By Gina Piccalo

February 02, 2007

That, in essence, is who I am.

Just off a freeway access road in Calabasas, past an RV lot and a
saddle shop, there is a beat-up little office park, the kind of
anonymous, out-of-the-way place where corporate whistle-blowers or
police informants might rendezvous. This was where Suzanne Somers
chose to be interviewed. Not her 86-acre property in the upper Mojave
Desert, where she's planting an olive orchard, citrus grove and
organic vegetable garden. Not her (then intact) beachfront Malibu
home. Cut to a strip mall with no shops, only blank, black-tinted
windows. Somers' office, her assistant had said, was behind the door
mysteriously labeled 'Port Carling.' No circular drive. No potted
palms.

Inside, the glamour quotient did not improve. On one wall, 'Suzanne
Somers' was painted in green next to a caricature in lavender. But
aside from the few old movie posters and photos lining the halls, the
office was furnished strictly for function. No sumptuous carpeting. No
fresh flowers. No smartly appointed secretary. Instead, there was a
small clutch of casually dressed staffers mingling around a coffeepot
in a starkly lighted hallway.

Somers' assistant led the way through the decidedly Spartan
headquarters of E.L.O. Somers Licensing (short for 'extraordinarily
low overhead') to a small, windowless meeting room stacked with the
hundreds of products that have made the erstwhile 'dumb blond' a
commercial juggernaut: books, clothes and jewelry, kitchen appliances,
a skin-care line, simmer sauces and condiments, and, of course, the
ThighMaster.

Down the hall, Somers' voice could be heard echoing as she walked and
talked, firing off a series of questions to her staff about the status
of clothing orders, about her doctor's appointment later that day,
about the coffee and the type of china in which she wanted it served
(classic white porcelain). She was followed closely by her husband and
manager, Alan Hamel. They both looked tanned and fabulous. Yet Somers
seemed braced for something. A petite woman, she wore all black:
boots, turtleneck and slimming pants, setting off her gold hoop
earrings and tousled blond hair.

She had a hectic week ahead of her - a speech before 6,000 anti-aging
doctors, a performance with her close friend Barry Manilow, a sales
meeting with dozens of 'Suzanne' product consultants - and had just
weathered some bad press over her latest bestseller, 'Ageless: The
Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones,' which some doctors say touts
a dangerous hormone replacement regimen for menopausal women. She'd
been on the hot seat a few nights ago, at the center of a nasty
shouting match with two of those doctors on 'Larry King Live.'

So on this weekday morning, Somers was eager to get down to business.
She extended a firm handshake, sent Hamel away with a reassurance that
she'd be fine, pulled up a chair and proceeded with a familiar line of
defense. She lambasted the patriarchal medical community and recounted
the life-altering benefits she has experienced on bioidentical
hormones: better sex, better sleep, better mood, better body. It
seemed this wouldn't be a meandering chat that left everyone a bit
less inhibited than when it started. This felt more like a well-honed,
telegenic sales pitch.

Somers continued virtually without pause for about 40 minutes, and
then I stopped her. The point of this profile, I said, was to get to
know the real Suzanne Somers, her world, her life, her personality.
She nodded vigorously, taking it in.

'Got it,' she said.

Then Somers began again. There was no hesitation. No apparent
contemplation. Somers knew where to take this. She recalled a lecture
she had delivered in 2004 at Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year
awards in Palm Springs. Somers explained that she never speaks with
notes, but rather devises an opening line and a thread of an idea and
then knows where she'll end up. At this lecture, however, the idea
didn't hit her until she was in the wings.

'Then it came to me,' she said. 'I sell my problems. I'm a woman with
problems. I've had problems since the day I was born. And I have found
a way to turn my problems into assets.'

And then Somers told a story that could wring tears from the most
committed cynic. It took place in the early 1960s, in her hometown of
San Bruno, the night before her first prom. It was the time, as Somers
remembers it, that she thought she'd killed her alcoholic father. She
spoke as if onstage, giving each detail a dramatic flourish.

'I was going to my first junior prom, and my mom had made me a dress,'
she said. 'And he's been watching her make this dress for the past
week, and the excitement that was going on in the sewing room, and the
fitting. She let me choose the fabric. I'd never been dressed up, and
I'd never been on a date. And I was really nervous about the date
coming to the house. . . . My mom and I had a plan that if [my father]
was really drunk, which he always was, that she would hold him down on
the kitchen table while I ran out of the house. And so I went to bed
that night. I had the dress hanging like that on the back of the
closet door. You know, you're 16. It was very exciting.

