I had been rather excited just to see Cloris Leachman in-person when I saw the live performance of Dancing With the Stars on October 7, 2008. Afterall, not only had she been a star on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, spun off into her own starring series Phyllis, taken over for Charlotte Rae on The Facts of Life, been in three major Mel Brooks films (Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and History of the World Part 1), and starred in a couple of Disney live-action films of the late 70’s/early 80’s – but she was an Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress in one of my favorite films, The Last Picture Show.
Seeing Cloris Leachman in person was one thing, getting the chance to meet her was even more exciting. She made a relatively rare appearance at The Hollywood Show on the weekend of April 24 and 25, 2010. Throughout Saturday the 24th, I pretty much realized that she was unbridled soul (translated as crazy broad). She and Gary Busey periodically broke out into good-natured shouting matches across the busy collectors show, at one point even pushing their designated tables together.
Gary and Cloris…such cut-ups!
Because Cloris Leachman had already been kind enough to sign a couple of photos for me (the two above) through the mail in 1998, I was really only needing to get a picture with her (which I didn’t do until Sunday the 25th). Her handler was going to charge me $20 for this pleasure, so I went ahead and bought the signed photo from The Mary Tyler Moore Show as seen below and got the picture with her for $25.
I’m not sure I really exactly what she was doing or why she was doing it, but she adamantly insisted on ‘directing’ both our position and the cameraman (in this case, Bob) as we got our picture taken together – hence the rather hideous close-up of us seen below. Bob naturally took the opportunity to pontificate to her that now he had been “directed by Cloris Leachman.”
Was Bob’s joke funny? Was Cloris mentally stable? Did she and Gary Busey partake in some very strong potions earlier that morning? As Cloris says in her last line of dialogue in her Oscar-winning role: “Never you mind.”
Celebrities of the Spring 2010 Hollywood Show will continue…
Autographs of 1998 will continue…
She also played Timmy’s mother on “Lassie” for 1 season.
Dad
May 18th, 2011
I didn’t know you got to be in the audience at Dancing with the Stars! Abby and I are jealous.
Bev
May 18th, 2011
When I lived in San Diego, I worked as an extra on several movies. I spent a week working on Scavenger Hunt with Cloris. She was the nicest person back then, around 1980. She not only spoke with and joked with the extras, she sat and ate with us each day at lunch. Class act.
Rick Greene
May 21st, 2011