THE RECORD BREAKER (REMEMBERING CLORIS LEACHMAN)

 

Cloris Leachman won just about every major film and television award going.

She holds the record for the most Emmy award nominations ever and, with eight wins from 22 nods, shares the distinction with Julia Louis Dreyfus as the most garlanded actress in the competition's history.

As Phyllis Lindstrom, a character first introduced to audiences on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', she became a sitcom legend.

But in a very prolific stage, TV and film career, Leachman also showed she was an actress of dramatic heft and great range which ensured she was rarely out of the public spotlight for seven decades.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1926, Cloris developed a taste for acting as a teenager at a theatre club for young people in Drake University.

After graduating from the Theodore Roosevelt High School, she pursued her interest while studying in the School of Education at Northwestern University in Illinois.

After appearing in the 1946 Miss America pageant in Chicago, she secured a place at Elia Kazan's Actors Studio in New York and quickly began to acquire vital stage and screen experience, taking on the role of Nellie Forbush as a replacement in the original production of Rogers and Hammerstein's 'South Pacific'.

She also became a good friend of Marlon Brando's while studying at the Actor's Studio.

Her first film role was uncredited as a dancing patron of a nightclub in Edgar G Ullmer's drama 'Carnegie Hall' with Marsha Hunt and William Prince about an Irish immigrant mother who arrives in the US as the famous concert venue is built and whose life is intertwined with its development.

Leachman was appearing in a production of William Inge's 'Come Back, Little Sheba' when Katharine Hepburn persuaded her to star in a production of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It'.

Now an emerging force as a stage actor, she landed the coveted role of Abigail Williams in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' but she pulled out the day before its previews in Wilmington, Delaware.

Despite this setback, she began to build a fruitful career on the small and big screen.

Having appeared as a panelist on the short-lived 1949 CBS game show 'Hold It Please,' she landed the part of the secretary Elfie Perrine in 'Charlie Wild, Private Detective' with Kevin O'Morrison initially when it aired on CBS and then John McQuade when it switched in 1951 to ABC and the Du Mont network in 1952.

Leachman honed her comic timing in 1952 as a regular on Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding's NBC sketch show 'Bob and Ray'.

In 1953, she married the Hollywood impresario George Eglund.

The marriage would last 26 years and they would have four sons and a daughter - one of whom Brian passed away in 1986.

She secured a notable role on the big screen in 1955 in Robert Aldrich's film noir 'Kiss Me Deadly' with Ralph Meeker and Albert Dekker which drew enthusiastic reviews from critics and performed decently in cinemas.

Publicly rebuked by the Kefauver Comission in the US for trying to corrupt the country's youth, it is now regarded as one of the most influential movies in the film noir genre and has been championed by Jean Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Alex Cox and Quentin Tarantino. 

In  1956 she played the friend of Anne Francis' Aggie Hall in Arnold Laven's Korean War drama 'The Rack' with Paul Newman, Lee Marvin and Walter Pidgeon which failed to set the box office alight.

Leachman also popped up on episodes of several CBS shows between 1955 and 1961 including 'Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre,' 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents,' 'Gunsmoke,'  Steve McQueen's bounty hunter series 'Wanted Dead or Alive,''The Twilight Zone' and 'Rawhide' as well as having a regular part as Ruth Martin for a whole season of 'Lassie'.

Jon Provost, who played Timmy on the show, observed "Cloris did not feel particularly challenged by the role.

"Basically, when she realised that all she would be doing was baking cookies, she wanted out."

And that's what happened, with June Lockhart replacing her. 

In 1962, she appeared in George Cukor's Technicolour drama 'The Chapman Report' with Jane Fonda, Shelley Winters and Claire Bloom about the sex lives of upper middle class women which was met with critical disdain.

Throughout the 1960s, there would be guest appearances in the John Cassavetes fronted NBC private detective series 'Johnny Staccato,' the ABC sitcom 'The Donna Reed Show,' ABC's 'The Untouchables,' '77 Sunset Strip' and its Gene Kelly Catholic priest comedy drama spin-off 'Going My Way' and NBC's Westerns 'Laramie' and 'The Virginian' and its medical drama 'Doctor Kildare'.

