The Rise, Fall and Triumph of Suzanne Somers: There’s Much More to Her Story Than ‘Three’s Company’

Night Terror

“I grew up believing I couldn’t learn,” Suzanne continues. “I thought I was stupid and I was insecure. At the same time, I remembered getting ready for my first big date. My mother had made me my junior prom dress and I loved it. I remember we picked up sequins for the top — I’ve always loved sequins — and two layers of chiffon for the skirt. One was pink, the other peach, and I couldn’t wait. I went to bed dreaming about it. But one night, my father came into my room — I wrote about this in Keeping Secrets — super drunk and started ripping my dress into pieces. My mother came in screaming, ‘Are you crazy?’ and he punched my mother in the breast and knocked her down to the floor. I picked up my tennis racket and, with all my might, I brought it down on his head. I’m 16-years-old and my father is beating up my mother. I’m absolutely powerless and he was a champion prizefighter, but I did give him a concussion. And a lot of stitches. From there on in, I was afraid of my father, but what I realized later on is that he was afraid of me, because for that one moment I got the attitude of, ‘I’ll show you. You can’t do this anymore.’”

‘Big Fist Events’

Elaborates Suzanne, “Sometimes, the worst things in life become your rocket fuel to get you through life, because there is no life without big fist events. You’ve had them, I have them, you will have more, I will have more. You can either be a victim when these things happen to you, or you can dust yourself off and ask, ‘How can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? Where’s the lesson?’ I’ve used this throughout my life and career.”

Lesson Learned From ‘Three’s Company’

Including, she says — while emphasizing that she does not have a chip on her shoulder about it — when she was fired “unfairly” from Three’s Company (which will be discussed further later on). “At the height of my career, when I’m on the No. 1 show with the highest demographics of all women in television, I get fired for renegotiating, because I wanted to get be paid commensurate with the men. But they wanted to make me an example, the thinking being that if they could fire Chrissy Snow, every other woman on television beware. And it worked. It worked for a long time until Roseanne Barr. In today’s world, I could have sued their ass and owned ABC, but at the time there were no movements or anything. But I decided not to be a victim.”

Viva Las Vegas

In response, Suzanne and her husband — Alan Hamel, also her manager, who she married in 1977 — arranged for her to go to Las Vegas to perform live. “I used my fame and the fact that people were craving to see Chrissy Snow again,” she says. “And I hired the best Hollywood writers and choreographers and put together this big act. I brought Chrissy to life on stage in the middle of the show and people would give her a standing ovation every night. And, in 1987, I walked on stage one night with Frank Sinatra. He was named Male Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year and I was named Female Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year. So every time some big life event happens, I’ve used it to work for me and what’s happened is it’s worked for the better good, especially in the later incarnations.”

Dreaded Words

Part of what she’s referring to is the battle with cancer that she began waging in 2000 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “The day you hear those three words, ‘You have cancer’ … man, it rocks your world. I walked on the beach with my husband that day, arm in arm, silently, and then I heard a voice … I hear voices, and they’re always profound. And the voice said to me, ‘You can handle this.’ I got back in the house and I said to Alan, ‘I can handle this.’ And I decided that I could. That’s when I decided I’m not taking chemotherapy and when I told the doctor that, he said, ‘You’re going to die.’ I said, ‘I cannot reckon with the fact of taking my weakened body right now and weakening it even more with poison. It doesn’t make sense to me and it never will. I’m not going to do it.’”

Doing it Her Way

“And that became the big brouhaha and it was all over the news,” Suzanne says. “But here I am and my body’s healthy and it’s not ravaged by poison. I didn’t have to come back from the brink of death, I just did it my way through nutrition, detoxification, and pancreatic enzymes. What are enzymes? Pancreatic enzymes are the most similar to human enzymes. Enzymes eat debris. So if you take massive amounts of enzymes away from meals, it eats debris. Guess what’s debris: cancer is debris. Toxins are debris. So I did that for a few years and I am NED — No Evidence of Disease. So that worked for a while. Then I realized that I don’t know what gave me the cancer, and thought that maybe it was the childhood trauma, because fear creates circumstance. So I decided to eat as though my life depended upon it. I started growing my own food and eating organic food. I eat like a horse, but it’s got to be organic.”

Going Organic

This led Suzanne to consider other things, including the makeup that is applied to her skin, particularly the inherent chemicals. Which led to her creating a personal wide-ranging line of products that are all organic and non-toxic (and which can be explored at suzannesomers.com). And it hasn’t stopped there: now she’s tackling aging and approaching that in a new way, which will be explored in her next book, January’s A New Way to Age (you can hear Suzanne talk about all of this and more in the recent episode of our Classic TV podcast on which she’s the focus).

