10/19/2024
Susan Anton was a winner of Miss California and second runner-up in the 1969 Miss America pageant. She was best known for starring and singing in TV commercials for Muriel Ci**rs. Anton earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture—Female for her performance in "Goldengirl" (1979).
The central character of Goldine Serafin is 6-feet 2-inches tall. Anton was 5-foot, 11-inches high, not quite as tall as the Goldengirl she plays. Anton once said of this: "It's probably the first time in my life that I wasn't too tall for something." To prepare for her role as an athlete, Anton underwent weights training, had to learn how to run like an athlete from 10 am to 4 pm each day and a trained in a strict exercise program which went for several months. Anton's instructor Tracy Sundlum said that Anton started to look like an Olympic athlete within five to six weeks.
Produced and theatrically released in 1979 prior to the 1980 Olympics boycott, this film depicts American athletes competing at the Moscow games. In reality, the boycott meant that the USA did not perform there, making the picture post-release anachronistic and historically inaccurate.
Al Oerter, one of the few athletes to win four consecutive gold medals in an individual Olympic event (discus, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968), loaned the producers his 1968 gold medal for use in the filming. It was "ruined," Oerter said later in an interview. (Wikipedia/IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Susan Anton!