Daniel Petrie directed her in a 1969 NBC adaptation of Robert Anderson's hit play 'Silent Night, Lonely Night' with Lloyd Bridges and Shirley Jones.

She had a cameo as a prostitute in George Roy Hill's classic 1969 Western 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' with Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katharine Ross.

The following year she reunited with Newman in Stuart Rossen's radio station conspiracy thriller 'WUSA' with Joanne Woodward, Anthony Perkins and Laurence Harvey.

A favourite of Newman's, the film divided critics.

She joined Eli Wallach, Julie Harris and Hal Holbrook in David Greene's fraught marital drama 'The People Next Door' and Renée Taylor, Joseph Bologna, Richard S Castellano, Bea Arthur, Michael Brandon, Diane Keaton and Bonnie Bedelia in Cy Howard's romcom 'Lovers and Other Strangers' which proved popular with audience and picked up three Academy Awards nominations.

1970 would, however, be a landmark year for Leachman landing the sitcom role that she would be most remembered for.

She was cast as the snobby, interfering friend Phyllis Lindstrom in CBS's hit sitcom 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' with Ed Asner and Valerie Harper.

She was nominated four times for an Emmy for her role and won twice in the Best Supporting Actress category in 1974 and 1975.

So popular was her character on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' that she got her own spin-off show 'Phyllis' on CBS for which she won a Golden Globe and earned a Lead Actress in a Comedy Emmy nomination.

However the sitcom about Phyllis adapting to having to go on a job hunt was cancelled after two seasons, with the ratings dropping off after a strong first season.

Leachman made a final appearance as the character in the last episode of 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' in 1977.

Phyllis was almost resurrected as a character on 'Rhoda,' - Valerie Harper's CBS 'Mary Tyler Moore Show' sitcom spin-off - but an episode featuring the character never got made.

The 1970s turned out to be a bit of a purple patch, with Leachman landing the part of Ruth Popper, the depressed middle-aged wife of a high school coach who has an affair with Timothy Bottoms' character Sonny in Peter Bogdanovich's acclaimed coming of age drama 'The Last Picture Show'.

With its striking black and white cinematography from Robert Surtees and its depiction of small town dysfunction in Texas, Bogdanovich's film with Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn and Ben Johnson remains hugely admired to this day.

But it also resulted in Leachman earning the best notices of her movie career as she captured the Kansas City Film Critics Circle, National Board of Review, BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1971.

She would reprise the role of Ruth in Bogdanovich's disappointing sequel 'Texasville' in 1990 which saw her character working as a secretary for Bridges' character Duane but it struggled to find an audience amid a barrage of negative reviews.

In 1972, there was an ABC TV movie thriller 'Haunts of the Very Rich' with Lloyd Bridges, Ed Asner and Anne Francis.

In CBS's TV adaptation of George Gershwin's musical 'Of Thee I Sing,' she joined a cast that included Carroll O'Connor.

She acted opposite Ross Martin in the critically acclaimed 1973 ABC horror mystery TV movie about a woman whose husband disappears in a roadside cafe as they travel through Arizona.

Leachman captured an Emmy for Best Actress in a Single Drama opposite Martin Balsam as a middle aged wife facing the impending birth of their first child in Sam O'Steen's well received ABC TV movie 'A Brand New Life'.

There was also a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her performance alongside Fred MacMurray as parents raising kids in the Midwest during the Great Depression in Vincent McEveety's Disney comedy 'Charlie and the Angel' which featured Kurt Russell and Ed Begley Jr.

She was "the Lady in Red" in John Millius' 1973 box office hit 'Dillinger' with Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Dreyfuss about the notorious bank robber John Dillinger.