Gaining a Louder Voice

All of these things going on seem a bit overwhelming, but Suzanne is up for all of it, turning back to the fact that her getting fired from Three’s Company was the greatest thing that could have happened to her. “You know why?” she asks rhetorically. “It gave me enormous visibility not only in this country, but around the world. It allowed me to have a louder voice around the world.”

The Power of Television

“I was in Israel last month,” she elaborates. “I’m in Jerusalem. I meet with Benjamin Netanyahu and he says to me, ‘I know all about the books, but I’ve been watching you on Three’s Company for 20 years.’ I asked, ‘Why have you been watching the show for 20 years?’ and he said, ‘Because for the longest time we only had one TV station in Israel and we only had one sitcom: Three’s Company. And for drama, we had M*A*S*H.’ So I look at the power of television, the power of a louder voice, and the ability to use it well. And the ability to not ever look at any big fist that comes your way and be a victim. I never have been and never will be. Time has laid out the template that just sort of revealed itself to me: Life is journey you can’t plan. And that every single thing that happens to me has actually been of monumental importance for my evolution.”

In the Beginning

She was born Suzanne Marie Mahoney on October 16, 1946 in San Bruno, California, and, as noted, had a very difficult time growing up with an alcoholic and abusive father — all of which makes one wonder what led her to think of acting as a career. “Oh, man,” she laughs, “I’ve love to give you a profound answer, but the truth is, when it was really bad, we hid in the closet most nights. But during the day, if it was really bad, my parents had a closet that, if you crawled way in the back, it was really dark. At the time, the priests or missionaries, or whoever they were, were all looking for money and they used to send these envelopes to my mother to get some money out of the — what? — $60 a week she had. As a good Catholic, she sent something and as a gift to her, they would send these glow-in-the-dark rosary beads.”

Suzanne vs. the Communists

“I would take the rosary beads way in the back of the closet, look at the them glow and I’d have this vision, because all we heard about when I was a little girl was, ‘You’ve got to fight communism. You’ve got to fight communists.’ I didn’t know what communists were, but apparently they needed fighting. So I used to have this vision that I went to the top of a hill where all the communists were, and I — Suzanne Mahoney at the time — said to the communists, ‘Why do you want to fight?’ and they looked at me and said, ‘You know what? You’re right.’ And I brought about world peace. Doesn’t that show the triumph of the human spirit in its lowest form?”

Enter Walter Winchell

For a time Suzanne attended Catholic school, but was kicked out for wearing her skirts too short (Suzanne!), which resulted in her shifting over to public school, where she got into the fine arts department. “I got the lead in Guys and Dolls,” she recalls. I was 16 years old and playing Adelaide and I really morphed into that character. I’d never studied acting or anything, but, man, did I get who she was. You probably don’t even know who this is” (we do) “and I barely knew who it was then, but a guy by the name of Walter Winchell [a famous newspaper and radio columnist] heard about this high school production out of San Francisco. Whatever got him to come on closing night of Guys and Dolls at Cappuccino High School, we’re getting our standing ovation and up walks this guy on stage in a trench coat and porkpie hat. He comes right over to me and he says, ‘You’re going someplace, sister.’ And because of that, I got a scholarship to college. And I’m the first one in my family to go to college. And, man, did I choose the wrong college, because I was so indoctrinated by all the Catholic schools that I took my scholarship at a Catholic girls’ school. Me who got kicked out for short skirts.”

Life-Changing Event

“And then I get pregnant that summer with the guy whose last name was Somers, who I was going to break up with, because he hates the success I had in Guys and Dolls. So I had sex with him once and got pregnant, and, at that time, if you got pregnant, you had to get married. I was thrown out of school and sent away from home in shame. Now I’m married and I have a baby, which I adore. But I hate being married. And I hate that I feel I missed out on something, though I don’t know what it is. I divorced my husband — at a time when no one got divorced — and it was shameful for my family, shameful for the small town and I moved further away. It was just me and my little boy.”

Promises Made

She points out, “When he was born and they pulled him from my body, he looked at me like, ‘Oh, God, you’re my mom?’…” He did not, Suzanne. “He did, I swear,” she laughs. “He actually even said it out loud, ‘Oh, God, you’re my mom?’” A moment later she adds, “He’s looking at me, and I said — for real — in the delivery room, ‘I promise I will make a good life for you.’ And I did. And I figured out how to feed him, shelter him, clothe him. I figured out by the seat of my pants how to raise him so that he wasn’t screwed up. I made my living by making chocolate desserts and selling them to restaurants in Sausalito, California, and by making children’s dresses and selling them on consignment to little children’s stores. That didn’t go well, though I suppose there are a bunch of people who have little dresses made by Suzanne Somers who will never know how much they’d be worth on eBay. But somewhere in there was that attitude: ‘I’ll show you.’”

