Suzanne Pleshette, RIP

[GA Russell]

I just heard on CBS Radio News that Suzanne Pleshette has died of respiratory failure. She would have been 71 Jan. 31.

She was always a good interview on the Carson show!

Here's her obit from the San Jose Mercury News:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci...?nclick_check=1

Suzanne Pleshette, known as 'Newhart's' wife, dies in Los Angeles

By BOB THOMAS Associated Press Writer

Article Launched: 01/19/2008 09:14:37 PM PST

LOS ANGELES—Suzanne Pleshette, the beautiful, husky-voiced film and theater star best known for her role as Bob Newhart's sardonic wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," has died, said her attorney Robert Finkelstein. She was 70.

Pleshette, who underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006, died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, said Finkelstein, who is also a family friend.

"The Bob Newhart Show, a hit throughout its six-year run, starred comedian Newhart as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by eccentric patients. Pleshette provided the voice of reason.

Four years after the show ended in 1978, Newhart went on to the equally successful "Newhart" series in which he was the proprietor of a New England inn populated by more eccentrics. When that show ended in 1990, Pleshette reprised her role—from the first show—in one of the most clever final episodes in TV history.

It had Newhart waking up in the bedroom of his "The Bob Newhart Show" home with Pleshette at his side. He went on to tell her of the crazy dream he'd just had of running an inn filled with eccentrics.

"If I'm in Timbuktu, I'll fly home to do that," Pleshette said of her reaction when Newhart told her how he was thinking of ending the show.

Born Jan. 31, 1937, in New York City, Pleshette began her career as a stage actress after attending the city's High School of the Performing Arts and studying at its Neighborhood Playhouse. She was often picked for roles because of her beauty and her throaty voice.

"When I was 4," she told an interviewer in 1994, "I was answering the phone, and (the callers) thought I was my father. So I often got quirky roles because I was never the conventional ingenue."

She met her future husband, Tom Poston, when they appeared together in the 1959 Broadway comedy "The Golden Fleecing," but didn't marry him until more than 40 years later.

Although the two had a brief fling, they went on to marry others. By 2000 both were widowed and they got back together, marrying the following year.

"He was such a wonderful man. He had fun every day of his life," Pleshette said after Poston died in April 2007.

Among her other Broadway roles was replacing Anne Bancroft in "The Miracle Worker," the 1959 drama about Helen Keller, in New York and on the road.

Meanwhile, she had launched her film career with Jerry Lewis in 1958 in "The Geisha Boy." She went on to appear in numerous television shows, including "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Playhouse 90" and "Naked City."

By the early 1960s, Pleshette attracted a teenage following with her youthful roles in such films as "Rome Adventure," "Fate Is the Hunter," "Youngblood Hawke" and "A Distant Trumpet."

She married fellow teen favorite Troy Donahue, her co-star in "Rome Adventure," in 1964 but the union lasted less than a year. She was married to Texas oilman Tim Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000.

Pleshette matured in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and the Disney comedies "The Ugly Dachshund," "Blackbeard's Ghost" and "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin." Over the years, she also had a busy career in TV movies, including playing the title role in 1990's "Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean."

More recently, she appeared in several episodes of the TV sitcoms "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter."

In a 1999 interview, Pleshette observed that being an actress was more important than being a star.

"I'm an actress, and that's why I'm still here," she said. "Anybody who has the illusion that you can have a career as long as I have and be a star is kidding themselves."

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I REALLY used to like her when I was a lad.

RIP

MG

[Shawn]

One of my favorites from childhood as well.

[7/4]

Oh my, this is sad. RIP.

[MoGrubb]

Loved her, especially on Bob Newhart's shows.

Rip Suzanne Pleshette.

[catesta]

She was a beautiful woman.

RIP

[Teasing the Korean]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/20/p...t.ap/index.html

Jazz connection? She starred in "Mr. Buddwing," scored by THEE GREAT KENYON HOPKINS!!!

And what a sexy voice!

[Larry Kart]

Damn -- I liked that woman. She and Ann Southern had a certain kinship -- sexy, funny, a bit of a weight problem.

