Suzannne Pleshette



Suzanne Pleshette (January 31, 1937 – January 19, 2008) was an American actress and voice actress. After beginning her career in the theatre, she began appearing in films in the early 1960s, such as Rome Adventure (1962) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). She later appeared in various television productions, often in guest roles, and played Emily Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972 until 1978, receiving several Emmy Award nominations for her work. She continued acting until 2004, four years before her death.

Contents
[hide]  *1 Early life ==Early life[edit] == Pleshette was born in Brooklyn Heights, New York City.[1]  Her grandparents were Jewish immigrants, three of them from Russia and one of them from Austria-Hungary.[2] [3]  Her mother, Geraldine (née Kaplan), was a dancer and artist who performed under the stage name Geraldine Rivers. Her father, Eugene Pleshette, was a stage manager, network executive and manager of the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn.[4] [5]  She graduated from Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts and then attended Syracuse University for one semester before transferring toFinch College.[1]  A graduate of Manhattan's prestigious acting school, The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, under the tutelage of legendary acting teacher Sanford Meisner. ==Acting career[edit] == Pleshette in 1969Reviewers described her appearance and demeanor as sardonic and her voice as sultry.[6]  She began her career as a stage actress. She made herBroadway debut in Meyer Levin's 1957 play Compulsion, adapted from his novel inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case.
 * 2 Acting career
 * 2.1 Television work
 * 2.2 The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
 * 3 Personal life
 * 4 Illness
 * 5 Death
 * 6 Filmography
 * 6.1 Feature films
 * 6.1.1 Television films
 * 6.1.2 Television series
 * 7 See also
 * 8 References
 * 9 External links

The following year she was 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.[7]  In 1959 she was featured in the comedy Golden Fleecing starring Constance Ford and Tom Poston.[8]  (Poston would eventually become her third husband.) That same year, she was one of two finalists for the role of Louise/Gypsy in the original production of Gypsy. During the run of The Cold Wind and the Warm she spent mornings taking striptease lessons from Jerome Robbins for the role in Gypsy.[9]  In his autobiography, the play's author Arthur Laurents states, "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."

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">In February 1961, she succeeded Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan Macy opposite 14-year-old Patty Duke's Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-NYT21_10-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Pleshette's first screen role was in the episode "Night Rescue" (December 5, 1957) of the CBS adventure/drama television series, Harbourmaster, starring Barry Sullivan and Paul Burke. Her other early screen credits include The Geisha Boy, Rome Adventure, Fate Is the Hunter, and Youngblood Hawke, but was best-known at that time for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's classic suspense film The Birds. 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, the drama Mister Buddwing and the western comedy Support Your Local Gunfighter.<sup class="Template-Fact" style="line-height:1em;white-space:nowrap;">[citation needed]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">She 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 The Lion King II: Simba's Pride. ===Television work<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === at the 43rd Emmy Awards, August 25, 1991<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Her early television appearances included Playhouse 90, Decoy, Have Gun – Will Travel, One Step Beyond, Riverboat, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Channing, Ben Casey, Naked City, Wagon Train, and Dr. Kildare, for which she was nominated for her first Emmy Award.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[11]  She guest-starred more than once as different characters in each of these 1960s TV series: Route 66,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-12" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[12] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[13]  The Fugitive,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[14]  The Invaders,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-15" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[15]  The F.B.I., "Columbo" (1971) and The Name of the Game.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-16" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[16]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Pleshette was the co-star of the popular CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978) for all six seasons, and was nominated twice for the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She reprised her role of Emily Hartley in the memorable final episode of a subsequent comedy series, Newhart, in which viewers discovered that the entire series had been her husband Bob's dream when he awakens next to Pleshette in the bedroom set from the earlier series.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Her 1984 situation comedy, Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs, was canceled after seven episodes.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-17" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[17]  In 1989, she played the role of Christine Broderick in the NBC drama, Nightingales, which only lasted one season. In 1990, Pleshette portrayed Manhattan hotelier Leona Helmsley in the television movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean, which garnered her Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations. In addition, she starred opposite Hal Linden in the 1994 sitcom The Boys Are Back.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">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, and appeared as the estranged mother of Megan Mullally's character Karen Walker in three episodes of Will & Grace. The role would prove to be her last. ===The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">A native New Yorker, Suzanne Pleshette had already experienced a full career on stage and screen by 1971 when TV producers saw her on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-NYT21_10-1" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]  and they noticed a certain chemistry between Suzanne and another guest, Bob Newhart.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-NYT21_10-2" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]  She was soon cast as wife to Newhart’s character, and the series ran for six seasons from 1972 to 1978 as part of CBS television's Saturday night lineup.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-NYT21_10-3" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10]  Pleshette's down-to-earth but elegant manner was caught during an anecdote that Carson was relating to her about working with a farm tractor in Nebraska. When he asked her, "Have you ever ridden on a tractor?" she replied smoothly, "Johnny, I've never even been in a Chevrolet." ==Personal life<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] == <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Pleshette's 1964 marriage to her Rome Adventure and A Distant Trumpet co-star Troy Donahue ended acrimoniously after just eight months. Her second husband was Texas oilman Tom Gallagher, to whom she was wed from 1968 until his death from lung cancer on January 21, 2000. She suffered a miscarriage during her marriage to Gallagher, and the couple was 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."<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Screen_18-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[18]  In 2001, she married Bob Newhart's former Newhart co-star Tom Poston.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-19" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[19]  They were married until his death from respiratory failure in Los Angeles on April 30, 2007.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">She was the cousin of the actor John Pleshette. ==Illness<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] == <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">On August 11, 2006, her agent Joel Dean announced that Pleshette, a long-time smoker, was being treated for lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. On August 14, 2006, New York Newsday reported that Dean claimed 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".

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">She was later hospitalized for a pulmonary infection and developed pneumonia, causing her to be hospitalized for an extended period. She arrived at a Bob Newhart Show cast reunion in September 2007 in a wheelchair, causing 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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-usatodaycaner_20-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[20] ==Death<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] == <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Pleshette died in the early evening of January 19, 2008, of respiratory failure at her Los Angeles home, twelve days before her 71st birthday. She is buried in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. She received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television on January 31, 2008. On the January 22 edition of Entertainment Tonight, her former co-star and longtime friend Marcia Wallace announced she would be attending the ceremony on Pleshette's behalf.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-APdeath_21-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[21]  Pleshette received the walk's 2,355th star. 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. Others in attendance included Peter Falk, Dick Van Dyke, and Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren, her co-stars from The Birds.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-22" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[22] ==Filmography<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] == ===Feature films<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] === ====Television films<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] ==== ====Television series<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[edit] ====