Sorry to hear that actress Wendie Jo Sperber has lost her battle with cancer at age 47. Here's an obit which mentions a lot of the things she did. There was a period there when she was appearing in one movie or TV show after another, and turning down five offers for every one she squeezed into her schedule. She was very good in every one of them.
Unmentioned in most obits is a musical play/revue called A-5-6-7-8, which is where I first saw and met Wendie Jo. It ran for a year or two at the Zephyr Theater on Melrose in West Hollywood around 1977. Almost plotless, its slim storyline was an excuse for about a dozen talented performers to sing and dance showtunes and novelty songs. Since I knew one of the talented ladies in it, I wound up seeing it a half-dozen times and hanging out with the cast after many a performance. Wendie Jo, who was barely out of her teens, was among the players and she managed to stop the show almost every night with an intense, emotional rendition of "Pachalafaka," a funny tune you may remember from when Soupy Sales used to perform it. She also stole the spotlight in a bump-and-grind version of "Welcome to Holiday Inn" (from the Broadway show, Seesaw) performed by the female cast members.
The thing I remember most about Wendie Jo is that everyone who came to the Zephyr then knew they were seeing the dawning of a great career. The revue was unabashedly intended to showcase its performers, and every casting director in town dropped by to case the talent. Every one of them immediately wanted to put Wendie Jo in something and there was one night when she actually seemed stressed, trying to decide among several offers for her screen debut. She thought they were all bad roles that didn't suit her and, while she knew every actress does some of those, she was hoping to start with something "a little special." Few actors who've never been hired to appear before a camera will turn down a chance to change that…but Wendie Jo decided it was a bad omen to go in and do something that you knew was wrong. So she passed on those offers and a week or so later, she got one of the leads in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a role that couldn't have been better suited to her. No one who knew her then was surprised at all the work she got after that. No one who knew her ever is unaffected by the news today.