Suzanne Pleshette 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
and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. 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.
Early life Pleshette was born in Brooklyn Heights, New
York City. Her parents were Jewish and the children of immigrants from Russia and Austria-Hungary.
Her mother, Geraldine, 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. She graduated from Manhattan's High School of
Performing Arts and then attended Syracuse University for one semester before transferring
to Finch College. 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
Reviewers described her appearance and demeanor as sardonic and her voice as sultry. She began
her career 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. 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. 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." In February 1961, she succeeded Anne Bancroft
as Anne Sullivan Macy opposite 14-year-old Patty Duke's Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.
Pleshette's first screen role was in the episode "Night Rescue" 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 she 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. 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 and sang the song
"My Lullaby". Television work
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. She
guest-starred more than once as different characters in each of these 1960s TV series:
Route 66, The Fugitive, The Invaders, The F.B.I., "Columbo" and The Name of the Game.
Pleshette was the co-star of the popular CBS sitcom The Bob Newhart Show 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.
Her 1984 situation comedy, Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs, was canceled after seven
episodes. 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. 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 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, and they noticed a certain chemistry between
Suzanne and another guest, Bob Newhart. She was soon cast as the wife of Newhart’s character,
and the series ran for six seasons from 1972 to 1978 as part of CBS television's Saturday
night lineup. 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
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 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, she married former Newhart co-star Tom Poston.
They were married until his death from respiratory failure in Los Angeles on April 30, 2007.
She was the cousin of the actor John Pleshette. Illness
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".
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". 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.
Death Pleshette died in the early evening of January
19, 2008, at her Los Angeles home, twelve days before her 71st birthday. She is buried
next to her third husband 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. 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.
Filmography Feature films
Television films Television series
See also References
External links Suzanne Pleshette at the Internet Broadway
Database Suzanne Pleshette interview video at the Archive
of American Television Suzanne Pleshette at the Internet Movie Database
Obituary in The Times, 22 January 2008 BroadwayWorld Article: Suzanne Pleshette Dies
at 70 Audio of Hollywood Walk of Fame star dedication
for Suzanne Pleshette 5-Part Oral History Interview with Suzanne
Pleshette on her TV career on YouTube