Jenilee Harrison

Jenilee Harrison dated a couple of men including L.A. Rams guard Dennis Harrah and former major league baseball player and Hall Of Famer Reggie Jackson before tying the nuptial knot to Dr. Bruce Oppenheim, a prominent Los Angeles area chiropractor, in 1988.

After the marriage, Jenilee became stepmother to Oppenheim’s two children, Ariel and Zachariah, from his previous marriage to actress Cybill Sheperd. She doesn’t have her own children.

Jenilee Harrison was born on June 12, 1958 in a middle-class household in Northridge, California. While her father was an aerospace engineer, her mother was a math teacher. She had four siblings, two elder sisters and two younger brothers.

She spent much of her growing up years in San Fernando Valley. Her parents divorced when she was 15. Despite living separately, young Harrison was close to both of them.

Jenilee Harrison was blessed with an impressive figure and naturally glowing skin. She had cheerful blond looks and a tall, slender frame that gave an overall impression of a chic girl. She contested in several beauty pageants, winning most of them including Miss San Fernando Valley, Miss Los Angeles, Miss Hollywood and Miss Young America.

Despite having gained success as a model, she did not give up on her studies. Instead, she continued her studies as well as pursued her career in modelling. She did a couple of television commercials and modelling assignments, the money gained from which she used, to pay her academic fees at the University of Southern California (USC).

Jenilee Harrison’s career kickstarted in 1978 when she was chosen as one of the members of the NFL cheerleading squad for Los Angeles’ Rams’ Embraceable Ewes. She thought of the project as her ticket to get into Hollywood. She was seen in the opening moments of the highlight film for Super Bowl XIV, which shows the Rams cheerleaders in their dressing room before the game. She was also be seen in the second season episode of CHiPs when Jon and Ponch pull over a van-load of Rams cheerleader

In 1980, she graduated with an education degree from USC. In the same year, she won the title Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. It was while studying at USC that Jenilee first met acting coach Joyce Selznick. Selznick gave her a lot of handy tips on how to polish her acting skills.

In 1980, Jenilee’s big breakthrough came in when she was cast for the ABC’s hit television sitcom ‘Three’s Company’. She was to enter the show as a replacement for Suzanne Somers, the ditzy dumb blonde who played Chrissy Snow. In it, Jenilee played the character of Cindy Snow, a cousin of Chrissy Snow. Cindy was quite similar to her cousin Chrissy excepting for the fact that she wasn’t a dumb blonde.

Jenilee made her debut on season five for the seventh episode of ‘Three's Company’. The episode entitled ‘Chrissy's Cousin’. She entered the show as Jack and Janet's new roommate. Right at the start, Cindy proved that she was a klutz by knocking Jack down.

Jenilee brought a lot of mirth and hilarity to the show and added to the show’s gags by being clumsy and witty. Despite replacing Somers, Jenilee wasn’t given opening credits billing. Instead she received end-credits billed, as a guest star.

The magnum opus of Jenilee Harrison’s career definitely has to be her stint as Cindy Snow in the highly popular and much-loved television series ‘Three’s Company’. She entered when the show was running in its fifth season as a replacement for Suzanne Somers who played Chrissy Snow. Her character was a cousin of Chrissy who was an extremely clumsy farm-girl. Since it was a mid-season entry, the character of Cindy bore slight resemblance to Chrissy in terms of personality and temperament. Jenilee reprised her role for the show’s sixth season as well before biding adieu.