SUZIE NEWS
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Suzanne Pleshette dies in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES - Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced star best known for her role as Bob Newhart's sardonic wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," has died at age 70.
Pleshette, whose career included roles in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and in Broadway plays including "The Miracle Worker," died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, said her attorney Robert Finkelstein, also a family friend.
Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006.
"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."
To read more obits, click here.
Friday, September 7, 2007
What Illness? Pleshette Still a Spitfire
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Suzanne Pleshette is very much alive, and ever her saucy self.
In a rare public appearance Wednesday night for a 35th-anniversary tribute to "The Bob Newhart Show" (1972-78), her most enduring work, the veteran actress showed that a year of serious personal and health matters hasn't dampened her spitfire personality.
"I'm cancer-free, my (breasts) are great and ... I'm extremely, extremely rich," she responded to a question from The Associated Press, generating howls of laughter from a packed audience during a panel discussion featuring the cast of the beloved sitcom.
The tribute, co-hosted by the TV Land cable network and the Paley Center for Media, attracted most of the show's principals, as well as legendary-comic guests Don Rickles and Tim Conway. But Pleshette's attendance had been a question mark.
In August 2006, it was announced that the actress, 70, was being treated for lung cancer. In April, her actor-husband Tom Poston died from respiratory failure. Even as late as Wednesday afternoon, publicists would not confirm Pleshette's participation in the tribute, and she did not walk the arrivals line, where Newhart spoke about his longtime leading lady's health.
"It is not cancer," he said. "She had an operation, they got it all. She then developed a pulmonary problem. She went in the hospital. When she went in the hospital, she caught pneumonia, so she went back in the hospital. It was touch and go. She's here tonight, and she told me, `Yesterday, I couldn't have made it.'"
Early into the panel discussion, Pleshette noted, "I could have dropped dead. There are three doctors who kept me alive, just for tonight."
Pleshette, looking fresh in a black pinstriped suit, was asked what she thought the classic show's real secret of success was. "The sexual energy between us," she responded dryly, inspiring a belly laugh from Newhart.
"I don't remember that," he shot back.
She was serious for a moment, though, when talking about working with Newhart as the ever amusing and ever loving Bob and Emily.
"We were a bright couple," Pleshette said. "We were a couple who cared deeply for each other. We were a working couple, both making substantial amounts of money. And I just think we were fabulous."
TV Land airs a 35th-anniversary marathon of "The Bob Newhart Show" on Monday, running eight episodes selected by Newhart, from 8 p.m. to midnight.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
`Newhart' sidekick Tom Poston dies
LOS ANGELES - Tom Poston, the tall, pasty-faced comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on such hit television shows as "Newhart" and "Mork and Mindy," has died. He was 85.
Poston, who was married to Suzanne Pleshette of "The Bob Newhart Show," died Monday night at home after a brief illness, a family representative, Tanner Gibson, said Tuesday. The nature of his illness was not disclosed.
Bob Newhart remembered Poston as a "versatile and veteran performer and a kindhearted individual."
"Tom was always the `go-to guy' on `Newhart' in addition to being a good and longtime friend," Newhart said in a statement Tuesday.
Poston's run as a comic bumbler began in the mid-1950s with "The Steve Allen Show" after Allen plucked the character actor from the Broadway stage to join an ensemble of eccentrics he would conduct "man in the street" interviews with.
Don Knotts was the shaky Mr. Morrison, Louis Nye was the suave, overconfident Gordon Hathaway and Poston's character was so unnerved by the television cameras that he couldn't remember who he was. He won an Emmy playing "The Man Who Can't Remember His Name."
But when Allen moved the show from New York to Los Angeles in 1959, Poston stayed behind.
"Hollywood's not for me right now; I'm a Broadway cat," he told a reporter at the time.
When he did finally move west, he quickly began appearing in variety shows, sitcoms and films.
His movie credits included "Cold Turkey," "The Happy Hooker," "Rabbit Test" and, more recently, "Christmas With the Kranks," "Beethoven's 5th" and "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement."
