The third of four children born to Frank and Marion Mahoney is Suzanne Somers. Her father was working on boxcars loading beer and her mother was a medical secretary. She grew up in constant terror of her verbally and physically abusing alcoholic father being wounded or possibly killed. When she was young, she was diagnosed with dyslexia and was a bad student. However, she excelled in the arts and was active in the theatrical department at her school. She received a collegiate music scholarship but after six months she became pregnant. She married the child’s father, “Bruce Somers,” and in November 1965, her only child, Bruce Somers.
In her marriage she was dissatisfied and started an affair with her former theatre teacher. Her spouse discovered this and the marriage terminated in 1967 after only two years. A single mother, she went to San Francisco for modelling to support herself and her son. She withdrew herself from her family too, because her older brother and sister were also alcoholics at that time. In 1968, her future husband, Alan Hamel, who was married, obtained a job as a prize model at a game-show. The two started dating, and while Hamel was still married she was pregnant. They concluded that Suzanne was supposed to have an abortion, which she endured from several days of intense bleeding. In 1971, her son Bruce was gravely wounded when he was hit by a car, and the therapist’s advice charged Suzanne only $1 a week for the fight. Suzanne herself was also treated to solve her dysfunctional childhood difficulties.
At the beginning of the 1970s, she played modest roles in movies and TV, and finally won a role in the series of Three’s Company (1976). In 1977, she married Hamel. She was sacked from the sitcom at the beginning of fifth season after she demanded a raise. She subsequently went to Las Vegas, where she had substantial performances in the mid-1980s. She started writing her memoirs in 1986, “Keeping Secrets,” later became a TV movie. In 1991, Suzanne played “Carol Foster” in the TV series Step by Step, against Patrick Duffy (1991). Since the end of this show, she has started hosting the Candid Camera series (1992).
Every episode of Three’s Company revolved on misunderstanding, but sudden departure from the programme by Suzanne Somers was a real difference that network leaders were unwilling to resolve.
It was just six episodes in the middle of the season when the sitcom began, but immediately it became the major theme for the Nielsen Top 10 shows – John Ritter, Jack Tripper, Joyce DeWitt, Janet Wood and Somers, as Chrissi Snow.
The imaginary comedy antiques in flat 201 have also brought fame to life for the young stars, with Somers featuring the cover of various magazines.
In 1980, the actress appeared to be at its pinnacle and realised her value. When contract discussions were about to happen, she set a realistic threshold – her male costars’ equivalent. She did not expect to go out of work without a job.
“The answer to the show was, ‘Who do you think you are?'” the actress said to people. “They remarked, ‘The star is John Ritter.'”
When Somers signed on to the show, they agreed to pay $3,500 a week to play Chrissy’s bubble. As the show grew, her pay grew and soon she raised $30,000 a week.
“I had the largest demographic of all women in television 18 to 49,” she remarked in an interview with the Arts and Sciences Academy of Television in 2009.
With a better understanding of the industry than when she began, she began negotiating her agreement with equal pay for the fifth season. “I look around, and think, ‘Why are all males… 10 times more?’ she said. She had already established her costars, Ritter and DeWitt, and she gave them a head to go into strong.
“I’m going to ask John and Joyce for a large money and a piece from the rear end and if the two of you are going to back me up, we’ll all get it, so I’m going to get that patsy,” she added.
Thus their spouse, former television producer Alan Hamel, went to bargain on her and asked for $150,000 a week. This was the average men earned on television at the time. (She says that she didn’t realise Ritter was doing more at that time, as the three of them had a favourite nation clause.)
Before heading to the conference that morning, Hamel checked again with Somers, assuming that all “water blowing.” “I replied, ‘They won’t get rid of Chrissy,'” she stated in the interview with the Academy.
What Hamel and Somers didn’t know at the time was that ABC’s leaders were tight enough to give the two women more than they had planned. They had just made a deal with Laverne & Shirley, Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams.
“Laverne and Shirley had just negotiated a gigantic contract, and then they wanted to make an example of women performers, so that no one else would ask to pay what the males did,” Hamel told People.
In a period before cell phones, Somers was anxiously waiting at home. “So I hear the front door open and can say that it is not good, by the way the door closes, and the sound of his feet going up the stairs,” she remembered. That’s when he said she was fired.
