Actress Loni Anderson, star of the TV sitcom WKRP In Cincinnati, died aged 79 on August 3, 2025.
She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1945. Her father was an environmental biochemist and her mother a onetime model. In 1964, Loni married real estate developer Bruce Hasselberg, and they had a daughter, Deirdra, before divorcing in 1966.
She made her uncredited screen debut in Nevada Smith (1966), starring Steve McQueen. In 1974 she married actor Ross Bickell, and a year later, a small part in an episode of TV’s S.W.A.T. led to a string of credits in Police Woman, Barnaby Jones, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Incredible Hulk.
After losing the lead role of ‘Chrissy’ to Suzanne Somers, Loni had a guest spot in an episode of Three’s Company. In 1978, she was cast as receptionist Jennifer Marlowe in WKRP In Cincinnati, set in a struggling Midwestern radio station. Loni’s performance as a not-so-dumb blonde made her a household name.
“I was against being like a blonde window dressing person, so I made my feelings known,” she recalled. “And, as we know, Jennifer was the smartest person in the room. She just turned into a great groundbreaking kind of character for women to be glamorous and smart.”
“Critics often noted Ms. Anderson’s Marilyn-like qualities — particularly the combination of mature sexual allure and disarming sweetness,” Rhonda Garelik wrote in the New York Times. “Through all her breathy bounce and giggle, she always seemed to be winking at her audience, acknowledging that this creature she’d dreamed up was purely fictional — a kind of useful, even slightly funny, alter-ego, a masquerade.”
During WKRP‘s four-year run, Loni also appeared on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, and played the titular role in a TV movie biopic, The Jayne Mansfield Story.
After WKRP In Cincinnati was axed, Loni teamed up with Lynda Carter (of Wonder Woman fame) for a detective series, Fifty/Fifty, and later starred in another sitcom, Easy Living. She also made more TV movies, including remakes of classic films like A Letter to Three Wives; Sorry, Wrong Number; and [Three] Coins in the Fountain.
Loni’s second marriage ended in 1981, and she began dating Burt Reynolds when they co-starred in Stroker Ace (1983.) They married in 1988 and adopted a son, Quinton Anderson Reynolds.
She appeared in Empty Nest, a spin-off of The Golden Girls, and took a leading role in Nurses, another sitcom from the show’s creator. She also reprised her most famous character in The New WKRP In Cincinnati, and played 1930s actress Thelma Todd in White Hot, a TV movie focusing on the blonde star’s mysterious death.
In 1994 Reynolds filed for divorce, shocking Loni to the core. During a long and ugly legal battle, he said her overspending was a cause of their split, and that he had been seeing another woman for two years. He also accused Loni of cheating. She denied these allegations, and told the court that drug misuse had made him abusive.
Loni went on to appear in Burke’s Law, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Melrose Place, and in 1999, she played the mother of Pamela Anderson – ironically, no relation – in V.I.P. She had regular roles in two more sitcoms, The Mullets and So Notorious (with Tori Spelling.) In 2008 she married Bob Flick, one of the Brothers Four, a folk singing group of the 1950s and ’60s.
In 2010, Loni appeared at the opening night of Marilyn Remembered, an exhibition at the Hollywood Museum, wearing a black beaded cocktail dress owned by Monroe, who wore a blue version of the dress during her 1954 tour of US Army bases in Korea.
“When the museum obtained it, [president and founder] Donelle Dadigan asked me if I would consider wearing the dress,” Loni told Fox News reporter Stephanie Nolasco. “And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, would I? I’ll be there in a minute!’ And when I found out that the dress had not be worn by anyone since Marilyn Monroe, well, that just gave me chills … As it went over my skin, I just felt a tingle. I remember before the shoot, I studied the photos. She had this open-mouth smile with those lips. And I really worked on that when I wore the dress. I remember all the paparazzi were there and just taking photos. It felt spooky. But it was an experience that I’ll never forget.”
More recently, Loni starred in a sitcom, My Sister is So Gay, and the TV movie Love You More (2017.) Her final role was in Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas (2023), alongside Morgan Fairchild, Linda Gray, Donna Mills and Nicollette Sheridan, as a quintet of reunited soap opera stars.
Loni Anderson died of uterine cancer. She is buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and survived by her husband, two children, and four grandchildren.
“She exuded kindness and joy and was an enlightened, kind and principled person,” the playwright Michael Feinstein wrote via Instagram. “She had extraordinary highs and equally extraordinary lows … She bore no malice and celebrated life with her talent and with true caring for others.”
The Marilyn Report 