Anita Bryant, whose anti-gay politics undid a singing career, has died aged 84

Anita Bryant, the singer and former beauty queen who had a robust and thriving music career, including hits like “Paper Roses,” in the 1960s and ’70s, but whose opposition to gay rights — she called homosexuality “an abomination” — nearly destroyed her career, died on December 16. She was 84.

The death at her home in Edmond, Okla., was caused by cancer, her son William Green said. The family placed an obituary in The Oklahoman, an Oklahoma City newspaper, on Thursday.

Mrs. Bryant was just 18 when she won the Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant and was named second runner-up in the Miss America pageant. She promptly parlayed that success into a lucrative show business career.

For nearly two decades, she had an uneventful run—entertaining troops on USO tours with Bob Hope, appearing on Billy Graham’s evangelistic tours, and co-hosting nationally televised parades. She sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the grave site of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Most memorably, she represented the Florida Citrus Commission in a long campaign of television commercials, singing “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” and offered the slogan: “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” Dressed in gingham, frills or both, she sauntered down country lanes (juice jug in hand), chatted with cartoon birds and beamed with delight about the wonders of vitamin C.

Then, in early 1977, Dade County, Florida — which includes Miami, where Mrs. Bryant lived — gave its final approval to an ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals. A group of opponents, led by Mrs. Bryant, showed up to protest. “The ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against my children’s rights to grow up in a healthy, decent community,” she said.

She founded Save Our Children, an anti-gay organization that gave rise to the modern religious right’s strategy of tying homosexuality to perceived threats to children. Her public image (many called her a “Christian celebrity”) was changed forever.

Less than two months later, a television producer told her that the publicity surrounding her “controversial political activities” meant she would not be hired for the variety show pilot that was planned.

“The blacklisting of Anita Bryant has begun,” Bryant announced to the press. Although the citrus commission publicly said her activism would not affect her $100,000-a-year arrangement, the contract was canceled before the decade ended.

In October 1977, at a press conference in Des Moines, a protester approached Mrs. Bryant and pushed a banana cream pie into her face. “At least it was a fruit tart,” said Mrs. Bryant.

Some took that remark as an innocent allusion to her job promoting fresh produce; others saw it as a pointed comment on a long-standing epithet for gay men. As the cameras rolled and the pie filling clung to her cheeks, she began to pray — “We’re praying for him to be delivered from his deviant lifestyle, Dad” — then burst into tears.

“I don’t regret it because I did the right thing,” Ms. Bryant recalled in a 1990 television interview. “Sometimes you have to pay a price for what you think is right.”

Anita Jane Bryant was born on March 25, 1940, at her grandparents’ home in Barnsdall, Okla., a small town in Osage County. She was the daughter of Warren G. Bryant, whose occupation was listed as toolmaker in the 1940 census, and of Lenore Annice (Berry) Bryant. When Warren joined the army, Lenore took a clerical job at a nearby air force base. The young couple divorced when Anita and her sister were small.

As a child, Anita sang in church and at local fairs. In her teenage years, she appeared on television stations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. When CBS’s “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” visited Tulsa, she was invited to compete in the show’s New York competition, and she won.

In 1958, she graduated from Will Rogers High School in Tulsa and was crowned Miss Oklahoma.

The first decade or so of her show business career included appearances on prime-time variety shows such as “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show,” “Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall” and “The George Gobel Show.” The first time she sang on “The Tonight Show,” in 1959, Jack Paar was the host.

Between 1959 and 1961, she had four Top 40 hits: “Paper roses“,” “Till There Was You,” “In My Little Corner of the World” and “Wonderland by Night.”

Before her job promoting orange juice, Ms. Bryant also appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola, Holiday Inn, Friedrich air conditioners, Phillips 66 and Tupperware.

When the publicity about her anti-gay views died down, she returned to television with a two-hour variety show special, smiling big but with what struck one media critic as a giant chip on her shoulder. “Miss Bryant’s case is never too clearly defined,” wrote John J. O’Connor in his review of “The Anita Bryant Spectacular” (1980), “but seems aimed at anyone who can differ from her particular notions of godliness. and cleanliness.”

Mr. O’Connor continued that despite “careful projections of health and goodwill,” Ms. Bryant’s message appeared to be “persistently hostile and aggressive.” The dissertation was sponsored by her religious organization, which supported “conversion therapy” for gay men.

Two months after the thesis, Mrs. Bryant ended her marriage to her manager, Robert Einar Greena New York-born former disc jockey whom she married in Oklahoma in 1960. Some conservative Christian fans, shocked by the divorce, turned away.

Later, Mrs. Bryant spoke openly about having contemplated suicide in the late 1970s. “I went into hiding,” she said in a 1990 “Inside Story” interview. “Today I can honestly say that there is such a peace and a confidence and a maturity, if you will, that can only have come from going down into those abysses of despair and despondency and wanting to take my life.”

Ms. Bryant first became an author with books such as “Amazing Grace” and “Bless This Food: The Anita Bryant Family Cookbook,” but her most talked about title was “The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of Militant Homosexuality” ( 1977).

She was always the subject of teasing. In 1974, when her purse was stolen, a column in The Times reduced her to “the singer who sells orange juice on TV.” So it was probably inevitable that she would be cranky on television programs such as “Saturday Night Live.” In 1977, Jane Curtin, co-host of the show’s news segment, screened the pie incident and reported, “Fortunately, Mrs. Bryant, who was not injured, had a good laugh and said it was OK if the assailant went with her husband.”

A sketch that year on “The Carol Burnett Show” with Ms. Burnett with a full-sized corsage of oranges, doing stunts about queens and singing about a promised land that is “bright and gay,” and Tim Conway as a character who looked and sounded a lot like Truman Capote.

The 1980 film comedy “Airplane” compared a plane full of nauseated passengers to an Anita Bryant concert. In Michael Moore’s “Roger & Me” (1989), Ms. Bryant embodied forced optimism, singing “Joy to the World” (the pop music version) to an audience in economically devastated Flint, Mich. Footage of her anti-gay campaign appeared in the film “Milk” (2008); and plays, including “Anita Bryant died for your sins” (2009) and “Anita Bryant’s Playboy Interview” (2016), opened on both coasts.

In 1988, she attempted a comeback tour, performing in Florida trailer-park rec rooms.

In 1990, Bryant married Charlie Hobson Dry, an Oklahoma native and former NASA test pilot. He spent the next decade trying to revive her career, opening the Anita Bryant Music Mansion in Branson, Mo., and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., but financial problems plagued both businesses. The couple moved back to Oklahoma where they operated Anita Bryant Ministries International.

She is survived by two sons, Robert Green Jr. and William Green; two daughters, Gloria and Barbara; and two stepdaughters. Mr. Dry died in 2024.

“I was a sacrificial lamb,” Ms. Bryant said in a syndicated newspaper article in 1988. “I didn’t even know it. And I couldn’t get out of it once I started.”

Sara Ruberg contributed reporting and Sheelagh McNeill the contribution of research.