She'd rather look like Olivia Newton-John in Grease, but...
Tammy Faye is a Dead Ringer for Lucy!
In her new book, Tammy Faye Messner tells Olivia Newton-John You're the One That I Want - to look like.
But as these pictures show, the ex-wife of disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker could be Lucille Ball's long-lost twin!
"My idea of a perfect woman is Olivia Newton-John in the movie Grease," Tammy Faye, 61, writes in I Will Survive...And You Will, Too! (Penguin Group). "When that movie came out, I vowed that I was going to lose weight and have a figure just like Olivia's."
So she joined an exercise club and shed 30 pounds. Then she bought some new clothes and compared herself to the Australian songbird, who donned a skintight spandex outfit to sing the duet You're the One That I Want with co-star John Travolta in the hit 1978 film.
"I got me a pair of spandex pants and stood in front of a full-length mirror," Tammy Faye recalls. "And for the first time, I felt like I looked as good as any other woman - very tiny but very shapely."
Her book recounts the tribulations she endred during her former hsuband's fall from grace and her marriage to current hubby Roe Messner, 68, along with suggestions on how to be a better person. She even gives tips on how to look good in makeup.
"I think makeup did as much to hurt my self-esteem as raise it," she confesses in the book.
"People cruelly put me down, calling me a clown and saying that I applied it with a paintbrush...but I have held up despite their cruel taunts. I feel lI look better with it that without it."
Still, she admits she's not exactly a femme fatale for her shuband Roe around their Rancho Mirage, Calif., home.
"You'll generally find me in a my old pink, hair-color-stained bathrobe," she says, adding that she climbs into bed in an "old, ratty, long gown."
She also is in the habit of wearing Vicks VapoRub to sleep because she says it helps her keep her neck from getting wrinkly.
Surprisingly, Tammy Faye has developed a special place in her heart for gays, who embraced her and sent her money in the late '90s after Roe had been sent to jail for bankruptcy fraud.
"Christians now tell me they didn't know where I was and I'm sure that's true," she says. "But the gay community found me and I will love them forever."
--Rod Gibson
Back to the Lucy Archives
{ List of Lucy Shows | Books | Main Lucy Page | Webrings |
Links | Movies | Pictures | Vivian Vance | William Frawley |
Archives | The Lucy Show | News | Lucy's Bio | Quiz | Desi } |