On "Mork and Mindy," which starred Robin Williams as a space alien, Poston was Franklin Delano Bickley, the mindless boozer with the annoying dog. On "Newhart," he was George Utley, the handyman who couldn't fix anything at the New England inn run by Newhart's character. And on Newhart's show "Bob," he was the star's dim-bulb former college roommate.
"These guys are about a half-step behind life's parade," Poston commented in a 1983 interview. "The ink on their instruction sheets is beginning to fade. But they can function and cope and don't realize they are driving people up the walls.
"In ways I don't like to admit, I'm a goof-up myself," Poston continued. "It's an essential part of my character. When these guys screw up it reminds me of my own incompetence with the small frustrations of life."
Goof-up or not, Poston was a versatile actor who made his Broadway debut in 1947 playing five roles in Jose Ferrer's "Cyrano de Bergerac."
One role called for him to engage in a duel, fall 10 feet, roll across the stage and vanish into the orchestra pit. Other actors had auditioned and failed but Poston, who in his youth had been an acrobat with the Flying Zepleys, did the stunt perfectly.
He went on to play secondary roles in Broadway comedies and starred at regional theaters in such shows as "Romanoff and Juliet" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." For 10 years he was also a panelist on the popular TV quiz show "To Tell the Truth."
He made guest appearances on scores of television shows, including "Studio One," "The Phil Silvers Show," "The Defenders," "Get Smart," "The Bob Newhart Show," "The Love Boat," "St. Elsewhere," "The Simpsons," "Coach," "Murphy Brown," "Home Improvement," "Touched by an Angel," "Will & Grace," "Dream On," "Just Shoot Me!" and "That '70s Show."
Poston and his first wife, Jean Sullivan, had a daughter, Francesca, before their marriage ended in divorce. He married his second wife, Kay Hudson, after they met while appearing in the St. Louis Light Opera, and they had a son, Jason, and daughter, Hudson.
Poston and Pleshette, who had appeared together in the 1959 Broadway play "The Golden Fleecing," had had a brief fling before marrying other people. Both now widowed, they reunited in 2000 and married the following year.
Their paths had crossed on "The Bob Newhart Show" in the 1970s. Poston made several guest appearances on the sitcom in which Pleshette played Newhart's wife.
In 2006, Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer that her agent said was caught at an early stage.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 17, 1921, Thomas Poston moved from city to city as a child as his father hunted for work during the Depression. As a teenager, he made money as a boxer.
Following two years at Bethany College he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and flew troops to the European war zone during World War II.
Hunting for a postwar occupation, Poston read an interview with Charles Jehlinger, creative head of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was inspired to sign up for a two-year course at the Academy.
Besides Pleshette, 70, Poston is survived by his children, Francesca Poston of Nashville, Tenn., Jason Poston of Los Angeles and Hudson Poston of Portland, Ore.
A private service was planned for immediate family. Details of a public memorial service were to be announced later.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Not In The Script by Army Archerd
Tom Poston died Monday night with his wife Suzanne Pleshette's head on his chest.
"He was just hanging on to get me through this," she told me. Suzanne had been recovering from tumor surgery, had undergone four separate chemotherapy sessions and was finally able to tell me, "I'm well. I'm healthy. He waited 'til my hair grew back!"
Both Suzanne and Tom endured their respective illnesses while putting on a happy face -- personified by the "Medical update" which they sent to me, Oct. 11, 2006:
BAD NEWS
I lost all of my hair
I look like shit
Tom has a catheter in his dickie
We have round-the-clock nurses, a walker and a wheelchair
GOOD NEWS
I'm saving a fortune on bikini waxes
Tom has lost all peripheral vision so he doesn't know
At his age we're just glad he
has a lump in his pants
We're madly in love
And we feel lucky.
AIN'T LIFE GRAND!!!!!!!
She maintained this outwardly happy attitude constantly in his presence -- and to the outside world during the months that followed -- and up to the moment he died.
I last saw Tom when we had lunch together at Nate 'n Al's in Beverly Hills on May 24, 2005. It was the deli's 60th birthday party. Our wise-cracking waitress was -- Suzanne who berated the order he had made -- corned beef on white bread with mayo.
