Actress Loni Anderson dies aged 79

Actress Loni Anderson dies aged 79. 

Whist Loni Anderson wasn’t ‘directly’ linked with Clint, she was nevertheless part of that 1984 crowd that came out of that whole City Heat period. Anderson, who died after a long illness, gained her greatest recognition on screen in the American sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, playing Jennifer Marlowe, the intelligent, cool and collected receptionist at a flagging Ohio radio station.

The 1983 film Stroker Ace, starred Burt Reynolds as an arrogant racing driver alongside Loni Anderson. The action comedy was deemed a flop by the public and critics, leading Reynolds to say that it was responsible for his career nosediving. 

The off-screen romance between Anderson and Reynolds led in 1988 to their marriage, his second, her third. The ceremony, in a purpose-built chapel at Reynolds’s Florida ranch, was top-secret, although pictures were released of Anderson wearing a canary-yellow, seven-carat diamond ring. “I feel like Cinderella,” she said. “I married Prince Charming.”

But an acrimonious divorce followed six years later, with Reynolds saying: “She bought everything in triplicate, from everyday dresses to jewellery, to China and linens.” He added that he gave her a platinum American Express card with a $45,000 credit limit that she “maxed out in half an hour”. Both claimed infidelity by the other.

RIP