Jump to content

Anita Bryant

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.95.50.34 (talk) at 06:44, 10 November 2007 (→‎Save Our Children: deleting doubtful, uncited assertions). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Anita Bryant

Anita Jane Bryant (born March 25, 1940, in Barnsdall, Oklahoma) is a American singer. In the 1970s she became the spokesperson for Florida orange juice, making a series of television commercials for them. She is also widely known for her strong views against homosexuality, and for her prominent campaigning in the mid-1970s to prevent gay equality - specifically her successful move to repeal a local ordinance in Miami, Florida, that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Bryant is also a member of a conservative church congregation affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Early career

Bryant was singing onstage on local fairgrounds in Oklahoma at age six. She sang occasionally on radio and television, and was invited to audition when Arthur Godfrey's talent show came to town. Her father at first refused to allow her to go on Godfrey's show, relenting only when he was told his daughter had exceptional talent, and it would be a sin not to share it.

Bryant became Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and was a second runner-up in the 1959 Miss America beauty pageant at age 19, right after graduating from Tulsa's Will Rogers High School.
In 1960, she married Bob Green, a Miami disc jockey, with whom she eventually raised four children, including Gloria and Robert Jr. (Bobby).

Her three biggest pop hits were: "Till There Was You" (1959) (also covered by The Beatles in 1963 at the Royal Variety Performance); "Paper Roses" (1960) (successfully covered 13 years later by Marie Osmond); and "In My Little Corner of the World" (1960). She placed a total of eleven songs in the Top 100, plus some in the "Bubbling Under" chart.

There were several albums on the Carlton and Columbia labels. For example:
The 1959 Carlton LP "Anita Bryant" contained Til There Was You, Do-Re-Mi (from The Sound Of Music), and other show tunes. The 1963 Columbia Greatest Hits LP contained both Carlton and Columbia songs, including Paper Roses and Step By Step. In 1964 came the "World Of Lonely People" album (pictured) containing "Welcome, Welcome Home" and a magical new rendition of "Little Things Mean a Lot" arranged by Frank Hunter.

In 1969 she became a spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission, and nationally televised commercials featured her singing "Come to the Florida Sunshine tree" and stating the commercials' tagline: "Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine".

In addition, during this time, she also did advertisements for Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Holiday Inn, and Tupperware.

File:AnitaBryant-WdLonPeople LP.jpg
1964 album

She sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" during the graveside services for Lyndon Johnson in 1973, and performed the National Anthem at Super Bowl III in 1969.

Notable Songs

Song Samples

Template:Multi-listen start Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen item Template:Multi-listen end

Political campaigning

Save Our Children

In 1977, Florida's Dade County (now Miami-Dade County) passed a human-rights ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Anita Bryant led a highly publicized campaign to repeal the ordinance. The campaign was waged based on what was labled "Christian beliefs regarding the sinfulness of homosexuality and the perceived threat of homosexual recruitment of children and child molestation."

Her view was that "What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life. [...] I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before." The campaign was called 'Save Our Children', the start of an organized opposition to gay rights that spread across the nation. Jerry Falwell went to Miami to help her.

Bryant made the following statements during the campaign: "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children" and "If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters." On June 7, 1977, Bryant's campaign led to a repeal of the anti-discrimination ordinance by a margin of 69 to 31 percent.

Victory and defeat

File:Button.gif
A boycott was organised against the Florida Citrus Commission, who used Bryant in advertising

In the aftermath, legislation was passed outlawing adoption by gays and lesbians in the state of Florida and Bryant led several more campaigns around the country to repeal local anti-discrimination ordinances. Her success led to a proactive effort to pass landmark anti-homosexual legislation in California that would have made pro- or neutral statements regarding homosexuals or homosexuality by any public school employee cause for dismissal. Grass-roots liberal organizations, chiefly in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, sprang up to defeat the initiative. Days before the election, the California Democratic Party (wary of appearing pro-gay) opposed the proposed legislation, causing it to go down to narrow defeat at the polls.

In 1998 Dade County repudiated Bryant's successful campaign of 20 years earlier, and re-authorized an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting individuals from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation by a 7 to 6 margin. In 2002, a ballot initiative to repeal the 1998 law called Amendment 14 was voted down by 56% of the voters. The Florida statute forbidding adoptions by gay persons, however, remains law; in 2004, a federal appellate court upheld Florida’s anti-gay adoption law against a constitutional challenge.

Anita Bryant's political success galvanized her opponents. She became one of the first persons to be publicly "pied" as a political act (in her case, on television), in Des Moines in 1977; Bryant quipped, "At least it was a fruit pie", apparently making a pun on the derogatory term for a gay man, "fruit". Gay activists organized an orange juice boycott. Many celebrities including Barbra Streisand (who was even quoted as saying she would never share a stage with her), Bette Midler, Paul Williams, John Waters, Carroll O'Connor, Mary Tyler Moore, and Jane Fonda publicly supported the boycott. To this day, Bryant is still viewed as one of the most loathed public figures of all time by the gay community, her name being synonymous with homophobia.[1]

Career decline and bankruptcy

The fallout from her political activism had a devastating effect on her business and entertainment career. Her contract with the Florida Citrus Commission was allowed to lapse in 1979 because of the controversy and the negative publicity generated by her political campaigns and the resulting boycott of Florida orange juice.[2]

Her marriage to Bob Green failed at that time and in 1980 she divorced him[3], although he reportedly has said that his fundamentalist religious beliefs do not recognize civil divorce and that she is still his wife in God's eyes. Some observers feel that her husband pushed her to get involved in the political activism that eventually led to her downfall and loss of income. Kathie Lee Gifford, who worked as a live-in secretary/babysitter for the Greens in the early 1970s said in her autobiography that Green had a ferocious temper and could be very possessive and emotionally abusive and that Anita was not very happy.

