Cloris Leachman
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| Cloris Leachman | |||||||||||||||||||
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 Cloris Leachman, May 2007 |
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| Born | April 30, 1926 Des Moines, Iowa |
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| Years active | 1949-present | ||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | George Englund (1953-1979) | ||||||||||||||||||
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Cloris Leachman (born April 30, 1926) is an American Academy Award-, nine-time Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other female performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Leachman, the eldest of three sisters, was born in Des Moines, Iowa, the daughter of Cloris and Buck Leachman, who owned a lumber company.[1] She graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1944. She later majored in drama at Northwestern University, where she was a member of Gamma Phi Beta and a classmate of future comic actor Paul Lynde. Leachman began appearing on television and in films shortly after competing in Miss America as Miss Chicago 1946. Before that she was very active at the Des Moines Playhouse starring in many productions.
[edit] Early career
After winning a scholarship in the beauty pageant, Leachman studied acting in New York City at the Actors Studio with Elia Kazan. She appeared in the Broadway production of William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba.[2]
She appeared in many live television broadcasts in the 1950s, including such programs as Suspense and Studio One. She was also one of the Raisonette Girls in the 1960s. She made her feature film debut in Robert Aldrich's film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, released in 1955. Leachman was several months pregnant during the filming, and appears in one scene running down a darkened highway barefoot and wearing only a trenchcoat. A year later she appeared opposite Paul Newman and Lee Marvin in The Rack (1956). She appeared with Newman again, in a brief role as a prostitute in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).
She continued to mainly work on television, with appearances including the classic It's a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone, in which she played Billy Mumy's mother; Rawhide; and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Leachman appeared as Ruth Martin, Timmy's adoptive mom, in the last half of season four (1957) of Lassie. She was replaced by June Lockhart in 1958. In 1959,she appeared in an episode of One Step Beyond entitled The Dark Room, where she portrayed an American photographer living in Paris.
[edit] Recognition and acclaim
Leachman has won numerous awards during her lengthy career. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in The Last Picture Show (1971), based on the bestselling book by Larry McMurtry. She played the high school gym teacher's wife, with whom Timothy Bottoms' character has an affair. Director Peter Bogdanovich had predicted to Leachman during production that she would win an Academy Award for her performance. The part was originally offered to Ellen Burstyn, who wanted another role in the film.[3]
Leachman has also won a record-setting eight primetime and one daytime Emmy Awards and been nominated over 20 times for her work in television over the years, most notably as the character of neighbor/landlady/nosy friend Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The character was a fixture on the program for five years and was subsequently featured in a spinoff series, Phyllis (1975-1977), for which Leachman garnered a Golden Globe award. In 1978 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. During the mid and late 1970s, she was featured in several Schoolhouse Rock episodes.[4]
In 1986, Leachman returned to television, replacing Charlotte Rae's character Edna Garrett as the den mother on The Facts of Life. Leachman's role, as Edna's sister, Beverly Ann Stickle, could not save the long-running series, and it was canceled two years later.
She has voice acted in numerous animated films, including My Little Pony: The Movie, The Iron Giant, and most notably as the voice of the cantankerous sky pirate Dola in Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 feature Castle in the Sky. Dubbed by Disney in 1998, Leachman's performance in this film received nearly unanimous praise.
Leachman played embittered, greedy, Slavic “Grandma Ida” on the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, for which she won two Emmy Awards, both for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (once in 2002, then again in 2006). She was nominated for playing that same character for six consecutive years.
Later television credits include the successful Lifetime Television miniseries Beach Girls with Rob Lowe and Julia Ormond. Leachman was nominated for a SAG Award for her role as the wine-soaked, former jazz singer and grandmother Evelyn in the Sony feature Spanglish opposite Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni. She had replaced an ailing Anne Bancroft in the role. The film reunited her with her Mary Tyler Moore Show writer-producer-director James L. Brooks. That same year she appeared with Sandler again, in the remake of The Longest Yard. She also appeared in Kurt Russell comedy Sky High.
In 2006, Leachman's performance alongside Sir Ben Kingsley and Annette Bening in the HBO special Mrs. Harris earned her an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or TV movie as well as an SAG Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries.
On May 14, 2006, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Drake University.
[edit] Mel Brooks films
Leachman has appeared in three Mel Brooks films. She played Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein (1974), in which the mere mention of her character's name frightens all horses within earshot (merely a silly joke: Blücher is rumored to be German for "glue," although the actual word for glue is Klebstoff). She also appeared in High Anxiety (1977), as demented psychiatric nurse Charlotte Diesel, and as Madame Defarge in the segment of History of the World: Part I (1981) which parodied Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
She auditioned for a chance in reviving her role from Young Frankenstein in the 2007 Broadway production opposite Megan Mullally (replacing formerly cast Kristin Chenoweth) and Roger Bart. However, Andrea Martin was cast in the role. Mel Brooks was quoted as saying that Leachman, at 81, was too old for the role. "We don't want her to die on stage," he told columnist Army Archerd.World Entertainment News Network (14 June 2007). Cloris Leachman Challenges Mel Brooks To A Duel To Win 'Young Frankenstein' Role. Starpulse Entertainment News. Retrieved on 2008-04-04.
[edit] Personal life
From 1953 to 1979, Leachman was married to Hollywood impresario George Englund. The marriage produced five children, most of whom are in show business. A son George Englund, Jr., was once married to actress Sharon Stone.[5] Leachman was predeceased by her son, Bryan, who died from a drug overdose in 1986. Some reports state that it was an overdose of ulcer medication, while others, such as in the Lifetime television program Intimate Portrait: Cloris Leachman (in which Leachman participated), state that it was from cocaine.[6][7]
Leachman's former mother-in-law was character actress Mabel Albertson, best known for playing Samantha's mother-in-law on the ABC sitcom Bewitched. Mabel's brother, actor Jack Albertson, won his Academy Award three years before Leachman did.
Cloris posed "au naturel" on the cover of "Alternative Medicine Digest" (issue 15, 1997) body-painted with images of fruit. This was a parody, or imitation, of the famous Demi Moore Vanity Fair magazine cover photo.
Leachman was a friend of Marlon Brando, whom she met while studying under Elia Kazan in the 1950s. She introduced him to her husband, who became close to Brando as well, directing him in The Ugly American and writing a memoir about their friendship called Marlon Brando: The Way It's Never Been Done Before (2005).[8]
Leachman is a long-time vegetarian. Currently, she is at work on a one-woman show about her life and career.
[edit] Filmography
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[edit] Television work
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[edit] References
- ^ Cloris Leachman Biography. FilmReference (2p008). Retrieved on 2008-04-04.
- ^ Wolf, Buck. "Would America Miss Miss America?", ABC News, 2005-09-20. Retrieved on 2006-09-12.
- ^ Hebron, Sandra (November 5, 2000). Ellen Burstyn (I). Guardian Unlimited. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.
- ^ History of Schoolhouse Rock
- ^ Wuensch, Yuri (March 28, 2006). Stone by the basics. Calgary Sun. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.
- ^ Intimate Portrait: Cloris Leachman. Failed URL as of 2007-08-17. Lifetime TV.
- ^ Intimate Portrait: Cloris Leachman at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ "Bad old boys", Guardian Unlimited, December 31, 2005. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.
[edit] External links
| Awards | ||
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| Preceded by Margaret Leighton for The Go-Between |
BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role 1972 for Trading Places |
Succeeded by Valentina Cortese for Day for Night |
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