'That night, he came into my room and he slammed open the door like he
always did.' Here Somers gasped. 'And he slammed on the light like he
always did. And then he came at me like a mad dog. And said, 'You
think you're something, huh? You think you're going to go to the prom
and all the boys are going to think you're pretty?' . . . He was so
drunk, and I thought he was going to strangle me, but he went past me
to that dress, took that dress, and he ripped it in half.

'I saw a white light of rage like I've never in my life seen. And my
mother came in and said, 'What, are you crazy?' And he took her and he
punched her in the breast so hard that she fell on the floor. And I,
without thinking, looked down - I was standing on the bed because I
was trying to get away from him - I reached down, got the tennis
racquet, pulled it over my head and with all my strength brought it
down on his head, and I still remember the sound of wood connecting
with his flesh and his blood spewing out of his head like a geyser. He
made this low guttural sound. He fell to the ground, and I started
screaming.'

She had given him a concussion. While her mother took him to the
hospital, Somers spent the night mopping up her father's blood from
the floor, the walls, the front walk and, yes, their white picket
fence. She would never be alone with her father again. But it would
take decades, she said, to realize that he feared her as much as she
feared him.

There was a brief silence. 'So,' she said after a few seconds. 'That,
in essence, is who I am.'

Somers had meant to explain herself with this sad memory, to
illustrate that since that night she has always been a fighter, the
one to face off with the brutal alcoholic, the television network, the
pharmaceutical industry. The story felt revelatory. She welled up as
she told it. So did I. To this day, she said, she prefers small rooms,
a consequence of a childhood spent hiding in her closet. Years of
therapy have helped her to cope with the trauma, but it is forever
painful to recall.

This was in fact a glimpse of the real Suzanne Somers. And so is this:
She has told different versions of this story many times in very
public venues, first in her 1988 memoir, 'Keeping Secrets,' which
became a 1991 TV movie, and again in 2005 in her one-woman Broadway
show 'The Blonde in the Thunderbird.' Such revelations, as honest and
heartbreaking as they are, have become a sort of currency.

Suzanne Somers the woman is inextricable from 'Suzanne Somers' the
brand. Many of the random personal details she shares - her dishpan
hands after cooking Thanksgiving dinner for her family, her occasional
use of Restylane for the wrinkles around her mouth - loop back to one
Somers product or another. She still references recipes from
'Somersize' cookbooks, and has used her FaceMaster every morning for
14 years. She has spun every life crisis, every career tribulation
into personal power and professional gold. Her early trials led to her
book of poetry, which led to spots on 'The Tonight Show' with Johnny
Carson, which led to 'Three's Company.' When that fell apart, she
whipped up a hit nightclub act in Las Vegas, wrote a bestselling
memoir and introduced the ThighMaster.

In the six years since her breast cancer, Somers has transformed a
modest licensing business - first launched in the late 1980s with the
ThighMaster - into a global merchandising machine. She has written
more than a dozen books, on nutrition, on blending families, on aging,
on surviving alcoholism. 'The Sexy Years,' her first book on
bioidentical hormones, published in 2004, sold a million copies in the
first three months. 'Ageless' debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times
bestseller list in October and stayed there for six weeks. The 50,000
copies Somers brought to her Home Shopping Network show sold out in
three days. Indeed, she has become a legend on HSN as the most
enduring celebrity brand in the network's 30 years. Even her
ThighMaster, which immediately became a late-show punch line on David
Letterman's top 10 list and once doubled as an orange juicer on 'The
Tonight Show With Jay Leno,' is still sold in 120 countries. 'The
comedians started selling it for us,' she said.

Somers herself is a natural saleswoman. To hear her proselytize for
the FaceMaster, for example, a little $100 machine that sends tiny
jolts of electricity to facial muscles, is to experience the art of
persuasion. It's a workout for your face, she says, building muscle
tone to prop up skin before it sags. She'll show you how she has
sculpted convincingly plump cheeks with this little device (FDA
approved, mind you), how she has avoided face-lifts and eye jobs. At
60, she's got some wrinkles. She'll point them out to you. But overall
she looks good. And she's so down-to-earth, with that throaty, self-
deprecating laugh that's just a few beats away from the Chrissy Snow
snort. So you willingly ignore that part of you that's saying,
'Electric jolts? To your face? Using a gel as a conductor fluid?' Here
in this stuffy meeting room, surrounded by a bacchanal of American
consumerism and the buzz of her own enterprise, Somers is riveting.

