Suzanne Pleshette

Suzanne Pleshette (January 31, 1937 – January 19, 2008) was an American actress known for her roles in theatre, film, and television. Her mother was a dancer and artist who performed under the stage name Geraldine Rivers. Her father was a stage manager of the Paramount Theater in Manhattan and of the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, and later, a network executive. She graduated from Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts and attended Syracuse University for one semester, then transferred to Finch College.

Career

The Boston Globe described her appearance and demeanor as sardonic and her voice as sultry. Pleshette began her career at age 20 as a stage actress. She made her Broadway debut in Meyer Levin's 1957 play Compulsion, adapted from his novel inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case. The following year, she performed in the debut of The Cold Wind and the Warm by S. N. Behrman at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, directed by Harold Clurman and produced by Robert Whitehead. In 1959, she was featured in the comedy Golden Fleecing, starring Constance Ford and Tom Poston. (Poston would eventually become her third husband.) In his autobiography, Arthur Laurents, the play's author, stated, "It came down to between Suzanne Pleshette and Sandra Church. Suzanne was the better actress, but Sandra was the better singer. We went with Sandra." In February 1961, she succeeded Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan Macy opposite 14-year-old Patty Duke's Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. The movie 40 Pounds of Trouble was the first motion picture ever filmed at Disneyland, and was distributed by Universal-International Pictures in late 1962. She worked with Steve McQueen in the 1966 western drama film Nevada Smith, was nominated for a Laurel Award for her starring performance in the comedy If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium opposite Ian McShane, and co-starred with James Garner in a pair of films, Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971) and the drama Mister Buddwing (1966).

Pleshette's first television role was in the episode "Night Rescue" (December 5, 1957) of the CBS adventure/drama television series Harbormaster, starring Barry Sullivan and Paul Burke. Her other early television appearances include Playhouse 90, Decoy, Have Gun – Will Travel, One Step Beyond, Riverboat, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Tab Hunter Show, Channing, Ben Casey, Naked City, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, the pilot episode of The Wild Wild West, and Dr. Kildare, for which she was nominated for her first Emmy Award. She guest-starred more than once as different characters in each of the following 1960s TV series: Route 66, The Fugitive, The Invaders, The F.B.I., Columbo ("Dead Weight") (1971), and The Name of the Game.

Her 1970 game show appearances include It Takes Two, with her husband, and Name Droppers. On August 5, 1971, TV producers saw her on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and noticed a certain chemistry between Suzanne and fellow guest Bob Newhart. She was cast as the wife of Newhart's character on the CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978) for all six seasons, In 1989, she played the role of Christine Broderick in the NBC drama, Nightingales, which lasted one season. In 1990, Pleshette portrayed Manhattan hotelier Leona Helmsley in the television movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean, which garnered her nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film.

In addition, she starred opposite Hal Linden in the 1994 sitcom The Boys Are Back. She had a starring role in Good Morning, Miami, as Mark Feuerstein's grandmother Claire Arnold in season one and played the mother of Katey Sagal's character in the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter following John Ritter's death. Pleshette provided the voices of Yubaba and Zeniba in the English dub of Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award-winning film Spirited Away and the voice of Zira in Disney's direct-to-video film The Lion King II: Simba's Pride in 1998 (replacing Kathleen Turner) and sang the song "My Lullaby". In her last role, she appeared as the estranged mother of Megan Mullally's character Karen Walker in three episodes of the NBC sitcom Will & Grace.

Personal life Pleshette wrote screenplays under a pen name. She also wrote poems, with some recited on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Suzanne Pleshette was the cousin of the actor John Pleshette.

Madlyn Rhue was her "oldest friend".

Pleshette appears in beach home movies filmed by Roddy McDowall in 1965.

Marriages Pleshette's 1964 marriage to her Rome Adventure and A Distant Trumpet co-star Troy Donahue ended in divorce after six months. She dated actors Dean Stockwell and David Janssen.