A Banner Year

In 1973, three significant things happened to Suzanne. She’d fallen in love with Alan by this time and they had gotten married; she read in the Hollywood trades (“Don’t ask me where I got it; I didn’t have the money to buy things like that”) and read that The Dom Deluise Show was looking for a guest star who was a small town girl who doesn’t know who she is and doesn’t know what she looks like (“That is so me,” Suzanne thought) and, with zero experience, managed to get on the studio lot, auditioned and was told she would get a callback. Not sure what a callback was, it was suggested she wait in the studio commissary. “Now I’m sitting there all by myself,” she says. “I’m not drinking or eating anything, because I don’t have any money. And in walks Johnny Carson and I think to myself, ‘Oh, my God, it’s Johnny Carson!’ He comes up to me and goes, ‘Hey, little lady, what are you doing here?’ And I said, ‘I have a callback,’ because now I know the lingo, right? And he said, ‘Oh, Dom Deluise is a good friend of mine. I hope you get it.’” She ultimately would.

‘The Tonight Show … With Suzanne Somers!’

Continues Suzanne, “What I’d left out is that somewhere in there I’d written a book of poetry. I’d always written poems, because I was sad. I got them published — don’t ask me how; right place, right time — and I hand Johnny Carson my book of poetry, because I don’t have an 8×10. That was Wednesday. Friday night of that week, I made my national debut on The Tonight Show. And I had to write a bad check, because I didn’t have a dress to wear on the show, but that’s child of the alcoholic crap — I’ll figure it out later to create a crisis. And I only had one credit; I’d been hired as an extra by George Lucas as a mysterious ‘Blonde in the Thunderbird’ in American Graffiti. As I’m standing behind that famous curtain I’m thinking, Oh, my God, they must love my poetry. And I hear Johnny Carson say, ‘We’ve all been wondering who the mysterious blonde in the Thunderbird is in American Graffiti. Well, we found her.’ And they opened the curtain and the audience went, ‘Woo.’ I had not seen the movie; again, it was a money thing. And I sat down kind of stunned, like, ‘What is this?’ But he loved me, because I was so unpolished and he began having me on every month. I started making my living doing The Tonight Show. My little book of poetry became the No. 1 best selling book of poetry that year along with Rod McEwen.”

One Door Leads to Another

One of the people watching The Tonight Show was ABC Entertainment President Fred Silverman, who had been having a hard time casting the Chrissy Snow character on Three’s Company and, upon seeing Suzanne, realized she would be perfect. “Was it planned?” Suzanne goes rhetoric. “No. Was the universe guiding me? I think so. With the incredible start I received on Three’s Company, I learned that, man, I’m talented. I didn’t realize it. And then when I went to Vegas and was named Entertainer of the Year, it was, like, ‘I’m talented,’ and I didn’t know that, because I never had anybody propping me up with positive reinforcement.”

Coping With Success

Three’s Company is another example of a show was so big that unless you were there, you wouldn’t realize what a sensation it was. It certainly turned Suzanne, John Ritter and Joyce Dewitt into mega-stars, though that show, and everything else that had been going on, never seemed too overwhelming to Suzanne. “I think that’s because I was a mother,” she muses. “John and Joyce had no children and I always had my little boy to go home to at the height of Three’s Company. My husband is so humble. He was the Johnny Carson of Canada, on late night every night, and, despite all the stardom, he walked away from this huge career when I got fired to manage me and my business.”

The ‘Three’s Company’ Implosion

So what happened with Three’s Company? Many people say that at the height of the show’s success, Suzanne and Alan made exorbitant demands for a salary increase and a piece of the show. That her ego had gotten so large that she was purposely overshadowing her co-stars. She sees it very differently, of course. “The night before the negotiation on Three’s Company, we had gotten a phone call from somebody in management at ABC,” recalls Suzanne. “And they said, ‘You didn’t hear it from me, but they’re going to hang a nun in the marketplace and it’s going to be Suzanne.’ When Alan left the next morning for the meeting, he stopped and uncharacteristically turned back to me and said, ‘You know, this could all blow us out of the water.’ And I said, ‘No, it’s a negotiation. We asked for this, they counter, you come back, they come back, we meet in the middle and all is well.’”

