Oscar and Emmy-winning actress displayed versatility
Cloris Leachman, LOS ANGELES — who won an Oscar for her role in the bleak coming-of-age movie “The Last Picture Show” and Emmy awards during a prolific television career that stretched back to the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” has died at her home in Encinitas, Calif.
The ubiquitous actress always seemed to be working: She anchored her own “MTM” spinoff series “Phyllis” and starred in the hit TV shows “The Facts of Life,” “Rhoda,” “Touched by an Angel,” “The Ellen Show,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” and “Raising Hope.” She had a recurring role on “American Gods” in 2016 and a critically acclaimed career in film, highlighted by her Oscar-winning performance in 1971’s “The Last Picture Show” and the classic tourde-farce “Young Frankenstein.”
Leachman, who worked well into her 80s and became the oldest contestant on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2008, died Tuesday evening of natural causes, her publicist said. She was 94.
“It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time. There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh till the tears ran down your face,” said Juliet Green, Leachman’s manager. “You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do, and that unpredictable quality was part of her unparalleled magic.”
Leachman’s versatility was often praised and accentuated by a youthfulness that belied her age, which aided her later projects and brought a freshness to her roles as matriarchs and grandmothers.
“There’s more to me than nutty; there’s more to me than energy,” she told The Times in 1986, still seeking the right adjective to describe herself.
Leachman said she had only one credo: “Since my childhood I have disliked rules and for the most part have avoided them.”
Leachman was born in Des Moines on April 30, 1926, the eldest of three girls. Her father ran a lumber mill, Leachman Lumber Co.
Leachman earned the Miss Chicago title and competed in Miss America in 1946. She played part of the Grieg piano concerto as her talent offering and placed in the top five, earning a $1,000-scholarship. She used the money to fund her move to New York and
study voice and drama at the Actors Studio.
The actress notched several Broadway credits in the 1940s and ‘50s, sang for Rodgers and Hammerstein and gained success in theater starring opposite Katharine Hepburn in “As You Like It.”
While in New York, Leachman booked jobs on theatrical and television productions, landing her first major role in the 1955s noir thriller “Kiss Me Deadly.” By then she had married producer George Englund, and together they would have four sons and a daughter before he ran off with actress Joan Collins. The couple divorced in 1979.
In the late 1950s, she played the doting wife and mother Ruth Martin on “Lassie” before being replaced by June Lockhart. Leachman said she had to be reminded that the star of the show was a dog.
“They used to tell me, ‘No, Cloris, it’s all about Lassie,’” she joked in a 2004 Times interview.