Her second husband was oilman Thomas "Tommy" Joseph Gallagher III (born January 28, 1934, in Galveston, Texas, to Thomas Joseph Gallagher Jr., and Toy Fay ), to whom she was married from March 16, 1968, to his death on January 21, 2000. He survived lung cancer, and later died of E. coli. She suffered a miscarriage during her marriage to Gallagher, and they were childless. Asked about children in an October 2000 interview, Pleshette stated: "I certainly would have liked to have had Tommy's children. But my nurturing instincts are fulfilled in other ways. I have a large extended family; I'm the mother on every set. So if this is my particular karma, that's fine."

In 2001, Pleshette married fellow actor Tom Poston, who had been a recurring guest star on The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s and a Newhart cast member. Long before they worked together on television, though, Poston and Pleshette had been involved romantically in 1959, when they acted together in the Broadway comedy Golden Fleecing. close to each other in the Jewish Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.

Designer From 1969 to 1980, Pleshette and Harriet Rosalind Dolin Stuart designed sheets for J.P. Stevens & Co.

Illness and death Pleshette was a smoker until her 1998 cancer scare whereupon she quit. She made her last public appearance with the Bob Newhart Show cast at The Bob Newhart Show 35th Anniversary Reunion at PaleyLive LA, held on September 5, 2007 at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. She died January 19, 2008.

On August 11, 2006, Pleshette's agent Joel Dean announced that she was being treated for lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Three days later, The Herald-Palladium reported that Dean said the cancer was the size of "a grain of sand" when it was found during a routine X-ray, that the cancer was "caught very much in time", that she was receiving chemotherapy as an outpatient and that Pleshette was "in good spirits".

She was later hospitalized for a pulmonary infection and developed pneumonia, which caused her to remain in the hospital for an extended period of time. She arrived at a Bob Newhart Show cast reunion in September 2007 in a wheelchair, which raised concern about her health, although she insisted that she was "cancer-free". (She was seated in a regular chair during the actual telecast.) During an interview in USA Today given at the time of the reunion, Pleshette stated that she had been released four days earlier from the hospital where, as part of her cancer treatment, part of one of her lungs had been removed.

Pleshette died on January 19, 2008, in her Los Angeles home, 12 days shy of her 71st birthday. She is buried close to her third husband, Tom Poston (who died the previous year), in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television on January 31, 2008, the walk's 2,355th star, which was placed (at her request) in front of Frederick's of Hollywood. Bob Newhart, Arte Johnson, and Marcia Wallace spoke at the star's unveiling, which had been planned before Pleshette's death. Tina Sinatra accepted the star on Pleshette's behalf.

Filmography Films Year Title Role Notes 1958 The Geisha Boy Sgt. Betty Pearson First feature film 1962 Rome Adventure Prudence Bell 40 Pounds of Trouble Chris Lockwood 1963 The Birds Annie Hayworth Wall of Noise Laura Rubio 1964 A Distant Trumpet Kitty Mainwarring Fate Is the Hunter Martha Webster Youngblood Hawke Jeanne Greene 1965 A Rage to Live Grace Caldwell Tate 1966 The Ugly Dachshund Fran Garrison Nevada Smith Pilar Mister Buddwing Fiddle Corwin 1967 The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin Arabella Flagg 1968 Blackbeard's Ghost Jo-Anne Baker The Power Professor Margery Lansing 1969 If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium Samantha Perkins Target: Harry Diane Reed 1970 Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? Ramona 1971 Support Your Local Gunfighter Patience 1976 The Shaggy D.A. Betty Daniels 1979 Hot Stuff Louise Webster 1980 Oh, God! Book II Paula Richards Arch of Triumph Joan Madou Never completed. Also filmed in 1948 and 1984. 1998 The Lion King II: Simba's Pride Zira Voice; direct-to-video 2001 Spirited Away Yubaba/Zeniba Voice, 2002 English dub Final film role.

Television Final role 2003 8 Simple Rules Laura 3 episodes

Theatre

Awards and nominations Year Association Category Project Result Ref. 1977 Primetime Emmy Award Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series The Bob Newhart Show 1978 1990 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean 1963 Golden Globe Award Best New Star of the Year – Actress The Birds 1990 Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean 1963 Laurel Award Top New Female Personality The Birds 1969 Female Comedy Performance If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium 1998 Annie Awards Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting The Lion King II: Simba's Pride