Cloris Leachman, Emmy and Oscar Winner, Dies at 94

By Carmel Dagan

Oscar winner and multiple Emmy winner Cloris Leachman, best remembered as the delightfully neurotic Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and her own subsequent sitcom, died of natural causes on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif. She was 94.

“It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time,” her longtime manager Juliet Green said.

“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.

You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of her unparalleled magic.”

The daffy, self-absorbed Phyllis, a character she claimed was close to her own persona, brought the actress two Emmys as a featured actress in a series during the mid-’70s and made Leachman a household name.

Leachman also won a supporting actress Oscar in the early part of the decade for a far different character, an embittered small-town housewife in Peter Bogdanovich’s elegiac “The Last Picture Show”; she would later reprise the role in the film’s less successful sequel “Texasville.”

Both films were based on the writings of Larry McMurtry.

Overnight success for the actress, however, came only after two decades of hard work in theater, television and some films. Leachman was in her 40s when stardom finally hit.

Leachman’s pitch-perfect timing and effortlessness in comedy and her unadorned honesty in drama was the result of many years honing her craft and incorporated her own life experiences as a mother of five children (by producer George Englund).

Her open, all-American look took her through several decades in a wide variety of roles on Broadway and early television as well as more than 40 movies, where she moved easily from leading roles to character parts.

The actress won a total of eight primetime Emmys, both for drama and comedy, and one daytime Emmy.

The recurring character of Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” not only made her a TV star but also gave her time to squeeze in roles in film including “Lovers and Other Strangers,” “The People Next Door,” “WUSA” and “The Last Picture Show,” which brought her an Oscar for supporting actress in 1971 in an upset over her nominated co-star Ellen Burstyn.

Two Emmys for the role of Phyllis were crowded alongside one for drama in the ABC TV movie “A Brand New Life” (1973) and led, in 1975, to her own series, which lasted a couple of seasons.

Decades later she was still working, and flying high: Leachman was a contestant on season seven of “Dancing With the Stars” in 2008, becoming, at age 82, the oldest contestant to dance on the series, and she was the grand marshal for the 2009 New Year’s Day Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, Calif.

During the 1970s, she did well by Bogdanovich’s “Daisy Miller” and was hilarious in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein”; she also appeared in Brooks’ “High Anxiety.”

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