Cloris Leachman Passed Away!

Cloris Leachman passed away.

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A legendary actress and comedian who has a legacy that spans over generations has passed away from natural causes on Tuesday. It was confirmed that Cloris Leachman died at the age of 94.

"There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh 'til the tears ran down your face," said her longtime manager Juliet Green. "You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of unparalleled magic."

Known on the big screen and little screen, I remember Cloris from her roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis, Raising Hope, The Facts of Life and Young Frankenstein.

She had an impact on so many and will be missed.

According to TMZ, which first reported the news, she passed away at her home in Encinitas, California, with her daughter, Dinah, beside her.

Cloris was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1926. She was the eldest of three daughters whose father worked in the family lumber business.

By 15, Leachman had built up an impressive resume of radio appearances — even receiving a radio scholarship to Northwestern University. It was there as a college student that she would decide to give beauty pageants a shot — competing in the 1946 Miss America pageant as Miss Chicago.

While she didn't snatch the crown, Leachman used the money she did earn from the competition to move to New York City where her acting career would take off. She attended the Actors Studio in its founding years, studying acting under Elia Kazan with people like Marlon Brando, Eli Wallach, and Julie Harris. She said the education opened her up to roles she never dreamed she would have.

Leachman made her Broadway debut in the 1947 farce John Loves Mary, as an understudy. She'd work consistently on the Great White Way every year after for the next 12 years — sometimes in leading roles, like 1950's As You Like It opposite Katharine Hepburn, and others as replacements, like when she stepped into the shoes of Abigail Williams in Arthur Miller's The Crucible in 1953.

Years of laughter and acting. 

She was both in the original run of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific — taking over the leading role of Nellie Forbush after understudying it from original star Mary Martin.

At the same time, Leachman's television career kicked off with a slew of live broadcasts in the '40s and '50s — beginning with 1948's Night Must Fall on The Ford Theatre Hour. The live anthology TV shows — like Suspense, Kraft Theatre, Danger, and Matinee Theatre — would be a staple of her career. She'd often film them during the day before rushing to act in a Broadway show at night.

Gigs on Lassie, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Perry Mason (among countless others) carried her through the 1970s. Along the way, she cozied up to a few big-name costars — including soon-to-be President Ronald Reagan.

The big screen called, too — though the parts at first were small. Leachman's feature debut was as an extra in 1947's Carnegie Hall. She had a memorable scene in Robert Aldrich's 1955 classic Kiss Me Deadly, but it wasn't a speaking role. She worked with Paul Newman in 1956's The Rack and then again in 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (she played the prostitute).

In 1971, Leachman's performance in The Last Picture Show would prove to be her breakout — earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Competing alongside Ann-Margret, Ellen Burstyn, Barbara Harris and Margaret Leighton, it was the first time in the history of the Oscars an entire category was filled with first-time honorees. Leachman would go on to win the top prize.

Cloris Leachman was featured on the sitcom Raising Hope.

"I'm having an amazing life, and it isn't over yet," she said in her acceptance speech, before thanking her parents and first piano and dance teachers by name. "Remember when Ben Johnson said in The Last Picture Show, 'I've fought my whole life against' whatever he said? I feel, I fought all my life against clichés. And look at me? I'm a hopeless cliché. … I am deeply honored by this."

It was an unexpected win for Leachman, who played Ruth — the depressed middle-aged wife of a high school football coach who has an affair with a senior on her husband's team. Leachman filmed the movie's pivotal scene, in which she confronts the boy (played by Timothy Bottoms), in just one take.

"I just did it once — I had just learned my lines on the way over there," she told CBS This Morning in 2015. "And then [director Peter Bogdanovich] said 'cut' and I said, 'Wait wait wait wait — I need to do that again.' And he said, 'no.' "

Though the big screen gave Leachman her breakout, television was where she'd find her most iconic role: as Phyllis Lindstrom on 1970's The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Snobbish and biting, Phyllis managed the apartment where Mary and Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) lived — and often clashed with Rhoda. Phyllis also had a tense relationship with Sue Anne Nivens (Betty White), who had an affair with Phyllis' husband.

"She's one of those geniuses who's capable of thinking on the spot and making it funny and making it truthful," Moore told GMA of Leachman in 2010. "I would go to no other person than she to ask for advice.

Leachman earned two consecutive supporting actress Emmys for playing the role, in 1974 and 1975. While she appeared in all seven seasons of the CBS sitcom, Leachman also went solo with the character — leading a spinoff series titled Phyllis from 1975-1977. She'd earn a leading comedy actress Golden Globe award for the show.

Cloris Leachman with Betty White.

During her Mary Tyler Moore Show run, Leachman would originate one of comedy's most cherished punchlines: Frau Blücher in Mel Brooks' 1974 classic, Young Frankenstein. 

The forbidding housekeeper of Dr. Fronkensteen's Transylvanian castle, costar and co-writer Gene Wilder played the sound of a horse's neigh every time Leachman's character's name was spoken — a joke he told the San Jose Mercury News he added when he learned "Blücher" translates to "a horse going to a factory and being turned into glue." (It technically doesn't mean that, but the joke still landed.)

To this date, it's one of the best-known running gags in movie history.

In her personal life, Leachman married Hollywood impresario George Englund in 1953. The couple had four sons and one daughter together: Morgan, Adam, Dinah, George Jr., and Bryan (who died in 1986).

Their marriage wasn't without scandal. Early on, Englund became involved in a torrid affair with Dynasty actress Joan Collins. In her 2010 autobiography, Leachman called it "the most difficult time of my life," since she had just gone through a "terrible miscarriage." Years later, both women would talk openly about the conflict — and the time Collins phoned Leachman at 4 a.m. to say, "I'm in love with your husband — what are you going to do about it?"

They remained together, though Leachman would admit in her book that she too had flings with stars, including Gene Hackman and singer Andy Williams. They eventually divorced in 1979.

Vegetarian since the age of 35, Leachman lived outside a horse farm in the hills above Los Angeles. In her 2010 autobiography, she said she wanted to be remembered for how she approached everything in her life with full force.

"I've lived my life; I haven't trotted alongside it," she wrote. "I've opened the doors of opportunity wherever I've seen them. I've walked into discoveries and dreams, disappointments and death. I bear the scares of not having obeyed rules made by others, and I wear the deep satisfaction of knowing I never bent to conventions I didn't believe in."

Mostly, Leachman said she was proud for how she remained unique up until the end.

"I never wanted to conform," she wrote. "I haven't conformed. I've tried, but I couldn't. I've never put a label on myself. I find it distasteful that people put labels on other people and say that's who they are, that one thing. When I was 46, people said I was in middle age. I shrugged off that designation. I didn't want to be lumped into a group."