Rising From the Ashes

Not exactly. “There’s a way the front door opens when it’s good news, and there’s a way it opens when it’s bad news,” Suzanne suggests. “When it’s bad news, it’s opened and closed quietly. We lived in a multi-level beach house and I hear Alan slowly padding up the stairs. So I meet him at the landing and he looks at me and says, ‘You’re out.’ I said, ‘I’m out?’ He said, ‘They were going to fire you when I walked in the door. They said it wasn’t a negotiation.’ And then he took me by the shoulders and he said, ‘We’re going to make this work for us.’ Now, was I ready to hear that right then? No. It took me a year of licking my wounds and questions of, ‘Why did I want more money? Why wasn’t I satisfied.’ Then, one day I said to him, ‘I’d really like to do a Vegas act.’ I had the name and he was able to make a great two-year deal for me in Vegas. When Alan walks into the office of the guy running the MGM Grand, he doesn’t even look up and says to my husband, ‘What do you want?’ Alan says, ‘I want a two-year deal for Suzanne Somers and I don’t care what the money is.’ He looks up and says, ‘Why do you want that?’ and Alan says, ‘Because I know her. If she doesn’t succeed the first time, she will. She’ll figure this out.’ And so Alan made a deal that day for two years at the MGM Grand with better money than I was asking for at Three’s Company.”

Public Misconceptions

There is a narrative out there in pop culture history that Suzanne was the source of her own problems and her (relatively speaking) falling from grace in Hollywood. “They never got me,” Suzanne says of the media. “And they never got me, because I started out too honest and continue to be so. I don’t bulls–t. When I asked about Three’s Company, I admitted I had no training. Well, that pissed off everybody who had training. But there are some people who are autodidactic or who training might actually screw up. Maybe if somebody tried to teach me how to be Chrissy Snow, I couldn’t have figure that out. But what you saw was me trying to figure out, how do you make a dumb blonde likable and hopefully lovable? And I gave her a moral code, what she would and wouldn’t do. She’d never tell a lie, she’d never steal anybody’s husband or boyfriend, and I embedded myself in that show to be able to live out the childhood I didn’t have. To me, Jack and Janet were the parents and I was the child.”

Taking on a New Attitude

“That approach to Chrissy was my childlike posture,” Suzanne explains, “my childlike clothes, my childlike hairdo. And, in retrospect, I think it was kind of brilliant. But I didn’t brag. I didn’t say, ‘Oh, I went to the University of this and the School of that,’ because I didn’t. And then we took charge of our own PR, and started focusing it to a constituency that is open and receptive to who I am and my message, and that number is well into the millions. For a kid who hid in the closet, it doesn’t matter to me what the media thinks anymore. With social media, you can bob and weave and find yourself in the right place. Why put yourself in the wrong place where they’re not going to like you? The other people I see who probably would have had the same thing are the Kardashians. Look what they figured out. Hats off to them. So this is a whole new world and the mainstream media doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it once had.”

Refocusing Anger

She feels that the two of them have been extremely misunderstood; that all she did was ask for a raise and to be paid what male actors on shows that were not No. 1 were being paid. Claiming that John Ritter was making 15 times more than her, she proclaims, “I was as good as John Ritter. That was my frustration. That was my ego that I had to do the work on myself to swallow, because that thinking was going to do me in. It was, ‘How can I use this to grow and not be angry?’ That was the big thing: Don’t be a victim. Use it as rocket fuel.” And it should be pointed out that she would go on to star in the series She’s the Sheriff (1987-1989) and Step by Step (1991-1998).

Final Thoughts

While Suzanne may not have reached the proverbial mountaintop yet — it’s something she’s always striving for — the journey so far must present a pretty amazing view. “I have gratitude for it all,” she smiles. “I think when you live in gratitude, it leaves room for little else. And that’s why my head is not filled with negatives. I look at all the disastrous marriages over my journey that have fallen apart, and I look at the fact that I’ve been with Alan for 50 years and I’m in love. It’s a mad, crazy, passionate love affair. What else do you want in life?”

“I’ve learned that you and I consist of approximately 40 trillion cells — I don’t know what really anal scientist counted them — and all cells have to talk to one another. We are a communication system. So for the last 10 or 15 years, every morning I isolate one cell; it’s my morning meditation. And I tell that cell, ‘I love my life. I love my husband. I love my family. I love the food I get to eat. I love my great health. I love that I live in America. I love my work.’ And whatever else I’m grateful for, and then I release it knowing that that one cell has no choice but to share that message with all the rest of them. It takes me a nanosecond and I just feel happy. Conversely, if I woke up every morning and said, ‘My life sucks, I hate my marriage, I hate, I hate,’ think what that poor little guy would have to do. ‘Hey, everybody, it’s not good news.’ So that’s when I realized we are in control of our happiness. We are in control of all our programming for everything. And if people could remember that, I think we could have a much more enjoyable experience in life. Because when you’re enjoying life, there’s nothing better.”