[Stereojack]

Big fan here too! I'd been hearing she was ill, so this doesn't come as a surprise, but I'm still saddened.

Beautiful, smart, funny.

[BERIGAN]

I knew she had been sick as well, but thought she was doing ok. Very sad. I remember her from being on Carson a fair bit as well. I recall her talking about her first husband and terrible heart trouble he had. Was really shocked when I heard she married Tom Poston, with him being so much older than her. Thought she would be a widow for a long time after he died. Turned out, it was less than a year later she died....

And yes, she was a sexy, funny woman....Rest in peace....

[DukeCity]

RIP. She was a favorite. I liked the smokey voice of her younger years. It started to get a little too smokey later, putting her creepily in that Bea Arthur, Maya Angelu, Carol Channing area. But still...

[GA Russell]

DukeCity, that second photo is really something, isn't it?!

Here's here LA Times obit:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...news-obituaries

Suzanne Pleshette, sexy star of 'Bob Newhart Show,' dies at 70

Suzanne Pleshette and Bob Newhart, co-stars in 'The Bob Newhart Show.' Pleshette died in Los Angeles Saturday, January 19. She was 70.

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 20, 2008

Suzanne Pleshette, the dark-haired, smoky-voiced actress who played Bob Newhart's confident and sexy wife, Emily Hartley, for six years on the popular 1970s sitcom "The Bob Newhart Show," has died. She was 70.

The widow of comic actor Tom Poston, Pleshette died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, Robert Finkelstein, an entertainment lawyer and family friend, told the Associated Press. Pleshette underwent chemotherapy in 2006 for lung cancer.

A stage-trained New York actress who made her movie debut in the 1958 Jerry Lewis comedy "The Geisha Boy," Pleshette appeared in such films as "The Birds," "Nevada Smith," "Youngblood Hawke," "A Rage to Live" and "Fate Is the Hunter."

She also appeared with Troy Donahue, to whom she was married for eight months in 1964, in the 1962 romantic drama "Rome Adventure" and the 1964 western "A Distant Trumpet."

On Broadway in 1961, Pleshette replaced Anne Bancroft in the role of Annie Sullivan in "The Miracle Worker," opposite Patty Duke as Helen Keller.

And on television in 1991, she earned an Emmy Award nomination for the title role in the TV movie "Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean."

But she had a flair for comedy.

Among her screen credits are "40 Pounds of Trouble," "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium," "Support Your Local Gunfighter," "The Shaggy D.A.," "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin," "The Ugly Dachshund" and "Blackbeard's Ghost."

Pleshette, however, is best remembered for playing what New York Times critic Frank Rich once described as "the sensible yet woolly wife" on "The Bob Newhart Show," which ran from 1972 to 1978. Her role as Emily earned her two Emmy nominations.

Pleshette retired from acting after marrying her second husband, wealthy businessman Tom Gallagher, in 1968. She told TV Guide in 1972 that after she'd been hanging around the house for six months, "my loving husband said, 'You're getting to be awfully boring. Go back to work.' "

After trying to figure out how she could return to work without having to get up at 5 a.m. or go out of town for weeks on movie locations, she recalled, "I said to myself, 'What can you do best?' 'Talk,' I said. 'So what better than the talk shows on TV?' I said. I picked up the phone and asked my agent to try to book me with Johnny Carson."

She made a couple of dozen appearances on the Carson show over the next few years, including one with fellow guest Newhart -- a show seen by writers David Davis and Lorenzo Music, the creatorsof the upcoming Newhart show.

"Suzanne started talking, and I looked at Lorenzo and Lorenzo looked at me," Davis told TV Guide. "There she was, just what we were looking for.

"She was revealing her own frailties, talking freely about being over 30. She was bubble-headed but smart, loving toward her husband but relentless about his imperfections. We were trying to get away from the standard TV wife, and we knew that whoever we picked would have to be offbeat enough and strong enough to carry the show along with Newhart. We didn't dream Suzanne would accept the part."

Pleshette told the magazine that "Bob is just like my husband, Tommy, letting me go bumbling and stumbling through life. And the way it's written, the part is me. There's the stream of non sequiturs by which I live. There are fights. I'm allowed to be demonstrative. But the core of the marriage is good."

