Wendie Jo Sperber

"I spent many years with low self-esteem, but the cancer has given me the gift of seeing how many people love me."

I liked her in I Wanna Hold Your Hand. She was also in an ABC Afterschool Special ca. 1978 about someone shooting smack. I watched as a twelve year old.

Her nasal voice annoyed the hell out of me.

She was very funny as a photographer’s assistant on an episode of “Designing Women.” This sexist pig photographer did a photo shoot at Sugarbakers. He dressed the women in silly over the top sexy outfits that made the women uncomfortable. The photographer would smarmy rave about one of the women - the running gag was that a bored monotone Wendie Jo Sperber would reply with - “Yeah...Sure....Fine .....Whatever.”

She was good in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Bosom Buddies, and Babes. She was also in that terrible John Ritter-Markie Post-Billy Bob Thornton early 1990s sitcom Hearts Afire (free on Amazon Prime).

Mindy Cohn was one of her best friends

On Bosom Buddies she won praise for being a well-dressed heavy-set young woman who was pretty and had romantic desires.

She was a delightful character actress. She carried herself as if she was the hottest girl in the room, and therefore she was.

[quote] Mindy Cohn was one of her best friends

That's a lot of latkes and passive aggressiveness.

Solid broad. She could plug a hole in a fuselage with that ass.

she was so funny in Moving Violations, another great 80's movie

She was a great actress. I think she could have been Kathy Bates great at some point. She was really confident in her craft and her body. Sorry she passed so soon.

Echo what others have said here, I loved her in I Wanna Hold Your Hand. It's one of my favourite films about fandom, and Sperber played a Beatles fan to perfection.

Also loved her in one my guilty pleasures, Bachelor Party.

Women in Prison was HERS!

She was replaced by Kathy Najimy.

If only "Women in Prison" and "Facts of Life" had had a very special crossover episode.

and she was great in Bachelor Party

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

R18- Thanks.

When I was a kid I loves the show Babes. Man, Fox was an assembly line for shitty yet enjoyable sitcoms in the early 90s.

Loved her!

I miss the days when fat shaming wasn't actively discouraged...

Did she carry around a snack purse?

I loved her in everything I saw her in, and a former friend worked with her several times and said she was a delight. He also said she didn't care for him much which made me love her even more, because the former friend was a huge pain in the ass.

R22, Babes stole Friends’s episode naming method.

Babes preceded Friends by 4 years!!!!!

Wasn’t she also in Back to the Future as the sister?

The only thing I remember her in was I Wanna Hold Your Hand, where she (and Eddie Deezen) were shrilly over-the-top as crazed Beatles fans.

I loved her as Doris on Fame.

So glad to see some love for Wendi Jo here. She's one of my faves. Loved her in Bachelor Party. I think she was one of those actresses who would have been an "overnight success" when the right part came along, especially on a streaming series, which it would have. She was too good for bit & second banana parts, which always outshined the main player. "I thought you said no hookers, Stanley, no hookers, no hookers!"

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack was a terrible production of a good book. June Lockhart played the mother and a miscast Wendie Jo played the daughter.

She was a great rockin' dancer as evidenced in "1942". Also remember her being Marty's sister in 'Back to the Future". She

Anyone else remember a scene she did with a man on the telephone she thinks is her doctor but os actually a car mechanic telling her to lube up her rear end and run down the street flat out to fix her problem?

[quote] She was a great actress. I think she could have been Kathy Bates great at some point.

Thanks for the laugh! Now I have to go clean the coffee off my laptop.

R33 see r11

She ate like Janet Jackson but died at like what, 36 years old? Sperber was funny in the show about fat girls, Babes.

[quote] an ABC Afterschool Special ca. 1978 about someone shooting smack.

Are you stuck in 1978?

Shooting ‘smack’?

Lol

Like Burt Reynolds, she could turn chicken shit into chicken salad. She was a joy in whatever she did and a mainstay of 80s films and TV.

she died at age 47 of breast cancer, asshole r36

She was one of those actors who made whatever project better with a little Sperber.

R37, that was the name of the book on which the TV movie starring Sperber was based...

R39 and yet Jabba is still single-handedly keeping KFC alive. Sick world.

did nat start this thread?

She was also great in 1941 and stole every scene she was in

Did she fuck Tom Hanks?

She auditioned for Jan in Grease the movie and should have gotten it.

Loved her in 'I want to hold your hand' (one of my favorite scenes is Wendie's character listening to the radio in the car and jumping out of it as the DJ announces that they are giving away tickets to the Sullivan show. She would just frantically throw a handful of dimes at the payphone and try to get through). I also loved her in 'Bosom Buddies'. I believe she was good friends with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. They quietly give their time to cancer charities Wendie Jo worked with.

Was she in an episode of Seinfeld? George Costanza wants to extend his unemployment benefits and takes her on a date. She was the daughter of his unemployment benefits case worker. I remember her very nasal sounding "will you call me when you get home?" I think he had taken her to McDonald's for the date.

No, r48, that wasn’t her.

R10, I love you almost as much as WJS.

Loved her. Gone too soon...

Brilliant casting for Bosom Buddies.

Tom Hanks really seemed to like her so I would imagine seeing how she was diagnosed with cancer in 1997, had she lived and Hanks' stature grew in Hollywood, Wendie Jo would have probably gotten some good projects via that connection combined with her talent.

She was funnier than Kathy Najimy. She could have had a career similar to Melissa McCarthy's.

She was also good on an episode of "Married With Children" as one of Al's former high school girlfriends.

LOL, R47, I remember her jumping out of that moving car in “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, and throwing a handful of dimes at the pay phone! I think the dimes gag was done more than once in the movie, if memory serves.

