Farewell to a TV Goddess

SHARPLY FUNNY AS AN ANYTHING-BUT-DUMB BLONDE ON WKRP IN CINCINNATI, SHE SURVIVED A BRUTAL BREAKUP WITH BURT REYNOLDS AND LIVED TO ‘REMEMBER THE GOOD TIMES’

- TOM GLIATTO

With her solid-platinum hair and curved physique, Loni Anderson didn’t object to being considered a sex symbol. “I embrace it,” she said in 2021. But playing dumb blondes—that she could do without. Auditioning for the sitcom role of WKRP in Cincinnati’s Jennifer Marlowe, a receptionist at a mismanaged radio station, she made it clear that she thought the character was vacuous. As she recalled in a 2020 interview, “I went in and sat on my little soapbox and said, ‘I don’t want to play this part because she’s just here to deliver messages and is window dressing.’ ” Creator Hugh Wilson had an idea: “Let’s make her look like Lana Turner and be the smartest person in the room.” She wisely accepted—and stayed sensitive to blonde jokes.

WKRP, which aired on CBS from 1978 to 1982, made Anderson a star, earning her two Emmy nominations and establishing her as a savvy TV goddess—a kind of forerunner to Christina Hendricks’s Joan on Mad Men. The show also gave her the clout to be paired with superstar Burt Reynolds, first in the 1983 movie