Singer, Crusader Against Gay Rights was 84

Anita Bryant, the pop singer and beauty queen from Oklahoma who rose to fame by convincing America that a “breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine” before seeing her popularity plummet as she railed against gay rights, has died. She was 84.

Bryant died Dec. 16 at her home in Edmond, Okla., her family said announced.

A brunette who personified health, Bryant was crowned Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and finished second in the Miss America pageant in 1959. She landed on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Till There Was You” from Broadway’s The music man in 1959 and with “In My Little Corner of the World” and “Papier Roses”, which reached no. 5, a year later.

After marrying disc jockey Bob Green in 1960 and settling in Miami Beach, Bryant released a series of albums; earned Grammy nominations in 1968, ’71 and ’73; was a frequent guest on variety and talk shows; and for seven years traveled with Bob Hope on his USO tours, making tours to entertain the troops in Vietnam.

One of Bryant’s biggest fans was President Lyndon Johnson. Then, taken by her rendition of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” during the 1971 Super Bowl halftime show, he asked her to sing it at his funeral, which she did in 1973.

Bryant appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola, Kraft, Holiday Inn and Tupperware, but became a household name after signing on as a spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission in 1968. For more than a decade, she poured glass after glass of orange juice in dozens of national aired TV spots while singing “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree.”

However, Bryant’s reputation was put to the test in 1977 after she organized a “Save Our Children” movement to overturn a Miami-Dade County ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. She was a born-again Christian and did not want homosexuals teaching school children.

“I only got involved because they were asking for special privileges that violated Florida state law, not to mention God’s law,” Bryant said Playboy in a 1978 interview. “You know, when I was a kid, you didn’t even mention the word gay, much less find out what the act was about. You knew it was very bad, but you couldn’t imagine what they were trying to do, exactly, in terms of one taking a male role and the other taking a female role. I mean, it was too dirty to think about and you had other things to think about. So when I finally found out all the implications, it was a total revelation to me.”

As word spread of her crusade, Bryant gathered support from Senator Jesse Helms and Virginia pastor Jerry Falwell, and six months after its passage, the ordinance was repealed by a vote of more than 2 to 1. Bryant then expanded the fight to other cities and states, and with her help, in 1979 Falwell created the Moral Majority movement of religious conservatives who denounced the LGBTQ community, abortion rights advocates, and others.

In the end, Bryant would pay a price. Gay rights activists targeted her and launched a nationwide boycott of Florida orange juice. Bars stopped serving screwdrivers and replaced them with a mixture of vodka and apple juice called the Anita Bryant cocktail.

Bryant said Playboy that she lost about half a million dollars in concert bookings and a deal to host her own television show when her public appearances became magnets for gay rights protesters. She also became a punchline for comedians, and the Florida Citrus Commission dumped her in 1980.

Bryant has the dubious distinction of being perhaps the first recipient of a protest pie. She spoke out against homosexuality during a 1977 press conference in Des Moines, Iowa, when she was creamed in the face by Thom Higgins, an activist from St. Paul, Minnesota. “At least it’s a fruit tart,” she joked before saying a prayer for his attacker.

Anita Jane Bryant was born on March 25, 1940 in Barnsdall, Oklahoma. At the age of 2, when she began singing in a local Baptist church, her parents – Warren, who worked in the oil fields, and Lenora – divorced. She and her late younger sister, Sandra, moved in with her grandparents. In 1948, after her family remarried, she appeared on a local radio station and was baptized.

The family moved to Oklahoma City in search of greater opportunities for Bryant, and she won a contest that led to her own weekly television show in 1952, after which she cut her first record a year later. Her parents divorced again and her mother took the girls to Tulsa.

Bryant attended Will Rogers High School, sang in school and church choirs, and appeared in a regional production of the South Pacific. While appearing on a local TV variety show, she was spotted by a talent scout for Arthur Godfrey and then took first prize at his Talent scouts CBS programme.

After graduating high school in 1958, she signed a contract with Carlton Records and released her first single, the pop tune “Dance On”. She won the Miss Tulsa pageant and was crowned Miss Oklahoma before losing to Mississippi’s Mary Ann Mobley in the Miss America pageant, then joined Don McNeill’s Breakfast Cluba Chicago-based ABC radio show.

She sang at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1968 and two years later published an autobiography, My eyes have seen the glory.

When Green and Bryant divorced in 1980, she lost support from conservatives who said she was no longer a suitable role model. “There were those who said, ‘You’ve written all these books about family unity, and we’re not supporting you anymore. We’re not buying your books and records anymore,'” Green said in a 2007 profile before Miami Herald.

“Blame gays? I do,” Green said. “Their stated goal was to put (Bryant) out of business and destroy her career. And they did. It’s unfair.”

After her divorce, Bryant focused on Christian music and charity work through Anita Bryant Ministries International, a nonprofit organization she had established in 1967.

She married the late Charles Dry, a former astronaut test husband who had been her childhood sweetheart, in 1990. They made several attempts to revive her career, but ventures such as the Anita Bryant Theater in Branson, Missouri; a show bearing her name in Eureka Springs, Arkansas; and the Anita Bryant Music Mansion in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, failed, resulting in delinquent bills and unpaid taxes.

Bryant occasionally reappeared, most notably as himself in the Michael Moore documentary Roger & me (1989) but largely stayed out of the limelight.

Meanwhile, she had become a pop culture punchline, med The Carol Burnett Show, Saturday Night Live, The Gong Show, The Golden Girls, Will & Grace and the movie Fly! make fun of her. She was also smashed in Anita Bryant’s Playboy interviewa 2016 play based on her 1978 magazine piece and in the 2018 musical The loneliest girl in the world.

A long-planned biopic, written and directed by Chad Hodge, was reported in May 2019 to be in the works, starring Ashley Judd as Bryant.

Survivors include her children, Robert Jr., Gloria and twins William and Barbara; two stepdaughters; and seven grandchildren.

“I’m not a goody two-shoes. I know now that I’m human, just like everybody else,” Bryant shared Playboy. “If it wasn’t for Jesus Christ in my heart and life, I would probably have married several times. I probably would have slept around with guys and whatever. I always say that I am just a sinner, saved by grace.”