It personified the joie de vivre they breathed as a couple wherever they went. She was putting on a brave act today as she described Tom's closing act to come...
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Tom Poston Farewell by Army Archerd
"I'm the Widow Poston," Suzanne Pleshette said as the "services" wound down at Hillside Sunday afternoon. "I said that for single men here," she continued comically. She then started remarks reading her introductions to the eulogies she had delivered at funeral services for Eva Gabor and Lew Wasserman! She had the crowd laughing hysterically. It was pure Pleshette comedy. And it was a full house--overflow--outside the large chapel.
Pleshette continued explaining how her first husband, Tom Gallagher, III, a non-Jew (as was Poston), was buried in Hillside Memorial Park whose prayer book informs, "Keeping Jewish Families Together." Suzanne said, "If you see a plaque (on the grave site) saying 'Tommy Goldberg,' it's him." She noted Poston "was the quintessential Gentile but was the best Tevya in 'Fiddler on The Roof' you ever saw when he played it in Milwaukee. He had seen 'My Fair Lady' with Rex Harrison and was gong to make Tevye British (not Yiddish)!" Suzanne segued into the tender telling of her love for Tom, their first affair, 48 years ago, continuing to their recent sad, simultaneous stay in the hospital. There wasn't a dry eye in the house as she spoke of their love. Later, when the mourners proceeded to the grave site they saw the plaque on Gallagher's plot did indeed bear his real name--not "Goldberg." There is an empty space between the two men's resting places--it's for Suzanne. She led the burial service, giving instructions to the workers, turning the first shovelful as family and friends lined up to follow suit
There was no prayer book--instead, a graphic program with color Poston portraits on front and back was given to each person. The back cover carries the vintage painitng of Poston which hangs in Sardi's. His inscription: "It's great to be hung. And even greater to be hung in Sardi's." The speakers in the program ranged from his WWII buddy, Eli Setencich, to his longtime managers Larry Brezner and David Steinberg, then Howard Storm whose name faces a photo of "Yarmy's Army" (charitable) with whom Poston appeared over the years. Dave Thomas and Chuck Lorre told hysterically funny--yet warm-revealing stories of Poston on- and offstage. But son Jason unveiled the real man, the father, in another emotional speech. Suzanne followed. Rarely heard applause in this setting filled the room. Pallbearers were brought up to escort the simple casket out to the car, which would take him to his final resting place, high atop the park, overlooking the Al Jolson memorial. Bob Newhart was one of the pallbearers. He said he was thankful not to have been asked to speak--he would have been too emotional in his affection for his longtime friend and coworker. To close the "ceremony" (there were no prayers), Tom's daughter Francesca Poston, Peter Marshall and Jack Sheldon sang/played "Bye, Bye Blackbird." Tom Poston died April 17. He was 85. He wasn't Jewish, but he sure was a mensch.
Suzanne Pleshette was born on January 31, 1937 in New York City, New York, the only child of Eugene Pleshette, who managed the Paramount and Brooklyn Paramount theaters during the big band era. As a child she met such stars as Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, and Danny Kaye. Pleshette describes her mother, a former ballerina, as "gorgeous, childlike, and very funny, with flaming red hair, and glamorous."She chose to attend the New York High School of the Performing Arts at twelve, then went on to Syracuse University, Finch College, the Neighborhood Playhouse, and Sandy Meizner's Acting School.
She was a popular performer on Broadway with roles in "Compulsion" and replaced Anne Bancroft in "The Miracle Worker." She was also busy on live television, then was hired by Jerry Lewis for a role in 1958's The Geisha Boy.
She appeared opposite Troy Donahue in Rome Adventure and would become his wife for a short time in 1964. She portrayed doomed teacher Annie Hayworth in 1963's The Birds and also starred in Wall of Noise [1963], Forty Pounds of Trouble [1963], Youngblood Hawke [1964], A Distant Trumpet [1964], Fate Is the Hunter [1964], Mister Buddwing [1965], A Rage to Live [1965], and Nevada Smith [1966].
