In Memoriam: Cloris Leachman (1926-2021)

(From left to right: Cloris Leachman in The Last Picture Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Young Frankenstein.)

Cosmo-lauded actress Cloris Leachman (April 30, 1926 – January 27, 2021) passed away on Wednesday at the age of 94.

She was nominated for the Cosmique Movie Awards’ Best Comedic Actresses Hall of Fame in 2005 and 2006 before being inducted at the 2010 awards. She was also twice nominated for the Best Actress Hall of Fame, both times alongside former co-star Mary Tyler Moore, losing in 2018 to Rita Moreno and in 2019 to fellow Comedic Actress Hall of Famer Madeline Kahn, her frequent Mel Brooks costar.

After using a Miss America pageant scholarship (where she finished in sixteenth place) to study acting under Elia Kazan, she appeared in a number of Broadway plays and television programs. Her first film break came with Kiss Me Deadly in 1955. She continued to appear in television shows like The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but her first award-winning role was for her performance as Ruth Popper in The Last Picture Show (1971), for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

By that point, she had just begun to reach superstardom in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, playing Phyllis Lyndstrom, Mary’s college friend who was now her downstairs landlady. She appeared in 34 episodes of the show before being spun off in her own series, Phyllis, set in our own San Francisco. Her show ran for 48 episodes from 1975 to 1977. She appeared as Phyllis in the final episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show the same week the final episode of Phyllis aired.

During the same period, she had attention-grabbing roles in a number of Mel Brooks films, including Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein, Nurse Diesel in High Anxiety, and Madame Defarge in History of the World, Part I.

She continued to perform to the end. In 2008, she competed in Dancing with the Stars, for which she remains the show’s oldest contestant at the age of 82. She costarred in 83 episodes of Raising Hope from 2010 to 2014, and continued to appear in other television shows, including ten episodes of Mad About You in 2019, her final television role. She was the voice of “Granny” in the 2013 animated film The Croods and its 2020 sequel.

Her final film roles will be for High Holiday and Not to Forget, both scheduled for release later in 2021.