She also picked up a nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Drama for her acclaimed portrayal of Viola Barlow in a 1974 CBS TV movie of Tennessee Williams' 'The Migrants' with Ron Howard, Sissy Spacek, Cindy Williams and Ed Lauter about a family of farm workers travelling across the US in search of employment.

Critics praised her performance as a woman who picks up a psychotic killer in the otherwise routine TV movie 'Hitchhike!' with Michael Brandon.

Gene Wilder, Ellen Burstyn and Bob Newhart acted alongside her in ABC's TV comedy movie about poker, 'Thursday's Game' which was well received by critics, helping the career of its writer James L Brooks.

She teamed up again with Cybill Shepherd and director Peter Bogdanovich on the movie 'Daisy Miller' - a period drama with Barry Brown and Eileen Brennan based on a Henry James novel which sharply divided critics and made little impression on the box office.

She would also team up with Mel Brooks for his classic comedy horror 'Young Frankenstein' with Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Madeleine Kahn, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr and Gene Hackman which was a huge hit with audiences and critics.

Playing the intimidatingly creepy housekeeper Frau Buchler, Leachman was a particular highlight of the film and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.

She would appear in two other Brooks' films, playing in his Hitchcock spoof 'High Anxiety' in 1977 the sinister Nurse Diesel and sending up the Charles Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities' character Madame Defarge in his irreverent sketch based epic 'The History of the World, Part I' in 1981.

In 2007, she attended a table read of 'Young Frankenstein' for a Broadway version but never got to reprise the role of Frau Buchler - partly because initially the producers wanted separate casts for the film and theatre and then, when they changed their mind, because the show closed.

An appearance on the CBS variety show 'Cher,' saw her capture an Emmy in 1975 for Outstanding Supporting Performance in A Variety or Music Show.

Up and coming director Jonathan Femme directed her in the Julie Corman produced crime spree film 'Crazy Mama' with Ann Sothern, Stuart Whitman, Jim Backus, John Millius and a young Bill Paxton and Dennis Quaid - a sequel of sorts to the Roger Cotman produced Angie Dickinson vehicle 'Big Bad Mama'.

She also guest starred in 1975 as Queen Hippolyta in an episode of ABC's 'Wonder Woman' with Lynda Carter, appeared on three episodes of 'The Love Boat' and was a guest on 'The Muppet Show' which was broadcast on ITV in the UK and was syndicated in the US.

There was another Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Show in 1976 for a CBS special built around Telly Savalas at the height of 'Kojak' called 'Telly: Who Loves Ya Baby?'

In 1977, she appeared as a guardian angel in ABC's 'It Happened One Christmas' with Marlo Thomas, Wayne Rogers and Orson Welles which reworked the premise of 'It's A Wonderful Life' with female characters and it netted her another Emmy nomination for Supporting Actress in a Drama or Comedy Special a year later.

She joined Peter Ustinov, Sally Keller an and John Carradine in providing the voices for the Japanese-American animated tale 'The Mouse and The Child' which got lukewarm reviews and failed to ignite the box office.

In 1978, she returned to the theatre after an absence of almost 20 years, performing George Firth's 'Twigs' at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois which she would also star in in a TV movie four years later.

Leachman played the head housekeeper in NBC's 1979 miniseries 'Backstairs at the White House' - a period drama with Leslie Uggams, Louis Gossett Jr, Celeste Holm, William Conrad and Robert Vaughn.

She played Molly Brown, a first class passenger in ABC's ambitious 1979 disaster TV movie 'SOS Titanic' with David Janssen, Ian Holm, David Warner, Susan Saint James and Helen Mirren.

There was also an appearance with Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy as a Hollywood studio chief's secretary in James Frawley's star studded hit 'The Muppet Movie' whose cast included Charles Durning and which featured cameos from Steve Martin, Milton Berle, Mel Brooks, Bob Hope, James Coburn, Dom DeLuise, Richard Pryor and Orson Welles.

