Loni Anderson, one of the stars of the classic sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati", died yesterday following an "acute prolonged illness." She would have been 80 tomorrow.
Loni played receptionist Jennifer Marlowe for the show's entire four-season run, from 1978 to 1982. The character was originally written as a typical dumb blonde, but Loni wasn't interested in that.
She made them rework the character so that she was portrayed as, quote, "the smartest person in the room."
Before landing "WKRP", Loni auditioned to play Chrissy Snow on "Three's Company". Obviously, she lost that part to Suzanne Somers.
In 1980, she starred in the TV movie "The Jayne Mansfield Story", alongside a relatively unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger, who played Jayne's husband Mickey Hargitay.
Loni spent a lot of the 1980s in the tabloids, thanks to her marriage to Burt Reynolds. They got hitched in 1988, after years of dating.
Their divorce in the early '90s was one of Hollywood's ugliest. It took them more than 20 years to completely settle it.
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