During the latter part of the 1960s and early 1970s she was an extremely popular guest actress on television and starred in the Disney films The Ugly Dachshund [1966], The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin [1967], and Blackbeard's Ghost [1968].
From 1972 to 1978 she played the role for which she is best known, Emily Hartley, on "The Bob Newhart Show." She received two Emmy nominations for her portrayal of funny and feisty Emily. She was a regular guest on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" known for her wit and humor.
The past twenty years have been a whirlwind of activity for Miss Pleshette. She starred in four television series, "Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs" [1984], "Bridges to Cross" [1986], "Nightingales" [1989], and "The Boys Are Back" [1994] with Hal Linden. She's made numerous made for television movies, including "Help Wanted: Male" [1982], "Dixie: Changing Habits" [1983], "Alone in the Neon Jungle" [1988], "Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean" [1990], and "Battling for Baby" [1992]. She appeared in one of the best final episodes in television history, waking up in bed with Bob Newhart to end his series "Newhart" on May 21, 1990. She's had featured roles in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride [1998] as the voice of Zira, and "Steve McQueen: The King of Cool" [1998] as herself (interviewee), who said of Mr. McQueen, "He got the **** kicked out of him as a kid." She was featured on the NBC comedy "Good Morning, Miami" and the ABC comedy "8 Simple Rules."
On a personal note, she was married for 31 years to Thomas J. Gallagher III, a wealthy oil businessman, who died January 21, 2000. Suzanne wrote the following poem to Tommy as a Christmas gift the year they lost half their home in a mud slide and funds were low.
Would that we had riches
Beyond the wildest reason,
I'd fashion you a Christmas
So joyful for this season.
But since the coffer's empty
And the gifts are not to be,
I give you all my love, dear
And I give you freely, me.~~ Suzanne Pleshette ~~
Suzanne married Tom Poston in New York on May 11, 2001 and a reception was held May 26, 2001 in Los Angeles. CLICK HERE to view wedding photos and article.
Tom Poston passed away April 30, 2007.
Miss Pleshette battled lung cancer from 2006 until her death on January 19, 2008.
"To me, going from the front door to a booth in a restaurant is exercise."
-- Suzanne Pleshette
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SUZANNE PLESHETTE'S PLAIN OLD-FASHIONED CHICKEN POTPIE
(As bequeathed by her caterer, Michael Hollingsworth) 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts*
SAUCE
*For lobster potpie, use butter instead of chicken drippings in sauce, and add 2 tablespoons of fresh dill and a quarter cup sautéed leeks and mushrooms. Heat butter or drippings; add flour, constantly whisking to form a roux. Add garlic salt, chicken stock, sherry and stir over medium heat. Bring to a boil and add cream. Simmer 20 minutes. Place vegetables in ramekins (8). Place chicken on top, pour 8 ounces of sauce on top, shake until settled. Brush rim of ramekins with egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon of warm water). Place puff pastry on top and cover. Brush the rest of the puff pastry with egg wash. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. ORANGE-HAZELNUT DRESSING
SALAD
Sauté pecans in skillet with 1 tablespoon butter, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, pinch cayenne. Drain and chop. Place cheese in freezer until ready to use. (It's easier to handle that way.) Lay lettuce out on chilled plates. Sprinkle with pecans, drizzle dressing and serve.
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in a Miniseries or Special for "Leona Helmsley: The Queen Of Mean" [1990] |
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in a Comedy Series for "The Bob Newhart Show" |
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in a Comedy Series for "The Bob Newhart Show" |
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by an Actress in a Program for "Dr. Kildare" Episode "Shining Image" [10/12/61] |
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in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for TV for "Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean" [1990] |
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SUZIE SOUNDS - CLICK TO LISTEN Suzie as Zira in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride .WAV File One ~ 74 KB
Suzie sings "My Lullaby" from the soundtrack Return to Pride Rock
"My Lullaby" .WAV ~ 1.94 MB
Suzie-Related Sounds
Theme from "The Bob Newhart Show" .WAV ~ 271 KB
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