The Enduring Genius of the Late, Great Cloris Leachman
Earlier this week, Hollywood lost one of its most enduring and celebrated talents when Cloris Leachman died at the age of 94. She won an Oscar for her role in The Last Picture Show, started her record-shattering run at the Emmys as Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and proceeded to turn in decades of unforgettable performances up until shortly before her death. Here, I briefly celebrate her iconic career.
The Late Career Resurgence of Cloris Leachman
To contemporary audiences, Cloris Leachman was mostly known for the outlandish and hilarious “batty old lady” persona she inhabited so memorably during the late career resurgence she had in her 70s and 80s. She received six consecutive Emmy nominations (and two wins) for her recurring role as Grandma Ida on Malcolm in the Middle (2001–2006), scored a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for her turn as Adam Sandler’s boozy mother-in-law in the 2004 film Spanglish, appeared regularly as Maw Maw on all four seasons of Raising Hope (2010–2014), and became the oldest contestant in Dancing with the Stars history when she competed in the 7th season at age 82. (She came in 7th place.) Over the last few years, she continued to do extensive sitcom appearances (her final television role was as a supporting player in the limited revival of Mad About You in 2019) and voiceover work (including her role as Gran in The Croods, a role she reprised just this year).
This late career resurgence allowed Leachman to continue to work regularly into her 90s. Only Betty White — who turned 99 this month and continues to work — can match her in terms of career longevity among television actors. Considering that her first television appearance was in 1949 (not long after the birth of the medium itself), she has an astonishing 71 year span between her first and last television appearance.
The Heyday of Cloris Leachman
Cloris Leachman was not just notable for her longevity. She was one of the most awarded and versatile actresses in American history. To illustrate this, let’s take a look at what are arguably her most iconic roles, all of which she created in the early 1970s.
Phyllis Lindstrom. Cleachman’s most identifiable role is probably Phyllis Lindstrom, Mary Richards’ vain, entitled, passive-aggressive, and judgmental landlady on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Although she only appeared on 35 episodes of the 168 that the show produced over its legendary seven-year run, she loomed large in the show’s universe. She was the subject of some of the series’ most famous episodes (“My Brother’s Keeper,” “The Lars Affair,” “Phyllis Whips Inflation”) and won her first two Emmy awards for the role. Phyllis was a popular enough character that she got spun-off into her own series, straightforwardly titled Phyllis. The spinoff only lasted two seasons, but it garnered her a Golden Globe and another Emmy nomination and its cancellation had less to do with its lack of popularity and more to do with the death of two main cast members during the second season. Of note, when Phyllis was introduced in 1970 she was an anomaly on television. Yes, she was a housewife with fairly traditional views, but she was more multifaceted, abrasive, and opinionated than virtually any female character had ever been allowed to be on television. Furthermore, her plot lines were among the edgiest of the show’s, touching on topics that were rarely discussed on television at the time like feminism, homosexuality, prejudice, infidelity, and economic injustice.
Ruth Popper. It is hard to imagine a character more diametrically opposed to Phyllis Lindstrom than the character of Ruth Popper in Peter Bogdonavich’s 1971 masterpiece The Last Picture Show. Based on the novel by Larry McMurty, the film follows numerous characters living in a declining Texas town in the early 1950s. Ruth is a clinically depressed housewife, whose intense loneliness and sadness is fueled by her husband being a closeted gay man. She rediscovers passion and joy in the form of an illicit affair with a local high school senior (Sonny Crawford, the film’s protagonist played by Timothy Bottoms), but finds herself heartbroken again when Sonny ultimately casts her aside for elusive bombshell Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her film debut). Leachman won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film. She is the highlight of a legendary ensemble that also included Ben Johnson (who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role), Ellen Burstyn and Jeff Bridges (who received Oscar nominations and went on to win for different films), and Eileen Brennan (who deserved a nomination here but didn’t get one). Her first scene, in which she displays near catatonic depression but slowly comes alive in the presence of Sonny is utterly haunting. Her final scene, in which she explodes in a passionate rage at Sonny for casting her aside and then transitions into maternally comforting him, is one of the great acting scenes in cinema. Despite being best known as a comedienne, Leachman played numerous dramatic roles throughout her career (including reprising the role of Ruth Popper in the 1990 sequel entitled Texasville), but the work she did in The Last Picture Show was never matched.