She also played Vincent Price's sister in the critically lambasted, star heavy comedy movie 'Scavenger Hunt' with Richard Benjamin, Roddy McDowall, Tony Randall, Scatman Crothers, Ruth Gordon, Robert Morley, Dirk Benedict, Richard Mulligan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In Vincent McEveety's 1980 Disney family adventure 'Herbie Goes Bananas' - the fourth in 'The Love Bug' series of movies about a Volkswagen Beetle racing car with a mind of its own - with Stephan W Burns and Charles Martin Smith which performed decently despite being panned as the weakest film in the franchise.

There was a role as Annette O'Toole's mother in the underwhelming sports romcom 'Foolin' Around' with Gary Busey and William H Macy.

Leachman picked up a Best Performance by a Foreign Actress Genie Award in Canada in 1981 for her appearance in 'Yesterday' - a romantic drama from director Larry Kent about a soldier wounded in the Vietnam War.

In 1983, she picked up a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in Children's Programming for her performance in an ABC Afterschool Special 'The Woman Who Willed A Miracle' - a drama with M Emmet Walsh about a foster mother caring for a cognitively impaired, blind boy with cerebral palsy who gains recognition as a musical savant.

The following year there was yet another Emmy nomination for her performance as Mary Kovacs in the ABC TV biopic 'Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter' with Jeff Goldblum playing the comedian.

She also captured the Emmy in 1984 for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Show for an appearance at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

She joined the final two seasons as a regular cast member of the 'Diff'rent Strokes' spin-off 'The Facts of Life' on NBC which also featured at various stages George Clooney and Molly Ringwald in the cast.

Leachman's character played Mrs Garrett's divorced sister Beverly Ann Stickle, stepping into the role after Charlotte Ray opted not to continue in the show which had been built around her character.

There was a 1987 TV movie spin-off 'The Facts of Life Down Under' which saw the cast heading to Sydney.

She joined Michael Biehn and Madokyn Smith in ABC's TV movie thriller 'Deadly Intentions' in 1985 which was so successful it earned a sequel six years later.

As well as providing the voice for two animated movies, the Japanese Studio Ghibli tale 'Castle in the Sky' with Mark Hamill and 'My Little Pony: The Movie' in 1986.

She joined Howie Mandel and Christopher Lloyd in Melvin Frank's feeble 1987 comedy movie 'Walk Like A Man' and turned up in John Hancock's minor hit reindeer tale 'Prancer' two years later with Sam Elliott.

There was a role as a Jewish mother in Danielle Steel's romance 'Fine Things', a NBC TV movie in 1990 with DW Moffett.

Bud Yorkin directed her in the 1990 comedy 'Love Hurts' with Jeff Daniels, Cynthia Sikes, Judith Ivey and John Mahoney.

She played a woman grocery store owner intimidated by Brian Dennehy's local thug in NBC's 1991 TV movie thriller 'In Broad Daylight'.

She played Granny Moses in Penelope Spheeris' 1993 movie version of 'The Beverly Hillbillies' with Jim Barney, Lea Thompson, Rob Schneider and Dabney Coleman which performed well in cinemas despite taking a critical pounding.

Leachman lent her voice to the Old Woman on a Plane and Bus in Mike Judge's 1996 hit film 'Beavis and Butthead Do America' which also called upon the talents of Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Dave Letterman, Greg Kinnear and Richard Linklater.

Leachman also memorably sent up Demi Moore's infamous 1991 Vanity Fair pregnancy pose by appearing naked on the cover of Alternative Medicine Digest six years later with body painted images of fruit.

In 1999, she was Meryl Streep's mum in Wes Craven's biographical musical drama 'Music of the Heart' with Aidan Quinn, Angela Bassett, Gloria Estefan, Kieran Culkin and Jane Leeves.

Despite getting mostly positive reviews, the film struggled to make a dent at the box office.

She also played a schoolteacher in Brad Bird's animated 'The Iron Giant' whose voice cast included Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr, Christopher McDonald and John Mahoney.

During the 1990s, she also made a number of guest appearances on popular shoes, providing the voice of Mrs Glick in a 1991 episode of Fox's 'The Simpsons,'  Fran Drescher's 1994 sitcom vehicle on CBS 'The Nanny,' and on four episodes of the popular Roma Downey drama 'Touched By An Angel' on CBS.

