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.”
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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.