Frau Blücher. A few short years after reaching a new level of fame and acclaim with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Last Picture Show, Leachman co-starred in Mel Brooks’s classic comedy Young Frankenstein. As Frau Blücher, the housekeeper of the Frankenstein family estate in Transylvania who had a passionate love affair with the protagonist’s grandfather (Victor Frankenstein) and ends up setting the monster free, Leachman delivers a delightfully deranged performance. Leachman fully embodies the character with her hilarious accent and chilling stares. She more than holds her own against the comic geniuses in the ensemble, which include Gene Wilder, Teri Garr, Peter Boyle, and Madeline Kahn. The film has gone on to be considered one of the best of all time, ranking #13 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest American comedy films ever made. Leachman collaborated with Mel Brooks three more times. She played Nurse Charlotte Deisel in his 1977 Hitchcock satire High Anxiety, Madame Defarge in 1981's The History of the World, Part I, and Ms. Frick in the short-lived 1989 sitcom The Nutt House.
Other Highlights of Cloris Leachman’s Life and Career
Leachman was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1926 and was the eldest of three daughters born to Cloris and Buck Leachman. By the age of 20, she had established herself as an accomplished classic pianist, received a scholarship for radio acting, and competed in the Miss America pageant.
As she progressed through her twenties, her reputation in entertainment circles grew. She studied under the legendary Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio in New York City. She was handpicked by Rodgers and Hammerstein themselves for a stint as the female lead in the Broadway production of South Pacific. The one and only Katharine Hepburn asked her to co-star in a production of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It on Broadway (an opportunity she naturally jumped on).
As she approached her thirties, she began to work less on stage and more in film and television. She had her first substantial film role in the 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly and co-starred opposite Paul Newman in The Rack the following year. Around the same time she had a two year stint as Timmy’s adoptive mother on the long-running family television series Lassie. Over the next decade she made appearances on countless classic television series, including Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Route 66, The Untouchables, and Perry Mason. She also had a brief, but memorable turn in the Robert Redford-Paul Newman classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
After her aforementioned heyday in the early 1970s she continued to work steadily for the rest of her life. Most of her work was in television. In addition to her work on Malcolm in the Middle, Raising Hope, and Dancing with the Stars, she starred on the last two seasons of The Facts of Life and had memorable guest appearances on shows like Wonder Woman, The Muppet Show, The Simpsons, The Nanny, Two and a Half Men, The Office, and Hot in Cleveland (on a special episode where the entire female cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was reunited nearly 40 years later). She earned an astonishing eight Primetime Emmy Awards for acting, a record among all performers that was recently tied by Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld and Veep fame. In sum, she earned a near-record 22 Primetime Emmy nominations for acting over the course of her career.
More details on her fascinating life and career can be found in her charming 2009 autobiography entitled Cloris.
A Personal Note
When I relocated from the East Coast to Los Angeles in the fall of 2008 for graduate school, the idea of coming into contact with a movie or television star was intoxicating. One of my very first days living in the Westwood neighborhood, I was having an early dinner with a friend who had flown out to help me get settled and do some sightseeing. From our table we could see the theater hosting the red carpet premiere of The Women, Diane English’s remake of the classic George Cukor comedy from 1939. We paid the check and walked over to the metal gates behind which fans and paparazzi were congregating and by sheer luck managed to bump into someone who offered us free tickets to go watch the premiere after the red carpet.
Over the course of that evening, we came within inches of megastars like Will Smith, Annette Bening, Warren Beatty, and Debra Messing. But the very first star we came into contact with was a vivacious Cloris Leachman (who co-starred in the film). She leapt out of her limo with the fervor of a highly caffeinated twentysomething. At that point she had been in show business for well over 60 years, but her enthusiasm and warmth were infectious. I have little doubt that she retained that same zeal and ability to inspire up until her last breath earlier this week.
Rest in peace and power, Cloris. You were one of the greats.
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