She's a guru, though she would never describe herself that way. She
has an impressive following of women of all ages - she calls them her
'flock' - who see Somers as an icon of fitness, fun and sex appeal and
are willing to spend money on her products as a means of emulating
her. They come from all over the country to attend her 'Suzanne'
conventions every 18 months, wearing their Suzanne Somers satin
pajamas and their Suzanne Somers tiaras, selling out cruise ships and
crowding meeting rooms at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to hear her talk
on weight loss, cooking, nutrition and fashion.

'She didn't get to go to prom, she wasn't a cheerleader, she didn't
get the chance to do a lot of things girls get to do,' said her
longtime friend and HSN cohost Colleen Lopez. 'So in a way she's
enjoying having girlfriends. She's a girl's girl.'

Somers says her greatest strength as a businesswoman is that she
understands her customers. They remind her in so many ways of her
mother, Marion Mahoney. 'This is how they came from the airport,' she
said of a photo of dozens of these women on the cover of a convention
program. 'They look like my mother. I grew up with these women. And I
think they sense it. This is my mission in America. It's not the
coasts. It's not the super-hip people. Although I think I'm super-
hip.' She chortled. 'That picture is so telling to me. I know that
they think about the prices of everything. I know that they don't get
the kind of attention from their husbands that they want. I give it to
them. . . . I've been told I'm the best friend they've ever had. I get
it. I just think I speak for them and I give them hope. That you can
look good, feel good, have energy, have fun, be in love, have a
family, have a great time with your family.'

Perhaps her decision to meet at this humble office park was part of
Somers' pitch. A way to keep things in context. After all, she's
selling affordable luxury. And how could she do that with earnestness
if she were speaking from some of the world's priciest real estate?

'What I say to them is, 'Now we can all have the jewelry that once
only the wealthiest women in the world could afford,'' Somers said,
recalling her HSN sell-a-thons. She gestured toward a wide bracelet
encrusted with cubic zirconia. 'That's a Harry Winston grid. I bought
[the design] from his grandson. And did the exact same grid and cut
the stones the same way he cut his diamonds but made them CZ. So I can
sell that for $189, and that's probably a million-dollar bracelet. So
they trust me, 'cause I don't have an agenda other than I have to love
it if I sell it. And so I wear my clothes and I wear my jewelry. I use
everything. I cook out of my cookbooks. I do take bioidentical
hormones. I do eat the way I write about. So there's something that
they're finding that's resonating as truthful.'

There's been just one instance during Somers' years as a brand when
that loyalty was tested. In 2001, a photograph appeared in the
National Enquirer of the 'ThighMaster Beauty' leaving a Beverly Hills
plastic surgery clinic where she had received liposuction. Two weeks
after the story broke, after her former costar John Ritter made a joke
about it, after Howard Stern picked it up and the press started
calling it 'ThighGate,' she went on 'Larry King Live' to announce that
she had had breast cancer and had undergone liposuction to 'even
things out' after her partial mastectomy.

The scandal swiftly disappeared as all talk turned to her homeopathic
treatment for cancer. Somers says she's now cancer-free, and that the
only health problems she sustained were due to the radiation
treatment. In fact, she credits much of her entrepreneurial drive to
being diagnosed with breast cancer and finding a hormone regimen that
she says gives her boundless energy.

Somers has taken a more direct approach to the controversy prompted by
'Ageless,' which is a series of Q&As with doctors and patients about
bioidentical hormones. She toured the talk-show circuit, gamely
countering criticism at every turn by recalling her devastating
menopause, marked by depression, loss of libido, dramatic mood swings
and insomnia so severe she says her marriage nearly ended. She bragged
about her newly healthy sex life, even telling one male network
correspondent, 'You should sleep with me. I don't sweat and I sleep
through the whole night, and if you want to have sex I'd be in the
mood!'

Unlike conventional hormone replacement therapy, which is derived from
the urine of pregnant mares, bioidenticals are derived from soy, wild
yam and other plants. Bioidentical compounds are so-called because
their molecular structure mimics those of the body's natural hormones.
Still, some doctors say, bioidenticals not only pose many of the same
risks as hormone replacement drugs, but have not been subject to
enough testing.

