"Bosom Buddies" Pal Dies

[coachb]

By Joal Ryan

 

Wendie Jo Sperber did not appear in every movie of the 1970s and 1980s. She was only in the ones that seemed to make the summers go by faster.

 

Sperber, the boisterous character actress who chased the Beatles in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, played Marty McFly's sister in the Back to the Future franchise, and kept Tom Hanks' cross-dressing secret in TV's Bosom Buddies, died Tuesday, losing a long battle to breast cancer. She was 47.

 

 

"The memory of Wendie Jo is that of a walking inspiration," Hanks said in a statement Wednesday. "...We are going to miss her as surely as we are all better for knowing her."

 

 

Hanks was a booster of Sperber's weSPARK, a cancer support center she founded in 2001 in Sherman Oaks, California. "SPARK" stands for "Support, Prevention, Acceptance, Recovery and Knowledge." Sperber found that she needed to draw on all of those resources when she received her first cancer diagnosis in 1997.

 

 

"The words 'you've got cancer' forever changed my life," Sperber wrote in a recent message on the organization's Website, weSPARK.org.

 

 

Shortly after the center opened its doors, Sperber's cancer advanced to her lungs, bones and brain. "Once again, I was shocked, frightened," she wrote, "but not discouraged."

 

 

Sperber applied a similar spunk to her acting career. Though not a star, she was a face--a familiar face. Her specialty was hysteria, typified by her flying leap from the moving car in I Wanna Hold Your Hand--the better for her star-struck 1960s teenager to try to snag tickets to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

 

 

Released in 1978, I Wanna Hold Your Hand was the Los Angeles-born Sperber's first featured film role. It also was the first feature for director Robert Zemeckis, who later cast Sperber in his 1980 comedy Used Cars and his 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future. (Sperber also appeared in 1989's Back to the Future, Part III.) Steven Spielberg, who executive produced I Wanna Hold Your Hand, enlisted Sperber in his first--and last--big-budget comedy, 1979's 1941.

 

 

Sperber's other Comedy Central-ready credits include Corvette Summer, Moving Violations and Stewardess School.

 

 

On television, Sperber costarred with Hanks in his breakthrough 1980-82 sitcom, Bosom Buddies. She later appeared in his 1984 big-screen comedy, Bachelor Party, yet another summer-vacation staple of basic cable.

 

 

On Bosom Buddies, Hanks and Peter Scolari played two men who dressed as women in order to rent an apartment in an girls-only building; Sperber played their neighbor--the only one with insider knowledge of their charade. Sperber's character was hopelessly in love with Scolari's character--hopelessly, because Sperber's type didn't get the guy. Because Sperber's type was, in two words, not thin.

 

 

Sperber's not-thinness led to steady supporting and character work, and finally a lead in the 1990 Fox sitcom, Babes, about three not-thin sisters. The show lasted just one season.

 

 

Even after cancer struck, Sperber continued to amass credits--from a 1998 episode of Murphy Brown dealing with its title character's own chemotherapy woes, to a recurring role on the 2002-05 sitcom, 8 Simple Rules.

 

 

Survivors include a son, a daughter and her "dream" of a support organization.

[Five0pd310]

I had never even heard she was sick. Sad to hear.

[cheaptrick77]

Yeah -- I knew she had been in poor health for the last few years .......... very sad :no:

 

Don't tell anyone, but Bosom Buddies is a guilty pleasure of mine :blushing: .......... if you look past the STUPID cross-dressing storyline, there is some pretty funny dialogue about early-1980s pop culture.

 

 

... and the aforementioned movie I Wanna Hold Your Hand is a lost gem ;)

[Five0pd310]

Back to the Future, of course, will always be a classic.