As publicity around her anti-gay views waned, she returned to television in 1980 with a two-hour variety special, “The Anita Bryant Spectacular,” with a big smile but with what struck one media critic as a giant chip on my shoulder. . “Miss Bryant’s cause is never too clearly defined,” wrote John J. O’Connor. in his New York Times review of the show, “but seems to be aimed at anyone who might differ from his particular concepts of piety and cleanliness.”
Mr. O’Connor added that, despite “cautious projections of wholesomeness and kindness,” Ms. Bryant’s message seemed “consistently hostile and aggressive.” The special was sponsored by his religious organization, which supported “conversion therapy” for gay men.
Two months after the special, Ms. Bryant ended her marriage to her manager, Robert Einar Greena 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 hid,” she said in a 1990 interview for the TV show “Inside Story”. “Today I can honestly say that there is such peace and confidence and maturity, if you will, that can only come from descending into those pits of despair and despondency and wanting to commit suicide.”
Ms. Bryant became an author with books like “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 the object of teasing. In 1974, when her handbag was stolen, a Times column reduced her to “the singer who sells orange juice on television.” So it was probably inevitable that she would be skewered in TV shows like “Saturday Night Live.” In 1977, Jane Curtin, co-host of the show’s news segment, screened the pie incident and reported: “Fortunately, Mrs. Bryant, who was not injured, had a good laugh and said it didn’t matter if the attacker was dating her husband.