A guest appearance on a 'Touched By An Angel' spin-off show 'Promised Land' with Gerald McRaney landed her another Emmy in 1998.

'Walter and Emily,' an attempt with Brian Keith and Christopher McDonald to create another sitcom vehicle in 1992 about grandparents stuttered on NBC and lasted only 13 episodes.

She appeared in 1999 as Grammy Winthrop in six episodes of 'Thanks,' another sitcom on CBS with Tim Dutton, Kirsten Nelson and Erika Christensen which was set in 17th Century Puritan Massachusetts which did not make it beyond six episodes.

There were guest appearances during the 2000s in ABC's 'The Norm Show' with Norm MacDonald, CBS's 'The Ellen Show' with Ellen DeGeneres, on UPN's revamp of 'The Twilight Zone,' as herself on Fox's 'Family Guy,' on CBS's 'Two and a Half Men' with Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer, on the Disney Channel's 'Phinneas and Ferb' and a 2009 episode of NBC's 'The Office', featuring in an episode that had an illegally downloaded movie in which she co-starred with Jack Black and Jessica Alba.

A recurring role between 2001 and 2006 as Grandma Ida in Fox's hit sitcom 'Malcolm in the Middle' with Frankie Munoz, Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston continued Leachman's run of Emmy nominations in every decade since the 1970s.

Between 2001 and 2004, she was nominated every year for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series and she won the 2002 race.

Leachman also picked up a nomination for the role in 2006.

In 2003, she turned up as the Grandma in Terry Zwigoff's irreverent but very funny Festive comedy 'Bad Santa' with Billy Bob Thornton, Lauren Graham, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly, Lauren Tom, John Ritter and Bernie Mac.

There were Screen Actors Guild and Satellite Awards nominations for her next supporting role in 2004 as Tea Leoni's mum in  James L Brooks' comedy 'Spanglish' with Adam Sandler, Paz Vega and Thomas Haden Church.

While the reviews of the film were mostly positive, some critics felt her character was the butt of too many demeaning jokes and the film performed disappointingly in cinemas, making a loss.

Nevertheless she would turn up in another Sandler movie, Peter Segal's commercially successful prison sports comedy 'The Longest Yard' with Chris Rock, James Cromwell, Nelly, Eddie Bunker and Burt Reynolds which did not delight the critics as much.

There would be other minor roles in films like David Zucker's popular 'Scary Movie 4,' in 2006, Jay Chandrasekhar's modest hit 'Beerfest' and in Joshua Marston's contribution to the 2008 anthology film 'New York, I Love You' where her co-star was Eli Wallach.

A guest appearance as Aunt Olive in the CBS's fantasy family drama 'Joan of Arcadia' with Amber Tamblyn and Joe Mantegna secured an 18th Emmy nomination.

In 2006, Leachman picked up anothet Screen Actors Guild nomination for her supporting performance as Ben Kingsley's character's sister in Phyllis Nagy's HBO film 'Mrs Harris' about the tempestuous relatiinship between a cardiologist and a headmistress with Annette Bening, Chloe Sevigny, Mary McDonnell, Ellen Burstyn and Philip Baker Hall.

She turned up in the Sci-Fi Channel's 'Lake Placid 2' - a TV movie sequel to the cult horror movie - with John Schneider and Sam McMurray which received a critical hammering.

In 2008 at the age of 82, she took part as a contestant in series seven of ABC's 'Dancing with the Stars,' pitting her against Kim Kardashian, Susan Lucci, Ted McGinley and Toni Braxton and finished in seventh place out of a field of 13.

She was the oldest competitor to take part in the dance competition and earned the respect of a new audience with quips like "I could get pregnant" and "maybe, I'll be on 'American Idol'."

Lou Diamond Phillips directed her in a 2009 Hallmark TV movie 'Love Takes Wing' in which she played a struggling orphanage owner.

