Anita with Love, the latest incarnation of the Anita Bryant musical revue, has turned up on the strip in Pigeon Forge. We've tried to follow Anita's career as she's migrated eastward from Eureka Springs in the early 1990s, to Branson, and now Pigeon Forge. Anita with Love opened in late 1999. The show has been beefed up with dancers and an orchestra; Anita belts out her pop and show tunes, and her classic "Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree" TV commercial jingle. She still wears the Vietnam Era field jacket of the late "Private Bryant" for her patriotic finale.

Once a Miss America runner-up and spokeswoman for the Florida orange juice industry, Anita had purchased a Branson, MO, theater in 1995. She and husband Charles Day filed for bankruptcy in 1997 to reorganize $10mm in debts. Day, a former NASA test crewman, was a childhood friend of Bryant's back in their hometown of Tishomingo, OK.

[Update: Anita went bankrupt again in 2001 and the show closed.]

[06/25/2000]