an obituary in The Oklahoman. A cause of death was not revealed.
Born on March 25, 1940, in Barnsdall, Oklahoma, Bryant grew up in a devoutly Christian family, with her love of music and singing leading to her own TV show at the age of 12, according to the obituary. At 18 she was crowned Miss Oklahoma, and would soon appear on the CBS variety show hosted by Arthur Godfrey and the Dick Clark-hosted American Bandstand.
Her chart hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s included “Till There Was You,” “Paper Roses,” “In My Little Corner of the World,” and “Wonderland by Night.”
A regular on Bob Hope’s holiday tours of military bases abroad, Bryant sang at the White House for President Lyndon B. Johnson (and at his graveside service), and in 1968 sang at both the Republican and the Democratic national conventions.
In 1971, Bryant sang at the Super Bowl. She would cohost the nationally televised segment of the Orange Bowl Parade for nine years, but her public profile – not to mention that of orange juice – had truly surged in 1969 when she became a spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission. In commercials that often featured the animated “Orange Bird” character, Bryant sang the earworm jingle “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” and made the tagline “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine” a national catchphrase.
Her ties to Florida prompted her to become a leading voice opposing a 1977 Dade County ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Spearheading a coalition called Save Our Children, Bryant used homophobic tropes about recruitment of children and child molestation in a campaign that led to the ordinance’s repeal.
Save Our Children’s success, however, resulted in severe backlash, with both Bryant and orange juice the targets. Gay rights advocates organized a boycott of the singer and the juice, and in an instantly famous 1977 incident that would presage the subsequent decades’ theatrical protests of ACT-UP and Queer Nation, Bryant was hit in the face with a pie during a TV appearance in Des Moines, Iowa. She made a quip that used a derogatory term for gay people before bursting into tears on camera.
Bryant also became the frequent butt of jokes on late-night talk shows (particularly in the monologues of Johnny Carson), on Saturday Night Live, in sitcoms such as Golden Girls and Designing Women and in Armistead Maupin’s 1980 novel More Tales of the City. Her reputation all but synonymous with intolerance, her show business career evaporated, and by the late 1990s she had filed for bankruptcy.
In 2006, she founded Anita Bryant Ministries International in Oklahoma City. She is survived by four children, two stepdaughters and seven grandchildren and their spouses.
The Left were joined by many “moderates” in ridiculing Anita. It was terrible injustice how few came to her defense.
Back in the 80s, we in YAF and CRs verbally battled the “Gay Student Union” on the campus in Tuscaloosa. The powers at be gave the perverts free office space in Bama’s Ferguson Center. We used a small advertisement from the back of a BLUEBOY magazine as proof that mainline homosexuals pursue minors. The ad had a small rough sketch of a man with a boy. The April Fools edition of the student newspaper (The Crimson White and that edition was called the Crmson Wipe) called YAF “Youth Against Faggotry” and said we had upped our demands to include the removal of women, Blacks, and foreign students from campus. But it also sniped at other side. A fake student event notice read, “Gay Student Union picnic … please bring a covered dish or a small child.”
“Where’s the bias? The word homophobic?”
The word “trope.”
Yes. No coffee yet. The phrase “homophobic trope.”
Turns out she was right all along.
I’m grieved. I was in junior high school when her campaign for decency was at it’s peak, and I paid little attention in my sheltered world (people didn’t talk about such things to their children if possible), I came to view her as one of my heroes over the years.
She didn’t back down from the perverts, even after numerous vicious attacks against her, her career and a limp-wristed GOP who wouldn’t really back her.
The sodomites will be celebrating, spreading their AIDS.
She was indeed prescient, if not prophetic, about the future if sodomites gained power/"rights." Everything she warned about came true.
Thank you for calling it anti-gay, although it is more pro-family. We shouldn't shrink from the appearance of a stark difference in ideology.
She wanted to protect school children from horrific pervert indoctrination we are seeing now blatantly implemented. At the time, I don't think she had any idea of the magnitude of the threat.
“Her reputation all but synonymous with intolerance, her show business career evaporated”
I gotta ask, how does this happen? Especially when this was during the 1970s and 80s when Homosexuality was not only nowhere near as revered today but the total opposite?
And Johnny Carson and the whole cast of Golden girls.
True. But the sexual alphabet soup mafia has run the media/entertainment industry for decades and they totally blacklisted her.
She was the first high-profile victim of what later became known as cancel culture.
Who himself suffered bankruptcy just like Byrant.
“Bryant also became the frequent butt of jokes on late-night talk shows (particularly in the monologues of Johnny Carson), on Saturday Night Live, in sitcoms such as Golden Girls and Designing Women and in Armistead Maupin’s 1980 novel More Tales of the City. Her reputation all but synonymous with intolerance, her show business career evaporated, and by the late 1990s she had filed for bankruptcy.”
And Carol Burnett too just found out.
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