[Deathwatch] Suzanne Pleshette, actress, 70

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Newhart' Actress Suzanne Pleshette Dies
Monday, January 21

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."

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary