Sally Struthers

Sally Struthers
Struthers at the Filmex Tribute to Elizabeth Taylor, November 1981
Born	Sally Ann Struthers July 28, 1948 (1948-07-28) Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Occupation	Actress; spokesperson
Years active	1970–present
Spouse	Dr. William Rader (1977-1983)

Sally Ann Struthers (born July 28, 1948) is an American actress and spokeswoman, best-known for her roles as Gloria Stivic on All in the Family, for which she won two Emmy awards, and as Babette on Gilmore Girls.

Personal life

Struthers was born in Portland, Oregon, and attended Grant High School. She is the daughter of Margaret Caroline (née Jernes) and Robert Alden Struthers, who was a surgeon. Her maternal grandparents were Norwegian immigrants. Struthers married Dr. William C. Rader, a psychiatrist, on December 18, 1977. Divorced since January 19, 1983, they had one child together, Samantha Struthers Rader.

Career

Struthers (upper-left) in the cast promotional photo of All in the Family, 1976.

In Five Easy Pieces (1970) she was in a nude sex scene with Jack Nicholson, but achieved fame as Gloria Stivic on the 1970s sitcom, All in the Family. Producer Norman Lear found the actress dancing on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a counterculture variety show whose writing staff included Rob Reiner. According to a WPTT-AM radio interview with Doug Hoerth in 2003, Struthers thought that Reiner's then-fiancée and later wife, Penny Marshall, would get the role of Gloria, as Marshall resembled Jean Stapleton, who played Edith Bunker. Actress Candice Azzara had played the role of Gloria in a pilot episode, but was soon dropped. After a shaky start, word-of-mouth propelled the program to the top of the Nielsen ratings, giving tens of millions of viewers the chance to see "Gloria" defending her liberal viewpoints about negative stereotypes and inequality. Struthers won two Emmy Awards (in 1972 and 1979) for her work in All in the Family.

On the short-lived Archie Bunker's Place spin-off Gloria (1982–1983), Struthers reprised Gloria as a new divorcee (she became an "exchange student", when husband Mike exchanged her for one of his students). The series co-starred Burgess Meredith as the doctor of an animal clinic with Gloria as his assistant.

She was a semi-regular panelist on the 1990 revival of Match Game. She also was an occasional celebrity guest on Win, Lose or Draw, even once guest hosting the NBC daytime version. She also had a recurring role as Bill Miller's manipulative mother, Louise, on the CBS sitcom Still Standing and regularly appeared on Gilmore Girls as Babette Dell. Struthers provided voices for a number of animated series such as The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show (as a teenage Pebbles Flintstone), TaleSpin (as Rebecca Cunningham) and was one of the voice stars on ABC's Dinosaurs produced by Walt Disney and Henson Productions (as Charlene Sinclair).

She has been the spokesperson for International Correspondence Schools in television ads. Now called Penn Foster Career School in America, the distance education organization offers degrees by sending lessons directly to individuals' homes. Struthers recently starred in the stage production of "Annie" at the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Atlanta.

Activism

Struthers is also widely known for her work with two organizations that advertised heavily on cable and late-night television. The first of these is the ChildFund International, advocating on behalf of impoverished children in developing countries, mainly in Africa. Her activism has been satirized in episode 19 of the seventh season of Grey's Anatomy, episode 6 of In Living Color, and in the South Park episodes "Starvin' Marvin", and "Starvin' Marvin in Space".

Work

Television credits

• The Tim Conway Comedy Hour (1970)
• The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
• The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show (1971–1972)
• All in the Family (1971–1978)
• Aloha Means Goodbye (1974)
• Hey, I'm Alive (1975)
• The Great Houdini (1976)
• Intimate Strangers (1977)
• Fred Flintstone and Friends (1977–1978)
• My Husband Is Missing (1978)
• ...And Your Name Is Jonah (TV movie; 1979)
• A Gun in the House (1981)
• Gloria (1982–1983)
• Alice in Wonderland (1985)
• 9 to 5 (1986–1988)
• A Deadly Silence (1989)
• Charles In Charge (1989)
• TaleSpin: Plunder & Lightning (1990)
• TaleSpin (1990–1994)
• Tom & Jerry Kids (1990)
• Yo Yogi! (1991)
• Dinosaurs (1991–1994)
• In the Best Interest of the Children (1992)
• Acting Crazy (1994)
• The New Adventures of Mother Goose (1995)
• The Awful Truth with Michael Moore (1999)
• General Hospital (2002)
• Gilmore Girls (2000–2007)
• Still Standing (2003–2006)
• The Winner (2007)
• Celebrity Ghost Stories (2011)

Stage

• The Odd Couple (female version) (1985–1986) on Broadway
• Grease (1994–1998) on Broadway
• Annie (1998) as Miss Hannigan on Broadway, 20th Anniversary Production
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2006) (Regional)
• Hello, Dolly! (2006) as Dolly (Ogunquit Playhouse)
• The Full Monty (2007) as Jeanette (Ogunquit Playhouse)
• Fiddler on the Roof (2008) as Golde (Ogunquit Playhouse)
• Annie (2008) as Miss Hannigan (Reagle Players)
• Nunsense (2008) as Mother Superior, 25th anniversary tour
• Always ... Patsy Cline (1999, 2009) as Cline's best friend
• All Shook Up (2009) as the Mayor (Ogunquit Playhouse)
• The Full Monty (2010) as Jeanette (North Carolina Theatre)
• Love Letters (2010) as Melissa Gardner (Kentucky Repertory Theatre)
• Cinderella (2010) as Fairy Godmother (Cabrillo Music Theater)
• Chicago (2010) as Mama Morton (Ogunquit Playhouse)
• Hello, Dolly! (2011) as Dolly Levi (Riverside Dinner Theatre)
• Annie (2011) as Miss Hannigan (Cabrillo Music Theatre)
• Legally Blonde (2011) as Paulette Bonafonté (Ogunquit Playhouse)

Selected filmography

• The Phynx (1970)
• Five Easy Pieces (1970)
• The Getaway (1972)
• A Different Approach (1978) (short subject)
• Out of the Black (2001)
• A Month of Sundays (2001)
• Reeseville (2003)
• Baadasssss! (2003)
• Hoodwinked (2005)

External links

• Sally Struthers at the Internet Movie Database
• Sally Struthers at the Internet Broadway Database