Wasn't she in an episode of Will and Grace? I just remember her in a scene with Grace and someone said, "open up a can of whoop ass." I was a sheltered child and had never heard that phrase before. I chuckled to myself for days.

I loved her on Bosom Buddies when I was a little kid, and watched for her as I grew up, as she popped up in a lot of movies and tv shows. I think the last thing I saw her in was her episode of Will and Grace. I loved her, and never once saw her turn in a bad performance in anything. I was very sad when she died.

It's surprising that a big-budget Spielberg movie would decide on using an unconvincing wig on her in "Back to the Future." They probably could have retro-styled her own hair and it would have looked more realistic.

She was in an episode of Married With Children where she played an old girlfriend of Al's. Despite Al's jabs about her weight, she still came out ahead in the battle of the sexes. There was a strange similarity to the way he spoke to her and the way he spoke to Peggy, a familiarity that wasn't genuinely malicious the way he was towards other fat women.

R58- Her and that other guy they were BOTH in I Wanna Hold Your Hand which had the same producer or director as Back To The Future. Neither of them belonged in BTTF. The other guy also was in Superman (1978) as Jimmy Olson.

I didn't see in her Wiki profile whether she was Jewish, but I believe she was, and I think, like Madeline and Gilda, she was predisposed to cancer due to the BRCA gene.

(Correct me if I'm wrong....I know you bitches will)

[quote] She auditioned for Jan in Grease the movie and should have gotten it.

She's too plump to be pink.

[quote] She auditioned for Jan in Grease the movie and should have gotten it.

It wasn't filmed in Cinemascope!

You guys and your fat jokes are straight off the 60s Catskills Twilight Family Dinner Comedy Circuit

Not really funny to be cracking fat jokes about a really decent dead woman who died from cancer at a young age.

She was a big-boned girl.

My former partner was one of her best friends, so I met her several times. Lovely person. Hilarious and joyful. Just what you’d hope.

[quote] the 60s Catskills Twilight Family Dinner Comedy Circuit

Ah, yes. The Borscht Belt. Remember it well.

I Wanna Hold You hand was this mystical movie I remembered seeing as a kid once and was never able to figure out what it was. Many years ago it aired on Bravo Canada and I was happy as hell to finally see that I didn't imagine Eddie Deezen jumping through an elevator door and spitting out glass.

[quote] Not really funny to be cracking fat jokes about a really decent dead woman who died from cancer at a young age.

Getta load of the one million moms president.

I’m a man, R70, but whatever you need to tell yourself is fine by me.

16 years ago is recently dead?

"really decent," not "recently dead"

She was one of my favorite 80s character actresses.

I always liked her. Thought she was funny, pretty, and a good actress. I liked her voice!

[quote] 16 years ago is recently dead?

Hey! To some of us 16 years ago is like this morning’s breakfast to you whippersnappers.

On a related note, whatever happened to Eddie Deezen? Other than aging out of the nerd/dweeb young adult roles he specialized in. My favorite film of his was Midnight Madness which aslo had a young pre-fame Michael J Fox in it.

I think she was in HUNK. I liked that movie and her in it.

r77...its funny you mention Eddie Deezen...I was just about to post that I liked WJS in Used Cars, where she was teamed with Eddie Deezen as high schol students learning how to drive.

She was in a very funny but short lived tv series called "Women In Prison." It had quite a cast: Peggy Cass, CCH Pounder, Denny Dillon, Wendie Jo and other talented actresses. I'm not sure why it got cancelled after only 13 episodes; it was considered quite risque for its time, maybe that was why. It had a hilarious theme song: "Poor little girl...now you're trapped in a cruel, craaazy world...while other girls make dates you make license plates...have them forward your mail...now you're in JAAAIIIILLL!"

I remember her as very pretty and a joy to watch. I would say she had a presence. I’m very sorry she died so young.I agree that she would have made an excellent character actress over time, and that’s actually a great identity to have as an actor.

She headlined her own series "Babes" - 3 overweight sisters share a bachelor apartment

Wendy Jo got top billing

Babes

Starring Wendy Jo Sperber

R82- meet R22.

Is "I Wanna Hold Your Hand " on any streaming services?

"Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack was a terrible production of a good book. June Lockhart played the mother and a miscast Wendie Jo played the daughter."

I was obsessed with the novel as a young adult, but for some reason I never saw the after-school special. I just went over to Youtube and watched it. Good Lord, they really fucked it up, didn't they? It deserved so much better, like for starters a 90-minute running time, a theatrical release, and a good director. Why was Dinky the protagonist in the show? Tucker was the protagonist in the novel, and it should have stayed that way, with a far more charismatic actor like... I'm thinking Chris Makepeace?

Can you imagine what Jane Fonda or Ellen Burnstyn could have done with Mrs. Hocker? June Lockhart was a bizarre casting choice and just too old for the part (by the way, TIL June Lockhart is still alive!). Maureen Teefy was fine as Natalia because she had that bohemian thing going on. Wendie Jo would have been fine if Dinky had remained a supporting charter. The only one who really nailed it was Gary Springer as P. John; he was very good.

[quote] Is "I Wanna Hold Your Hand " on any streaming services?

I'm not sure r84 but I highly recommend the Criterion edition Blu-ray of the film. It looks gorgeous and has some terrific special features. It was refreshing to see Criterion issue a fun comedy.

I forget the setup but I remember laughing so hard as a kid when one of the guys makes a metaphor about Jack and the Beanstalk.

She misses the point and says perfectly: "you didn't even get the beans??!!!!"

R33, that was Moving Violations. Such a good quality 80s comedy. I wanted to bang Bill Murrary's little brother