The widower of TV icon Suzanne Somers has opened up about their final moments together. Photo / Getty Images
The widower of TV icon Suzanne Somers has opened up about their final moments together. Photo / Getty Images
Suzanne Somers “fought until her last breath” to keep going - and passed away holding the hand of her beloved husband Alan Hamel.
The widower, still numb after losing his wife of nearly 50 years, told Page Six Somers - an outspoken supporter of holistic medicine - tried every treatment available after her breast cancer came back at the beginning of 2023.
The actress passed away at 5am while at her home in Palm Springs, California on Sunday morning, just a day short of her 77th birthday.
“We continued our search for the right thing to do at all times,” Hamel, 87, said, adding that Somers relied on “alternative, integrative and allopathic [Western medicine]” treatments.
“It got to the point where cancer is very tricky. Just when you think everything is fine and you get an all-clear, cancer does an end-run … cancer is ugly, it’s an epidemic,” he sighed.
“One of the things we talked about was that we knew that this day was coming,” he revealed. However, “We thought it was going to be me [first] because I am 10 years older than her … It was a conundrum. I said, ‘If I pass, then you’ll be alone. I can’t imagine you being alone - there is no solution’.”
Alan Hammel and Suzanne Somers attend Clive Davis' milestone birthday gala on April 6, 2022 at Cipriani South Street in New York City. Photo / Getty Images
The Three’s Company actress spent seven weeks prior to her death at a physical therapy clinic in Chicago, battling with pain after breaking her neck. In 2020, Somers sustained the neck injury after falling down a flight of stairs at home, with her husband falling down with her.
Somers’ representative R. Couri Hay told Page Six: “She never truly recovered from her fall on the stairs, and cancer weakens your bones.”
“Alan was with her. They rarely spent an hour apart in 55 years together. She spent seven weeks there and then headed home for her birthday. She planned to be with her family.
“Her son Bruce, daughter Leslie and daughter-in-law Caroline all arrived the day before her birthday, and all she wanted was cake — she was always happiest with a red velvet cupcake.”
But by the time her family arrived, Somers was in a “weakened state”, says Hay. “She fought until her last breath, using every form of medicine,” he shared. “She went peacefully after raging and fighting for her life.”
Suzanne Somers and husband Alan Hamel at Studio 54 circa 1978 in New York City. Photo / Getty Images
Now, “Suzanne’s grandchildren came to celebrate, but instead, all the family are together celebrating her life and legacy, not her birthday”, he says.
Although she played “one of the best dumb blondes that’s ever been done” — which is how she described her character Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company — Somers was actually way ahead of her time as the original Hollywood influencer.
While the sitcom catapulted her into the spotlight in the late ‘70s, she became a household name when she became the face of ThighMaster, a workout device she praised in infomercials.
She alleged that she used the device twice a day, keeping one in her bag, by her bed and in her car.
Somers told CNBC she stopped counting how many ThighMasters went off the shelves after she sold 10 million - adding that she made $300 million ($509m) in sales since it was first released.
She said: “I sell to my age group, that’s what I know … The public is smart, and they can smell BS.”
Her empire grew to include exercise videos (the Somersize Method), a range of olive oils and books on fitness, marriage, cooking and dieting, beauty and fashion.
Somers also got candid about her traumatic childhood in her memoir, Keeping Secrets, in which she spoke about her experience growing up as the daughter of an alcoholic.