Due to her divorce, many fundamentalist Christians shunned her. No longer invited to appear at their events, she lost a source of income.[4] With her four children she moved from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and later to Atlanta, Georgia. In a Ladies Home Journal article she said, "The church needs to wake up and find some way to cope with divorce and women's problems."

In the 1980s she even renounced her anti-gay ways. In the same article in Ladies Home Journal she said that she felt sorry for all of the hateful things she had said and done during her campaign.[5] She said that she had a more "Live and let live" attitude now.

She married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990, and they tried to reestablish her career in a series of small venues, including Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Commercial success was elusive however due to the controversy from the past, and they left behind them a series of unpaid employees and creditors. They filed for bankruptcy in Arkansas (1997) and in Tennessee (2001).[6]

Her career decline is detailed in her book, A New Day (1992).[7]

Anita Bryant returned to Barnsdall, Oklahoma, in 2005 for the town's 100th anniversary celebration and to have a street renamed in her honor. She returned to her high school in Tulsa on April 21, 2007, to perform in the school's annual musical revue. She now lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, and says she does charity work for various youth organizations while heading Anita Bryant Ministries International.

Pop culture references

  • The audio recording of Bryant being pied in Des Moines opens the song "Just Desserts" on Chumbawamba's album Un.
  • Bryant's visit to Flint, Michigan, is featured in the 1989 Michael Moore documentary film Roger & Me.
  • A parody of her and her campaign appeared as "The Sinister S.O.O.F.I." ("Save Our Offspring from Indecency") in Steve Gerber's Howard the Duck.
  • David Allan Coe recorded a song called "Fuck Aneta Briant" for his 1978 album Nothing Sacred. It is suspected that the misspelling was intentionally added to avoid charges of slander.
  • She was also mentioned by first name in the song "Moral Majority" on the album In God We Trust, Inc., by Dead Kennedys.
  • Mad magazine's parody of Three's Company (where John Ritter's character Jack pretends to be gay to share an apartment with two women) ends with a visit from the "new landlord," a whip-wielding Anita Bryant.
  • In Jimmy Buffett's song "Manaña", he hopes "Anita Bryant never ever does one of my songs."
  • In an episode of The Golden Girls, an effeminate wedding director makes a reference to a musical theatre production, and Blanche comments "You're just about to fly right out of here, aren't you?" To which the wedding director replies, "Well, excuse me for living, Anita Bryant!" In another episode, after Dorothy and Rose place second in a Miami songwriting contest, Dorothy mentions that the pair are pushed out of the way while they took the winner's picture with Anita Bryant. The fact that the sitcom aired many gay-friendly episodes helps to put these references into context.
  • In the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip episode "Nevada Day Part II," NBS President Jordan McDeere cautions actress Harriet Hayes against appearing at a Christian group's concert in light of a quote that has enraged the gay and lesbian community, telling Hayes that it could permanently damage her career, and references Anita Bryant. (Ironically, Harriet Hayes is played by Sarah Paulson, an openly gay actress born in Tampa, Florida.)
  • In the 1980 movie Airplane!, while an epidemic of food poisoning is sweeping through the plane, Captain Oveur asks, "What is it Doctor? What's going on?" to which Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) answers, "I'm not sure. I haven't seen anything like this since the Anita Bryant concert."
  • Folksinger Tom Paxton wrote a satirical song called "Anita OJ" in which she is castigated by first name for, among other things, "squeezing fruits."
  • In his memoir Running With Scissors Augusten Burroughs describes how Anita Bryant was at her peak around the time he came out of the closet. He stated at the time that he "thought she was tacky and classless and this made me have no respect for her."
  • In the 1978 film Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke, a roadie remarks, "No wonder Anita Bryant's pissed off", after being pushed around by cops masquerading as Hare Krishnas.
  • In the Will & Grace episode "Dance Cards and Greeting Cards" (7.16), Karen Walker claims to have been enemies with Anita Bryant, who later fell in love with her: "...my former nemesis is in love with me. It just keeps happening. First Anita Bryant, now this guy. Well, I said the same thing to him I said to Anita: 'Squeeze your own oranges!'" Later in the episode, Scott Woolley (played by Jeff Goldblum) exclaims: "Karen, you've made me the happiest man on the face of the earth!" to which she replies, "Oh, honey... That's exactly what Anita Bryant said."
  • In Robert Patrick's play Pouf Positive, Robin, an effeminate gay man in the final stages of AIDS-related illness, is called by an ex-lover who is a writer, to whom Robin says, "Well, here's a fairly poignant paradox for your next play. I came home from a rally for gay rights only to discover I had the gay wrong. No, wait, that's not a paradox, it's an irony: it's an irony, one of life's little ironies --- like Anita Bryant turning out to be right. Huh."

References

  1. ^ Louis-Georges Tin, "Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience" (2003), ISBN 978-1551522296
  2. ^ Saint Petersburg Times article
  3. ^ Saint Petersburg Times article
  4. ^ Saint Petersburg Times article
  5. ^ Cliff Jahr, "Anita Bryant's Startling Reversal", Ladies Home Journal 97 (December 1980), 60-68.
  6. ^ Saint Petersburg Times article
  7. ^ Saint Petersburg Times article
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anita_Bryant&oldid=170499757"