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Post by rick on Jan 27, 2021 17:49:47 GMT -5
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Post by erik on Jan 27, 2021 18:39:22 GMT -5
They keep leaving us, don't they?
I do remember having seen Cloris not only on Phyllis, but also on the big screen as well, notably for roles in BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. to name just two. People like her are quite hard (if not impossible) to replace.
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Post by rick on Jan 27, 2021 21:39:24 GMT -5
From the Washington Post:
“Television work provided a secure paycheck—except when Ms. Leachman, known for her tart tongue, indulged in flouting industry protocol. She was fired in 1958 as the young mother on the TV show “Lassie” because she refused to do promotional work for the sponsor, Campbell’s Soup. “I make my own soup,” she snapped. “I don’t eat yours”
An uninhibited interviewee, Ms. Leachman spoke about...her on-set flirtations with “Mary Tyler Moore” co-star Ed Asner, with whom she agreed to an assignation if he lost 32 pounds. “He got to 29 pounds and he went back up,” she told the Bergen Record. “I don’t know who was more frightened, he or I.” (Would Copperud have had us clean up the quote to make it “him or me”?
Back in the late 1980s, the then-Museum of Broadcasting had its annual festival here in Los Angeles and there was an evening tribute to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." The episode that Mary Tyler Moore chose to have shown to the audience that night was "The Lars Affair," Season Four, Episode One, which Moore felt showed the great ensemble work of the cast -- Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Ed Asner, Ted Knight, Gavin MacLeod, and, introduced in this episode, Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens. One of my favorite lines is when Cloris Leachman, as Phyllis, says, "I've become such an object of pity that even Rhoda is being nice to me."
After Valerie Harper was spun off onto her own series, the following year MTM spun off Cloris Leachman's character on "Phyllis." I think the opening theme song (a take-off on tunes like "Hello, Dolly!" or "Mame" with a wry twist at the end) and credits were some of the best ever done for a series --
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