Anita Bryant, the singer and former beauty queen who had a successful and successful music career in the 1960s and 1970s, including hits like “Paper Roses,” whose opposition to gay rights – she called homosexuality “an abomination” – was virtually untrue destroyed her career, died on December 16th. She was 84 years old.

The death at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, was caused by cancer, said her son, William Green. The family published an obituary Thursday in The Oklahoman, an Oklahoma City newspaper.

Ms. Bryant was just 18 years old when she won the beauty title of Miss Oklahoma and was named second runner-up in the Miss America pageant. She immediately turned this success into a lucrative career in show business.

For nearly two decades, she had a smooth run – entertaining troops on USO tours with Bob Hope, appearing on Billy Graham’s evangelical tours and co-hosting nationally televised parades. She sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the grave of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Most memorably, she represented the Florida Citrus Commission in a lengthy television advertising campaign in which she sang “Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree” and offered the slogan, “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” She wore ruffled gingham or both, strolling down country roads with a juice jug in hand, talking to cartoon birds and beaming with joy at the wonders of vitamin C.

Then, in early 1977, Dade County, Florida – which includes Miami, where Ms. Bryant lived – gave final approval to an ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals. A group of opponents led by Ms. Bryant showed up to protest. “The ordinance condones immorality and discriminates against my children’s right to grow up in a healthy, decent community,” she said.

She founded Save Our Children, an anti-gay organization that laid the foundation for the modern religious right’s strategy of associating homosexuality with perceived threats to children. Her public image (many called her a “Christian celebrity”) was changed forever.

Less than two months later, a television producer informed her that public attention to her “controversial political activities” had resulted in her not being cast in the variety show’s planned pilot episode.

“The Anita Bryant blacklist has begun,” Ms. Bryant announced to the press. Although the Citrus Commission publicly stated that their involvement would not affect their $100,000 per year agreement, the contract was terminated before the decade was up.

In October 1977, at a press conference in Des Moines, a protester walked up to Ms. Bryant and shoved a banana cream pie into her face. “At least it was a fruitcake,” said Ms. Bryant spontaneously.

Some thought this remark was an innocent nod to their mission of promoting fresh produce; others saw it as a pointed comment on a longstanding epithet for gay men. As the cameras rolled and pie filling stuck to her cheeks, she began to pray – “We pray for him to be freed from his deviant lifestyle, Father” – and then burst into tears.

“I have no regrets because I did the right thing,” Ms. Bryant recalled in a 1990 television interview. “Sometimes you have to pay a price for what you think is right.”

Anita Jane Bryant was born on March 25, 1940, at her grandparents’ home in Barnsdall, Oklahoma, a small town in Osage County. She was the daughter of Warren G. Bryant, whose occupation was listed as tool cutter in the 1940 census by Lenore Annice (Berry) Bryant. When Warren joined the Army, Lenore took a job as an office clerk at a nearby air force base. The young couple divorced when Anita and her sister were still small.

As a child, Anita sang in church and at local fairs. As a teenager, she appeared on the Tulsa and Oklahoma City television stations. When CBS’ “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” visited Tulsa, she was invited to compete in the show’s New York competition and she won.

In 1958, she graduated from Will Rogers High School in Tulsa and was crowned Miss Oklahoma.

The first decade of her show business career included appearances on primetime variety series such as “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show,” “Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall” and “The George Gobel Show.” When she first sang on “The Tonight Show” in 1959, Jack Paar was the host.

She had four Top 40 hits between 1959 and 1961: “Paper Roses,” “Till There Was You,” “In My Little Corner of the World,” and “Wonderland by Night.”

Before advertising orange juice, Ms. Bryant also appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola, Holiday Inn, Friedrich Air-Conditioners, Phillips 66 and Tupperware.

As public attention for her anti-gay views waned, she returned to television with a two-hour variety special, with a big smile but with what seemed to one media critic like a giant chip on her shoulder. “Miss Bryant’s cause is never too clearly defined,” wrote John J. O’Connor in his New York Times review of “The Anita Bryant Spectacular” (1980), “but seems to be aimed at anyone of her particular imagination could deviate from piety.” and cleanliness.”

Mr O’Connor went on to say that despite “careful forecasts of health and goodwill”, Ms Bryant’s message appeared to be “persistently hostile and aggressive”. The special was sponsored by her religious organization, which supported “conversion therapy” for gay men.

Two months after the special event, Ms. Bryant ended her marriage to her manager Robert Einar Green, a New York-born former disc jockey whom she married in Oklahoma in 1960. Some conservative Christian fans, shocked by the divorce, turned away.

Ms. Bryant later spoke openly about having considered suicide in the late 1970s. “I went into hiding,” she said in a 1990 “Inside Story” interview. “Today I can honestly say that there is such peace, such confidence and maturity, if you will, that can only come from descending into those depths of despair and despair and wanting to take my life.”

Ms. Bryant first became an author with books such as “Amazing Grace” and “Bless This Food: The Anita Bryant Family Cookbook,” but her most talked-about title was “The Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation’s Families and the Threat of.” Militant Homosexuality” (1977).

She was always an object of teasing. When her purse was stolen in 1974, a Times column reduced her to “the singer who sells orange juice on TV.” So it was probably inevitable that she would be skewered on television shows like Saturday Night Live. In 1977, Jane Curtin, co-anchor of the program’s news portion, showed the cake incident and reported: “Fortunately, Mrs. Bryant, who was not injured, had a good laugh and said it was fine if the attacker went out with her husband. “

In a sketch on “The Carol Burnett Show” this year, Ms. Burnett wore a corsage made of large oranges, made double entenders about queens and sang about a promised land that is “bright and cheerful” and Tim Conway as a character who is so looked and sounded a lot like Truman Capote.

The 1980 comedy film “Airplane” compared a plane full of disgusting passengers to an Anita Bryant concert. In Michael Moore’s “Roger & Me” (1989), Ms. Bryant embodied forced optimism by singing “Joy to the World” (the pop music version) to an audience in economically devastated Flint, Michigan. Footage of their anti-gay campaign appeared in the film “Milk” (2008); and plays including “Anita Bryant Died for Your Sins” (2009) and “Anita Bryant’s Playboy Interview” (2016) premiered on both coasts.

In 1988, she attempted a comeback tour, performing in trailer park lounges in Florida.

In 1990, Ms. Bryant married Charlie Hobson Dry, an Oklahoma native and former NASA test crew member. He spent the next decade reviving her career by opening the Anita Bryant Music Mansion in Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but both ventures suffered from financial problems. The couple moved back to Oklahoma, where they ran Anita Bryant Ministries International.

She is survived by two sons, Robert Green Jr. and William Green; two daughters, Gloria and Barbara; and two stepdaughters. Mr. Dry died in 2024.

“I was a sacrificial lamb,” Ms. Bryant said in a 1988 newspaper article. “I didn’t even know. And I couldn’t get out once I started.”

Sara Ruberg contributed to reporting and Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.