Leachman also got to work with Quentin Tarantino on his Second World War romp 'Inglorious Basterds' but her part was cut in the final edit because the movie was too long.

She did, however, join Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey and Cate Blanchett in the English voice cast for Studio Ghibli's animé classic 'Ponyo' in 2009.

In 2010, Leachman joined Debbie Reynolds as a guest judge in an episode of VH1's 'Ru Paul's Drag Race' and on the US version of the BBC's 'Top Gear' on the History channel, racing Bruno Tonioli and Terri Seymour in limos.

For the fifth decade in a row, Leachman secured an Emmy nod for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Sitcom in 2011 for her appearance in the Fox comedy 'Raising Hope' as Martha Plimpton's character's grandmother.

It would be a recurring role, appearing over four seasons, with her character Maw Maw Thompson succumbing to dementia.

Michael Hoffman directed her as a Grandma in his poorly received 2012 remake of 'Gambit' with Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz, Alan Rickman, Tom Courtenay and Stanley Tucci and she was a Gran too in Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders' hugely successful 2013 Stone-Age DreamWorks animation comedy 'The Croods' with Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds and Catherine Keener. 

She reprised the role in the 2020 sequel 'The Croods: New Age' which performed well in cinemas despite the disruption caused by the Covid-19 and on video on demand services, while attracting decent reviews.

There were guest appearances in 2013 as the mother of Kirstie Alley's Maddie Banks in the short-lived TV Land sitcom 'Kirstie' and as a character called Peg in an episode of the much more successful 'Hot in Cleveland' on the same channel with Jane Leeves.

She also popped up in episodes of CBS's 'Hawaii Five-O', Fox's animated sitcom 'Bob's Burgers' and three episodes of State's 'American Gods' with Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane and Emily Browning as Zorya Vechernyaya, one of three sisters who watch the stars to guard against forgotten horrors.

On the big screen, Leachman was cast alongside Kevin Hart and Josh Gad in Jeremy Garelick's surprise 2015 comedy hit 'The Wedding Ringer' despite the film's critical lambasting.

In Christopher Langdon's 2015 zombie comedy 'The Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse' with Tye Sheridan and Logan Miller which was loathed by critics and barely made its budget back.

She joined Robert de Niro, Danny de Vito, Leslie Mann, Charles Grodin, Patti Lu Pone and Harvey Keitel in Taylor Hackford's 2016 comedy drama 'The Comedian' which some critics described as a waste of many talents.

She was cast in 10 episodes of Spectrum Originals' 2019 revival of the Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser's sitcom 'Mad About You' as Mrs Mandlebaum, a patient of Hunt's therapist Jamie.

One of Leachman's final movie roles was in Phil Connell's Canadian film 'Jump, Darling' in which he co-starred with Thomas Duplessie who played her drag queen grandson recovering from the heartache of a break-up.

The film, which was on limited release due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was warmly received in the LGBTQ community.

Prolific to the end, two films featuring Cloris Leachman were awaiting release when she passed away.

Valerio Zanoli's 'Not to Forget' saw her working with Louis Gossett Jr, Tatum O'Neal, Olympia Dukakis and George Chakiris in a tale about a millennial compelled by a judge to take care of his grandmother with Alzheimer's.

Brian Herzlinger's 'High Holiday' with Tom Arnold, Jennifer Tilly and Corey Landis about a Christmas Eve dinner at the home of a conservative politician enlivened by a marijuana laced salad dressing.

A vegetarian and a very public aetheist, Leachman rarely held back in interviews but was adored by those she worked with.

One of the warmest tributes to Leachman following her passing came from Mel Brooks.

"Cloris was insanely talented," he recalled.

"She could make you laugh or cry at the drop of a hat - always a pleasure to have on a set.

"Every time I hear a horse whinny, I will forever think of Cloris' unforgettable Frau Buchler. 

"She is irreplaceable and will be greatly missed."

(Cloris Leachman died at the age of 94 on January 27, 2021)