The week 'Ageless' was published, seven doctors, including three
mentioned in it - Manhattan internist Erika Schwartz, Santa Barbara
endocrinologist and Somers' former personal physician Diana
Schwarzbein, and C.W. Randolph, founder of the Natural Hormone
Institute of America - signed a letter to Somers and her publisher,
Crown, calling it 'detrimental and dangerous to the thousands of women
who read it because the book freely and repeatedly blurs the line of
medical ethics and science with hearsay.' Their greatest source of
concern was Somers' frequent reference to a rhythmic hormone protocol
devised by T.S. Wiley, a former actress with a bachelor's degree in
anthropology.

In November, the American Medical Assn., without naming Somers or her
book, asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to increase its
oversight of bioidenticals, stating that it hoped to counter
'potentially misleading or flawed information about custom-compounded
bioidentical hormones' and expressing concern about the promotion of
bioidenticals as safe and effective by 'non-medical professionals.'

In response to the criticism, Somers said that Schwartz, in
particular, had 'a little bit of sour grapes' because her Q&A was cut
from the book. And Schwarzbein, Somers said, was just bothered that
she didn't think of Wiley's method first. (Both doctors have denied
these claims.) Yet the experience has been so trying that Somers
likens it to being fired from 'Three's Company' when she demanded that
ABC increase her salary fivefold.

'That's why I don't want to fight with the pharmaceuticals,' she said.
'I thought [after being fired], 'Oh, I can't win. They want to make an
example of me so no other women get uppity.' I have to say when women
get paid big salaries in television now, I take personal pride in it.
And I take a lot of pride in that maybe I'm going to be the one they
all pounce on with these bioidentical hormones. But I brought them to
the forefront.'

And if Somers has her way, women all over America will have affordable
access to them. She has signed on as celebrity spokeswoman for
Menopause Clinics of America, a venture started by an Australian
company that offers bioidentical hormone treatments from nurse
practitioners for $39 a visit. The first clinic opened in April in La
Jolla; another is set to open this month in New York, and more are
planned in Indiana, New Jersey and North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Somers is saving America's women from mediocre meals and
financial dependency. She has started a new restaurant franchise,
Suzanne's Kitchen, which sells the raw ingredients to make Somers'
recipes - what she calls 'real food.' And this year, dozens of her
flock will start hosting home parties to sell Somers' products a la
Tupperware. Within a year, she hopes, this sales team will grow to
3,000.

After that, she wants to do another sitcom, start a magazine and -
theater critics be damned! - perform another stage show.

She and Hamel see all of it, from the SomerSmile Get White Tooth
Whitening System to her upcoming lecture series with motivational guru
Tony Robbins and former president of Mexico Vicente Fox, as 'doing
well while doing good.' That too sounds like a sales pitch, but one
with a vaguely philanthropic bent. Though most people assume that
Hamel pushes her, Somers said, 'I am the driven one. And it's not
about money. The drive is that I like it. It's fun.'

Four days before their Malibu house burned to the ground, Somers and
Hamel spent a few days there, working and vacationing. They'd had a
busy holiday with their children and grandchildren, but as they
settled into a table at Geoffrey's, an oceanside restaurant, they
appeared far more relaxed than they had in Calabasas. There was
something youthful about the couple. They clearly like each other.
Hamel ordered the corn chowder, and Somers finished it for him.

Somers and Hamel have been together since the late 1960s, when she was
a 19-year-old single mother and he was in his late 20s, married with
kids of his own. (Port Carling is from his past, the name of a town in
southern Ontario, Canada, where he drove a truck as a teenager.) They
met the day she auditioned for a game show he was hosting in San
Francisco. She was fired almost instantly for looking into the wrong
camera as she presented a prize refrigerator. But not before Hamel got
her phone number.

They dated - for 10 years. Somers was struggling, living hand-to-mouth
as a model, a salesclerk and a sometime actress, always behind on the
rent, even arrested once for passing bad checks, and didn't want Hamel
to know the extent of her problems. Hamel had his hands full juggling
a family and a mistress. He wasn't especially interested in being a
parent to Somers' young son, Bruce.

