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Oscar winner and Emmy award multiple Cloris Leachman, best remembered as the deliciously neurotic Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and her own subsequent sitcom, died of natural causes Tuesday in Encinitas, in California. She was 94 years old.
“I have had the privilege of working with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time,” said longtime manager Juliet Green. “There was no one like Cloris. With just one look, she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh until tears rolled down your face. You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of his unprecedented magic.
Daffy, egotistical Phyllis, a character she claimed to be close to her own personality, brought the actress two Emmys as a star actress in a series in the mid-’70s and made Leachman a household name.
Leachman also won a Supporting Actress Oscar earlier in the decade for a much different character, a bitter small-town housewife in Peter Bogdanovich’s elegiac “The Last Picture Show”; she would later reprise the role in the less successful sequel to the movie “Texasville”. Both films were based on the writings of Larry McMurtry.
Overnight success for the actress, however, only came after two decades of hard work in the theater, on television and in some films. Leachman was in his forties when fame finally struck.
Leachman’s perfect timing and simplicity in comedy and unadorned honesty in drama was the result of many years honing her craft and incorporating her own life experiences as a mother of five (by producer George Englund ).
Her open, all-American look has taken her through decades in a wide variety of roles on Broadway and early television, as well as in over 40 films, where she easily transitioned from lead roles to character roles.
The actress won a total of eight prime-time Emmys, both for drama and comedy, and a daytime Emmy.
The recurring character of Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” not only made her a TV star, but also gave her time to play roles in films such as “Lovers and Other Strangers”, “The People Next Door”, “WUSA” and “The Last Picture Show,” which won her an Oscar for Supporting Actress in 1971, bowled over by her co-star named Ellen Burstyn. Two Emmys for the role of Phyllis were crammed alongside one for the drama in the ABC TV movie “A Brand New Life” (1973) and led, in 1975, to her own series, which ran for a few seasons.
Decades later, she was still working and flying high: Leachman was a contestant for the seventh season of “Dancing With the Stars” in 2008, becoming, at 82, the oldest dancing on the show, and she was the big one. Marshal of the 2009 New Years Tournament of the Rose Parade and Game of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
During the 1970s, she performed well with Bogdanovich’s “Daisy Miller” and was hilarious in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein”; she also appeared in Brooks’ “High Anxiety”.
She has had a more interesting job to do on television. She won a fourth Emmy for a guest role in the variety series “Cher”, and she became a television staple during the period and has directed television productions of “The Migrants” by Lanford Wilson and ” Ladies of the Corridor ”by Dorothy Parker on PBS.
The Five and Six Emmys would come for ABC Afterschool Special “The Woman Who Wanted a Miracle” in 1983 and the SAG’s 50th anniversary celebration the following year.
She tried the show’s regular job again, doing her best with “The Facts of Life”.
Leachman continued to work in TV movies, appearing in the miniseries “Backstairs at the White House” plus “In Broad Daylight”, “Little Piece of Heaven”, “Fine Things”, “Deadly Intentions”, “The Oldest Living” Graduate ”,“ Advice to Lovelorns ”,“ Miss All American Beauty ”,“ Dixie ”,“ Mrs. R’s Daughter ”,“ Fade to Black ”,“ Between love and honor ”,“ Miracle Child ”and“ Double, Double, Toil and Trouble ”.
In 1996, she appeared in the Los Angeles version of “Showboat”.
During the 80s and 90s, Leachman worked intermittently in films such as “The History of the World, Part I”, “Walk Like a Man” and the 1993 big screen version of “The Beverly Hillbillies” in the Granny role.
She seemed to make the transition effortlessly and even embrace the roles of grandmother she found herself playing in the 1990s and 2000s.
Leachman returned to “Malcolm in the Middle” from 2001 to 2006 as Grandma Ida and won several Emmy nominations and two other Emmy Awards (in 2002 and 2006).
In 2003, she played the big-screen grandmother in the romantic comedy “Alex and Emma” and in the darker comedy “Bad Santa”. She also did voice work in the animated films “Beavis and Butthead”, “A Troll in Central Park” and in the 2008 English version of the Japanese anime “Ponyo” as well as in “The Simpsons” of the television.
It was hard to see any evidence that she was slowing down.
She was a series regular on Ellen DeGeneres’ brief vehicle “The Ellen Show” in 2001-02, is recurring on “Touched by an Angel” and has appeared on “Diagnosis Murder”, “Joan of Arcadia”, “Two and a Half Men, ”“ The Office, ”“ Phineas and Ferb, ”“ Hawthorne, ”and“ Blue Mountain State. ”In 2010-14, she was a series regular on Fox’s“ Raising Hope, ”pulling her 19th Emmy nomination (She still appeared regularly in the telepic.)
On the big screen, she was much busier in the decade and more after 2000, when she was in the late ’70s and early’ 80s, than in the decade before.
His film credits during the period included (but were by no means limited to) “Spanglish” (2004), “The Longest Yard” (2005), “Scary Movie 4” (2006), “Beerfest” (2006) and “The Women (2008). In the anthology photo (2009) “New York I Love You,” she appeared in a poignant but sentimental segment as an elderly woman grappling with the infirmities of her even older husband (Eli Wallach).
In 2011 and 2012, Leachman advanced to the big screen in a wide array of stills, including “The Fields”, the comedy “Gambit”, the horror film “The Home” and action dramas such as ” The Story of Bonnie and Clyde ”and“ Timberwolf. ”
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Leachman gained work experience as a child at Des Moines Little Theater. At 15, she appeared on local radio stations. She won a special scholarship to study dramatic theater at Northwestern, where she stayed for some time before returning to Des Moines to finish high school. She returned to the Northwest with a theater scholarship this time, but gave up and entered a beauty pageant, eventually finding her way to the 1946 Miss America pageant.
Moving to New York, she landed a role in a fast-paced movie, “Carnegie Hall,” and narrowly missed the lead female role in the Broadway comedy “John Loves Mary” to Nina Foch. She studied at the Actors Studio and made her Broadway debut in 1948 in the pop-up production “Sundown Beach”. She gained attention as Cecilia in a Theater Guild production of “As You Like It” starring Katharine Hepburn which lasted six months.
Her role in “A Sunday Night Story” earned her good marks in 1950, and she played on Broadway for eight months in the 1954 Jean Kerr / Eleanor Brooke comedy “King of Hearts”. She also played Nellie Forbush in a special cover of “South Pacific”.
More regular training came via live television. She was a regular on the first series “Charlie Wild, Private Detective” (1950-52), and she excelled in bad girl roles. She has also made appearances in television series such as “Gunsmoke” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”.
During this period, she was seriously considered for the female lead role in Charlie Chaplin’s bittersweet drama “Limelight”, but the role went to Claire Bloom. She then grabbed the role of a sexy hitchhiker in Robert Aldrich’s “Kiss Me Deadly”. She also landed a small role in Rod Serling’s 1956 film “The Rack”.
But television was much more suitable for motherhood, so she played the role of mother in the series “Lassie”. Other television works include “The Migrants” by Tennessee Williams and “Of Thee I Sing” by George Gershwin.
Leachman was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2011.
“Cloris: My Autobiography” was released in 2009. She wrote the bestselling book with George Englund, whom she divorced in 1979.
Survivors include sons Adam, George Jr. and Morgan, an actor; and a daughter, Dinah.
The family requests that any donation in their name be made to PETA or Last Chance for Animals.
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