Off-camera, Pleshette was known for being what an Orlando Sentinel reporter once described as "an earthy dame, an Auntie Mame who isn't afraid to tell a dirty story." Or, as TV Guide put it in 1972: "Her conversations -- mostly meandering monologues -- are sprinkled with aphorisms, anecdotes, salty opinions and X-rated expletives."

She enjoyed talking so much that during the making of "The Geisha Boy," Lewis took to calling her "Big Mouth."

Newhart, according to the TV Guide article, "was finding himself outtalked by Suzanne on the set about 12 to 1 but professed to be unperturbed by the phenomenon."

"I don't tangle," Newhart said, "with any lady who didn't give Johnny a chance to exercise his mouth -- even to sneer -- for 10 whole minutes."

Although Newhart got a new TV wife, played by Mary Frann, for his 1982-90 situation comedy "Newhart," Pleshette had the last laugh -- making a memorable surprise guest appearance as Newhart's previous TV wife, Emily, at the end of the series' final episode.

In it, Dick Loudon, the Vermont innkeeper Newhart played on "Newhart," is knocked out by a stray golf ball. Then the show cuts to a darkened bedroom as he wakes up and turns on the light to reveal Chicago psychologist Bob Hartley's bedroom from "The Bob Newhart Show." The Vermont-set "Newhart" and its colorful characters, it turns out, had only been a dream, and Pleshette's Emily tells Bob he should watch what he eats before going to bed.

In a 1990 interview with "CBS This Morning," Pleshette recalled that when the "Newhart" studio audience first saw the familiar bedroom set from the old series, she heard gasps.

"And then they heard this mumble under the covers, and nobody does my octave, you know," she recalled. "And I think they suspected it might be me, but when that dark hair came up from under the covers, they stood and screamed."

For her and Newhart "to be together again with the old rhythms, looking into each other's eyes, was just wonderful," she said. And, she said, it was "very touching and so dear" that the studio audience "remembered us with such affection."

Pleshette was born Jan. 31, 1937, in New York City. Her mother had been a dancer, and her father was the manager of the New York and Brooklyn Paramount theaters during their big-band days.

After attending the New York High School of the Performing Arts -- "I found myself there," Pleshette later said -- she spent a semester at Syracuse University and a semester at Finch College before moving on to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and acting teacher Sanford Meisner.

Pleshette also starred in the short-lived sitcoms "Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs" (1984) and "The Boys Are Back" (1994-95) and the dramatic series "Bridges to Cross" (1986) and "Nightingales" (1989).

More recently, she played the lusty grandmother in the sitcom "Good Morning, Miami" (2002-03).

Pleshette was married to Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000.

She first met -- and dated -- Poston when they appeared together in the 1959 Broadway comedy "Golden Fleecing." They were both dealing with the deaths of their spouses in 2000 when they got back together. They were married the next year.

"They are a romantic duo," actor Tim Conway, a friend of Poston's, told People magazine in 2001. "It's almost embarrassing. You have to put cold water on them."

Poston died in April at age 85 after a brief illness.

Details on survivors were not immediately available.

[BruceH]

Terrible, terrible news. RIP

[BERIGAN]

DukeCity, that second photo is really something, isn't it?!...

Boy, I'll say!!!!

[paul secor]

Suzanne Pleshette was a perfect foil for Bob Newhart.

Pleshette was evidently her real name - her father's name was Eugene Pleshette. Pleshette sounded so much like a stage name that I always assumed that it was one.

[ValerieB]

i think, very sadly, that "smoky" voice may have contributed to her demise from lung cancer. i seem to remember her being a heavy smoker for years. she was one-of-a-kind. gorgeous, sexy, down-to-earth, very bright, funny, outspoken, etc. she will be missed.

[Big Al]

Did anyone find her turn as "Patience" in Support Your Local Gunfighter hilarious? I know I did.

RIP, and thanks for all the laughs

[Teasing the Korean]

Duplicate post (threads were merged).

Edited January 21, 2008 by Teasing the Korean