Once they married, Somers says, they spent their first decade fighting
for 'a level playing field.' He was a controlling personality, someone
who subconsciously reminded her of her father. Now they're close
companions. Sometimes, she says, she looks at Hamel and 'I still get a
wiggle. He turns me on.' On another level, though, he keeps her
grounded. 'He's very base,' she says. 'He says things to me as we're
going out. We're walking down the hall - 'Um, you're not going to like
the way that looks from behind.'' She lets loose another throaty
laugh. Then she shrugs. 'I'd rather he tell me.'

The couple are regulars at the big social events of the year - the
Vanity Fair Oscar party, the Carousel Ball and others. But they're
choosy about their evenings out, and when they talk about their lives
they sound a lot like homebodies. They spend all their time together,
24/7. In the mornings, they follow their vitamin and smoothie regimen,
followed by coffee - Hamel's specialty. Somers joked about their
shared office - Hamel collects piles of papers - and reminded her
husband she'd be making crab for dinner. Hamel said he's never been to
a wine tasting, never been to a stag party, he's not big on golf. He
doesn't have a lot in common with his retired friends, because even
after 52 years he never wants to be out of work. They have six
grandchildren altogether and revel in them, attending ballet recitals
and such. Holidays are typically blocked out for big family
gatherings.

Somers is especially close to her son Bruce, now 41, and his wife,
Caroline. In 'Ageless,' she interviewed him about his own experience
with hormone treatments. At 33, Bruce believed he was suffering from
the male equivalent of perimenopause, known as periandropause, and in
the book he details the relief he found with the treatment. But their
exchange reveals a bit about their relationship as well.

'I don't know that I realized I was tired then,' he said. 'I've been
tired, I mean, I've been trying to be cognizant of being tired in the
last few years and not letting myself get burned out. I'm not good at
it. You see, I have a mom who's a workaholic in everything she does.
She's the best mom, the best nightclub entertainer, the best
salesperson, the best at everything she does.'

In response, Somers told him: 'I'm working on it. I left dishes in the
sink last night, you'll be proud to know.'

In early January, on an otherwise uneventful Monday night, Hamel
called his wife to the television and pointed to the inferno on the
screen. It was their $5-million Malibu home. They watched it burn,
consumed by a fast-moving brush fire. The next day they drove to the
property and Somers waded through a crowd of reporters to get to the
charred remains. Her convertible Jaguar, now a blackened shell, was
still parked out front. Somers and Hamel had owned the modest
midcentury two-bedroom for seven years. They bought it for weekend
getaways, and ended up spending most of their time there. Still, as
Somers told the reporters, it wasn't as if she'd lost a child in Iraq.
'We will learn something great from this experience,' she said.

In the days after the fire, Somers would elaborate only by e-mail. She
wasn't especially upset over the material losses, though she said
she'd miss her Tom Ford black leather jacket and a scrapbook of 'The
Blonde in the Thunderbird' that her granddaughter had made. 'Because
my social life was in L.A., and my professional life, all my clothing
and jewelry and my 25-year collection of Native American moccasins
were all destroyed,' she wrote. 'I do not own a purse or a coat
anymore. My gowns were all burned. As were my costumes. My scripts and
all the research I had collected - gone. It's an interesting
experience. Sad, but with perspective . . . I always said, I'd like to
have 10 great things to wear. 'Your wish is my command.' Be careful
what you wish for.'

Jackie Collins sent Somers one of her necklaces, and film producers
Arnold and Anne Kopelson volunteered their guest quarters. Somers was
overwhelmed by the 'huge outpouring of love and kindness from our
friends and hundreds of people who have reached out to my website.'
Still, nearly two weeks after the fire, she remained hurt that The
Times' next-day news story had reported that she read a statement
'from a piece of paper.' She mentioned it twice in her e-mails.

'I know the 'deal' that is struck when one chooses the celebrity
life,' she wrote in one last missive. 'I know that the press is going
to be there when you want them and also when you would prefer they are
not there. I have never resented the intrusion and have welcomed those
appearances that move my persona forward. But what I do resent is
being 'reviewed' on my tragedy. It happened with cancer and it
happened again with, unfortunately, the L.A. Times 'reviewing' my
reaction. Just the thought is ghastly and then to . . . say I pulled
out a canned written response, when if the video is reviewed there was
no written response, nor did I have any idea what I was going to say
until it came out of my mouth. I was in shock seeing my life burned to
ashes. It was my soul speaking . . . there was no canned response.
Just the words of a woman who was trying to do her best under such
adversity.'