Oscar-winning actress and comedy icon Cloris Leachman died of natural causes this Tuesday aged 94.
One of her sons told TMZ that her daughter Dinah was with her when she passed away at her own house in Encinitas, California.
After becoming a star on The Mary Tyler Moore Show she earned an Academy Award and was tied with Julia Louis-Dreyfus for the most acting Emmys won by anyone.
Dearly departed: Oscar-winning actress and comedy icon Cloris Leachman died of natural causes this Tuesday aged 94
She was nominated 22 times for the Emmy Award and won eight, including two for her turn as Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s.
Cloris went onto lead the cast of a short-lived spin-off series called Phyllis, which earned her yet another Emmy nomination.
Even in her later years she continued to be a major presence in TV comedy, winning a further two Emmys as Grandma Ida on Malcolm In The Middle.
Her Oscar came for Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 coming of age movie The Last Picture Show, which also won her a BAFTA.
She delivered a heartrending performance as an embittered housewife called Ruth whose secretly gay husband is the football coach at the local high school.
Ruth takes comfort in an affair with one of the students at the high school, Sonny, who was portrayed by a young Timothy Bottoms.
Born to a family that ran a lumber company in Des Moines, Cloris competed in the Miss America Pageant at the age of 20 in 1946 and made it to finalist.
Her father then gave her enough money to be in New York ‘for three days including airfare,’ she said in an interview with blogger Vanessa McMahon.
Cloris quickly became a jobbing actress, landing an extra gig in the 1947 movie Carnegie Hall – the same year that the Actors Studio was co-founded by Elia Kazan and, as Cloris said: ‘I was in the first group.’
She spent two years at the Actors Studio until the legendary acting coach ‘Lee Strasberg came in. He’s not Elia Kazan. So I quit the Actors Studio.’
During the 1950s she acted on TV shows like Lassie and Alfred Hitchcock Presents as well as in such movies as The Rack with Lee Marvin and Paul Newman.
One year before she achieved full-on stardom she appeared in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid led by Robert Redford and Paul.
However she won over America with her iconic role as the leading lady’s zany and meddlesome neighbor Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The show made stars of several members of its cast including the late Valerie Harper as well as Ed Asner and Betty White who are both in their 90s.
During the 1970s Cloris became a comedy legend not just on television but in films, doing three movies with Mel Brooks.
She gave an unforgettable turn in Young Frankenstein as the forbidding Frau Blucher who sings the song He Vas My Boyfriend about Dr. Frankenstein.
Shortly thereafter she featured in Mel’s Hitchcock spoof High Anxiety as the evil Nurse Charlotte Diesel – and then in his send-up of period pieces History Of The World, Part 1 as Madame Defarge from A Tale Of Two Cities.
Cloris retained a prominent acting career well into the 21st century including in Malcolm In The Middle which lasted until 2006.
Her film work did not stop either, as she appeared in such comedies as Bad Santa and even the 2020 movie Jump, Darling as a drag queen’s grandmother.
She remained so busy until the end that two of her movies are going to be released posthumously – High Holiday and Not To Forget.
A few years ago when The Hollywood Reporter asked her if she considered retirement she joked: ‘F*** you.’
Although she won laughs and love onscreen her personal life had its share of trials including her failed marriage to George Englund.
George, who came from a showbiz family and was close pals with Marlon Brando, married Cloris in 1953 when she was still a rising actress.
They had five children together – Dinah, Morgan, Bryan, George Jr. and Adam – but the marriage finally fell apart by 1979.
In the meantime he was unfaithful to her – Joan Collins has confessed that when she was in her 20s she had an affair with George during his marriage to Cloris.
‘One dreadful afternoon when George was in my apartment, his wife, actress Cloris Leachman, arrived and started banging on the door and screaming that she knew he was there with me,’ Joan wrote in the MailOnline.
Joan said: ‘George isn’t here, Cloris,’ at his instruction, but Cloris was having none of it and bellowed: ‘I know he’s in there, you b****.’
However after the marriage fell apart Cloris and George managed to retain a close friendship and even eventually co-wrote her memoir.
Their lives were marked with tragedy in 1986 when Bryan was found dead at the age of just 30 of what some reports suggested may have been an overdose.
In her memoir, which she co-wote with Bryan’s father, she wrote heartbreakingly bout her ‘hope addiction’ that Bryan would overcome his drug problem.
‘I feel Bryan’s presence always,’ she wrote. ‘I love him so, and I know how much he loved me, and I know he’d be with me every second if he could, just as when I die, I’m not going to be gone. I’ll be with my children. I’ll never be away from them.’