1. Anita Jane Bryant was an American singer and anti-gay rights activist.
47 Facts About Anita Bryant
1. 2.
Anita Bryant had three top 20 hits in the United States in the early 1960s.
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Anita Bryant was the 1958 Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and a brand ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission from 1969 to 1980.
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From 1977 to 1980, Bryant was an outspoken opponent of gay rights in the United States.
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Anita Bryant began singing at the age of 2 at the First Baptist church in Barnsdall, with "Jesus Loves Me".
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Anita Bryant was singing onstage at the age of six, at local fairgrounds in Oklahoma.
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Anita Bryant sang occasionally on radio and television, and was invited to audition when Arthur Godfrey's talent show came to town, eventually winning the contest.
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At age 12, she had her television show The Anita Bryant Show, which aired on WKY.
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Anita Bryant became Miss Oklahoma in 1958, right after graduating from Tulsa's Will Rogers High School, and was second runner-up in the 1959 Miss America pageant at age 18.
10.
In 1960, Anita Bryant married Bob Green, a Miami disc jockey, with whom she eventually raised four children.
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Anita Bryant appeared early in her career on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood and on the same network's The Ford Show, starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.
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Anita Bryant released several albums on the Carlton and Columbia labels.
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Anita Bryant had a moderate pop hit with the song "Till There Was You", from the Broadway production The Music Man.
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From 1961 until 1968, Anita Bryant frequently joined Bob Hope on holiday tours for the United Service Organizations.
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Anita Bryant again traveled with Hope for televised shows during the Vietnam War.
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Anita Bryant was given the Silver Medallion Award from the National Guard for "outstanding service by an entertainer", and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Leadership Gold Medallion.
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Between 1964 and 1969, Anita Bryant performed at multiple White House functions, including both the Democratic Convention in Chicago and the Miami Republican Convention in 1968.
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Anita Bryant was nominated for two Grammy Awards: best sacred performance and best spiritual performance.
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Anita Bryant sang the Orange Bird Song and narrated the Orange Bird record album, with music written by the Sherman Brothers.
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Anita Bryant co-hosted the televised segment of the Orange Bowl Parade for nine years.
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Anita Bryant recounted her autobiography, appeared in medleys of prerecorded songs, and interviewed Pat Boone.
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Anita Bryant led a highly publicized campaign to repeal the ordinance, as the leader of a coalition named Save Our Children.
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Anita Bryant perpetuated the idea of the gay community 'recruiting' children through child abuse to become homosexual themselves.
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On June 7,1977, Anita Bryant's campaign led to a repeal of the anti-discrimination ordinance by a margin of 69 to 31 percent.
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However, the success of Anita Bryant's campaign galvanized her opponents, and the gay community retaliated against her by forming the Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory Campaign, who organized a boycott of orange juice.
26.
Anita Bryant had a pie thrown at her by Thom L Higgins.
27.
Anita Bryant quipped "At least it's a fruit pie", making a pun on the derogatory slur of "fruit" for a gay man and a reference to her work as a sponsor for fruit companies.
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Anita Bryant's husband said that he would not retaliate, but followed the protesters outside and threw a pie at them.
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Anita Bryant led several more campaigns around the country to repeal local anti-discrimination ordinances, including campaigns in St Paul, Minnesota; Wichita, Kansas; and Eugene, Oregon.
30.
The Florida Citrus Commission allowed her contract to lapse after the divorce, stating that Anita Bryant was now "worn out" as a spokesperson.
31.
Anita Bryant rapidly became the butt of jokes, as her image shifted from being a model Christian spokeswoman to that of a priggish, self-righteous bigot.
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Anita Bryant married her second husband, Charlie Hobson Dry, in 1990.
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Anita Bryant spent part of the 1990s in Branson, Missouri, where the state and federal governments both filed liens claiming more than $116,000 in unpaid taxes.
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In 1996, Anita Bryant stated that she was happy to no longer be working in show business.
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In 2005, Anita Bryant returned to Barnsdall to attend the town's 100th anniversary celebration and to have a street renamed in her honor.
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In 2021, Anita Bryant's granddaughter came out publicly on an episode of Slate's One Year podcast series by announcing her pending marriage to a woman, although she was having difficulty deciding whether she should invite her grandmother to the ceremony.
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Anita Bryant died from cancer at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, on December 16,2024, at the age of 84.
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Anita Bryant's death was announced by her family on January 9,2025.
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Anita Bryant is a frequently portrayed character at drag shows across the United States.
40.
Anita Bryant's name has frequently been invoked as a prototypical example of opposition to LGBT rights.
41.
Armistead Maupin, in his 1980 novel More Tales of the City, used Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign to prompt a principal character to come out of the closet.
42.
Anita Bryant was regularly lampooned on Saturday Night Live, sometimes with her politics as the target, sometimes her reputation as a popular, traditional entertainer known for her commercials as the target, and sometimes targeting a combination of the two.
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Anita Bryant was the target of mockery in the RiffTrax short Drugs Are Like That.
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Anita Bryant appears in archive footage as a principal antagonist in the 2008 American biographical film Milk, about the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk.
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Anita Bryant was portrayed as the principal antagonist in the 2011 play, Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins.
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Archive footage of Anita Bryant appears in The Gospel of Eureka, a 2018 documentary about the lives of LGBT individuals and evangelical Christians in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
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Anita Bryant is the subject of The Loneliest Girl in the World, a musical that premiered at Diversionary Theatre in San Diego in mid-2018.