LOS ANGELES (AP) – Cloris Leachman, an Oscar winner for her portrayal of a lonely housewife in ‘The Last Picture Show’ and a comedic delight as the formidable Frau Blücher in ‘Young Frankenstein’ and introverted neighbor Phyllis on ‘ The Mary Tyler Moore Show, ”has passed away. She was 94.
Leachman died in her sleep of natural causes at her home in Encinitas, California, publicist Monique Moss said Wednesday. Her daughter Dinah Englund was by her side, Moss said.
Leachman, a character actor with extraordinary reach, defied typecasting. In her early television career she appeared as Timmy’s mother in the series “Lassie”. She played a frontier prostitute in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, a relative of a crime family in ‘Crazy Mama’, and Blücher in Mel Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’, in which the mere mention of her name provided horse commentary.
“Every time I hear a horse whinny, I will forever think of Cloris’ unforgettable Frau Blücher,” Brooks tweeted, calling Leachman “insanely talented” and “irreplaceable”.
Greetings from other admiring colleagues poured in on social media. Steve Martin said Leachman “brought the mysteries of comedy to the big and small screens.” “Nothing I could say would exceed the enormity of my love for you,” wrote Ed Asner of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” “Applause at every entrance and exit,” said Rosie O’Donnell.
‘There was no one like Cloris. With a single glance, she had the power to break your heart or make you laugh “until tears ran down your cheeks,” Juliet Green, her longtime manager, said in a statement.
In 1989 Leachman toured in ‘Grandma Moses’, a play in which she was between the ages of 45 and 101. For three years she starred in major cities in the 1990s as the captain’s wife in the revival of ‘Show Boat’. In the 1993 film version of “The Beverly Hillbillies” she took on the role of Irene Ryan as Granny Clampett.
She also played an occasional role as Ida in “Malcolm in the Middle”, winning Emmys for that show in 2002 and 2006. Her Emmy haul over the years has totaled eight, including two trophies for Moore’s sitcom, making her the best Emmy winners among the performers along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
In 2008, Leachman joined the contestants of ‘Dancing With the Stars’, who did not compete for long, but pleased the crowd with her sparkling dance costumes, perching herself on the jurors’ lap and cursing during the live broadcast.
She started out as Miss Chicago in the Miss America Pageant and willingly accepted non-glamorous screen roles.
“Actually I don’t care what I look like, ugly or beautiful,” she told an interviewer in 1973. “I don’t think beauty is. In a single day each of us is ugly or beautiful. I’m devastated, I can’t be the witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” But I would also like to be the good witch Phyllis combines both.
‘I am something like that in life. I am magic and I believe in magic. There should be a point in life where you don’t have to keep believing that. I haven’t reached it yet. “
In the 1950s, Leachman got busy with live TV drama, showcasing her versatility, including in roles that represented the casting standards of the time.
“One week I would be like a Chinese girl, the next like a blonde cockney, and weeks later like someone else dark-haired,” she recalled. In 1955 she made her screen debut in a hard-boiled Mickey Spillane saga, “Kiss Me Deadly” – “I was the naked blonde who picked up Mike Hammer on that dark highway.”
She followed with Rod Serling’s court-martial drama, ‘The Rack’, and a season on ‘Lassie’. She continued to play supporting roles on Broadway and in films, achieving her triumph with Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show,” based on Larry McMurtry’s novel.
When Leachman received the Best Supporting Actress Oscar of 1971, she gave an elaborate speech thanking her piano and dance teachers and concluding, “This is for Buck Leachman, who paid the bills.” Her father owned a sawmill.
Despite her photogenic appearance, she was still cast in character parties. Her most indelible role was Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Phyllis often visited Mary’s apartment, lamenting her husband Lars and caustic comments about Mary and especially her opponent, another tenant, Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper). Phyllis was so unexpectedly captivating that Leachman starred in her own spin-off series “Phyllis,” which ran on CBS from 1975 to 1977.
With “Young Frankenstein”, Leachman joined “the Mel Brooks stock company” and also appeared in “High Anxiety” and “History of the World, Part I.” Her other films included Bogdanovich’s ‘Daisy Miller’ and ‘Texasville’, repeating her role on ‘The Last Picture Show’. In 2009, she released her autobiography “Cloris”, which made headlines for her story of a “wild” one-night stand with Gene Hackman.
Cloris Leachman grew up in the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa, where she was born in 1926. The large family lived in an isolated log home with no running water, but the mother had ambitious ideas for her children. Cloris took piano lessons at the age of 5; because the family could not afford the piano, she practiced on a cardboard drawing of the keys.
“I’m going to be a concert pianist,” the girl announced, and her mother encouraged her with bookings at churches and public clubs. She arranged for Cloris to ride a coal wagon to Des Moines to audition for a Drake University student show. She got the part and appeared in other plays at a local theater. After high school, she won a scholarship to study drama at Northwestern University.
Granted, a poor student, Leachman only lasted a year. As a Chicago area lark, she tried out a Miss Chicago beauty pageant and was chosen. She competed in the Miss America pageant of 1946 in Atlantic City and qualified as a finalist. Her consolation prize: a $ 1,000 talent grant.
With a new ambition she went straight to New York, where she worked as an extra in a movie and Nina Foch little studied in the hit “John Loves Mary”.
More jobs followed, and she enrolled at the Actors Studio to hone her craft. “I finally quit because of smoking,” she said later. “I couldn’t stand that blue haze.”
In 1953 Leachman married George Englund, later a film director and producer, and they had five children: Adam, Bryan, George, Morgan and Dinah. The couple divorced in 1979. Son Bryan Englund was found dead in 1986 at the age of 30.
___
AP writers Beth Harris in Los Angeles and Hillel Italy in New York contributed to this report.
___
The late AP Entertainment writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this story.