LOS ANGELES (AP) – Oscar winner Cloris Leachman for her portrayal of a lonely housewife on “The Last Picture Show” and a comical treat like the fearsome Frau Blücher in “Young Frankenstein” and her self-centered neighbor Phyllis in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show ”, died. She was 94 years old.
Leachman died while sleeping from natural causes at his home in Encinitas, California, publicist Monique Moss said on Wednesday. His daughter Dinah Englund was at his side, Moss said.
Actor of characters of extraordinary reach, Leachman defied typification. Early in her television career, she appeared as Timmy’s mother on the series “Lassie”. She played an avant-garde prostitute in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, a family member in “Crazy Mama”, and Blücher in “Young Frankenstein” by Mel Brooks, in which the mere mention of her name attracted equine comments.
“Every time I hear a horse neigh, I will always think of the unforgettable Frau Blücher de Cloris,” Brooks tweeted, calling Leachman “incredibly talented” and “irreplaceable”.
Greetings from other fellow admirers rained on social media. Steve Martin said that Leachman “brought the mysteries of comedy to the big and small screen”. “Nothing I could say would outweigh the enormity of my love for you,” posted Ed Asner of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. “Applause at every entry and exit,” said Rosie O’Donnell.
“There was no one like Cloris. With a single look, she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh until tears flow down your face, ”said Juliet Green, her longtime agent, in a statement.
In 1989, Leachman toured “Grandma Moses”, a play in which she was between 45 and 101 years old. For three years in the 1990s, she appeared in major cities 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 had an occasional role as Ida in “Malcolm in the Middle”, winning the Emmy in 2002 and 2006 for that program. Her Emmy achievement over the years has totaled eight, including two trophies for Moore’s sitcom, tying her with Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the top Emmy winners among artists.
In 2008, Leachman joined the ranking of contestants in “Dancing With the Stars”, not lasting long in the competition, but pleasing the crowd with their shiny dance costumes, perching on the judges’ lap and cursing during the live broadcast.
She started out as Miss Chicago at Miss America Pageant and gladly accepted non-glamorous roles on screen.
“Basically, I don’t care what I look like, ugly or beautiful,” she told an interviewer in 1973. “I don’t think that’s beauty. In a single day, any one of us is ugly or beautiful. I’m heartbroken, I can’t be the witch in ‘The Wizard of Oz’. But I would also like to be the good witch. Phyllis combines the two.
“I’m kind of like this in life. I am a magician and I believe in magic. There must be a point in life when you must not continue to believe this. I’m not there yet. “
During the 1950s, Leachman engaged in live TV dramas, demonstrating his versatility, including roles that represented the casting standards of the time.
“In one week I would be a Chinese girl, the next as a blonde cockney and weeks later as another girl with dark hair,” she recalled. In 1955, she made her film debut in Mickey Spillane’s tough saga, “Kiss Me Deadly” – “I was the naked blonde Mike Hammer picked up on that dark road.”
She followed up with Rod Serling’s court-martial drama “The Rack” and a season of “Lassie”. She continued to play supporting roles on Broadway and in cinema, and then achieved her triumph with Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show”, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry.
When Leachman received the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1971, she gave a rambling speech in which she thanked the piano and dance teachers and concluded, “This is for Buck Leachman, who paid the bills.” His father ran a sawmill.
Despite her photogenic appearance, she continued to be cast in character roles. Her most indelible role was Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”.
Phyllis used to visit Mary’s apartment, bringing regrets about her husband Lars and caustic comments about Mary and especially about her opponent, another tenant, Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper). Phyllis was so unexpectedly engaging that Leachman starred in a new series of his own, “Phyllis”, which aired on CBS from 1975 to 1977.
With “Young Frankenstein”, Leachman became a member of the “Mel Brooks stock company”, also appearing in “High Anxiety” and “History of the World, Part I.” His other films include Bogdanovich’s “Daisy Miller” and “Texasville”, repeating his role on “The Last Picture Show”. In 2009, she released her autobiography, “Cloris”, which made headlines in the tabloids for her narrative of a “wild” one-night stand with Gene Hackman.
Cloris Leachman grew up outside Des Moines, Iowa, where she was born in 1926. The large family lived in an isolated wooden house with no running water, but the mother had ambitious ideas for her children. Cloris took piano lessons at age 5; as the family had no money to buy a piano, she practiced drawing the keys on cardboard.
“I’m going to be a concert pianist,” announced the girl, and her mother encouraged her with reservations at churches and civic clubs. She arranged for Cloris to travel in a coal truck to Des Moines for a test for a play by a student at Drake University. She received the role and appeared in other plays at a local theater. After high school, she won a scholarship to study theater at Northwestern University.
Admittedly a poor student, Leachman lasted only a year. As a joke, while in the Chicago area, she auditioned for a Miss Chicago beauty contest and was chosen. She competed in the 1946 Miss America contest in Atlantic City, qualifying as a finalist. Your consolation prize: a $ 1,000 talent pool.
With a new ambition, she went directly to New York, where she worked as an extra in a film and was a replacement for Nina Foch in the hit play “John Loves Mary”.
More substitute jobs followed, and she enrolled at Actors Studio to improve her craft. “I finally stopped because of smoking,” she said later. “I couldn’t take that blue mist.”
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.
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AP writers Beth Harris in Los Angeles and Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
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The late AP Entertainment writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this story.