Susan Buckner came into the world on January 28, 1952, in Seattle, a city soaked in rain and coffee long before either became a brand. She arrived with the kind of smile pageant judges salivate over — the kind that promises good posture, bright teeth, and an American future polished to a dangerous shine. By 19, she was Miss Washington. By 20, she was on the Miss America stage under the bright Atlantic City lights, tied for first in the swimsuit round, her whole life stretched out like a runway in front of her.
That’s how Hollywood first heard her knocking — through the echo chamber of sequins and sincerity. A lot of women break under that spotlight. Susan didn’t break. She converted it.
She eased herself into show business through song-and-dance trenches, the old-fashioned way, back when you needed legs, lungs, and stamina instead of a social media manager. She became one of The Golddiggers — Dean Martin’s glamorous chorus platoon — all tans, teeth, and choreography on syndicated television. She made her way through the variety circuit too: The Mac Davis Show, Sonny & Cher, smiling like the world hadn’t started to swallow the ’70s whole.
Somewhere in there she also put on a swimsuit and dove into a pool as one of The Krofftettes on The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, performing synchronized swimming routines that defied both physics and dignity. But that was the era: everyone looked ridiculous, but the checks cleared.
Then 1978 arrived, and Grease happened — big, loud, sugar-packed like a summer carnival you can’t get off of even when you want to. Susan Buckner became Patty Simcox, the high-octane cheerleader with a voice like a whistle and the kind of perkiness that could make you nostalgic or nauseated, depending on your constitution.
Patty Simcox was the sort of girl who ran student council meetings with iron pom-poms and believed in rules the way some people believe in God. And Susan played her perfectly — so perfectly you could smell the bubblegum off the screen. She became part of cinema’s permanent backdrop, the bright, chirping counterweight to Rizzo’s cynicism and Sandy’s sweetness. A thousand rewatchers can recite her lines. A million know her face even if they don’t know her name.
She drifted through television after that — When the Whistle Blows, odds and ends on the small screen, enough work to keep the flame going. But Hollywood is a place that eats the soft-hearted first. Susan didn’t stick around long enough to be devoured.
By the early ’80s, she stepped off the carousel. She chose her children over the camera, traded call sheets for school lunches, applause for the quiet rhythmic grind of real life. If she missed the spotlight, she never said. Maybe she didn’t. Some people only need one good crack at immortality.
She married Michael R. Josephs in 1979 — a marriage that held for nearly two decades — and had two children who became the center of her gravity. That’s the thing they don’t tell you: sometimes the bravest thing is walking away before the lights burn you hollow.
On May 2, 2024, in Miami, at 72, Susan Buckner slipped out of this world. No blockbuster farewell, no synchronized chorus line to send her off — just the quiet exit of a woman who once danced across millions of screens and then chose a different kind of life altogether.
But every time Grease plays — at sleepovers, drive-ins resurrected by nostalgia, bars where the bartender is too young to remember VHS — Patty Simcox bursts onto the screen, smiling like she owns the whole damn school. And for a few minutes, Susan Buckner is right there again: alive, unstoppable, and cheering her heart out for a world that always needed a little more joy than it knew how to hold.
